bkedelen

Ikeda Sensei usually explains that he puts some on some bodyweight, just enough so the uke reacts just a bit and he gets some dynamic tension. In his terminology this is "tightness". "Tightness" also includes a sense of closeness, of collapsing into your body's inner empty space toward your partner. He then talks about creating a feeling of upwelling in his own abdomen (without moving his upper body!) which results in uke becoming "light". When uke is "light" he can be moved around easily. Sensei often uses the lightness to pick up his partner's shoulder. In my experiments with Mark I have found that this produces similar results to when Mike adjusts the angle of his ground path to be more acute to his partner's push. The result of both methods seems to be that if the partner pushes harder, he pushes himself away instead of pushing nage more. The order Sensei seems to apply this this method seems to be "tightness" or "connection", then "break balance", "make light" or "putting on edges", then "wave" or "putting your weight on". He seems to pick and choose between these options when he does a technique, doing whichever he feels the current circumstances warrant, often in a couple of different combinations for one single set of four during a technique demonstration. That is part of why it is so hard to see what he does, you cannot look again to see what he did previously. At a higher level, he talks about moving the steps "inside" which almost completely eliminates the ability to observe the steps happening, and also seems to keep uke from being able to feel the application of the steps. I hope this perspective is useful.