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Old 02-15-2005, 12:31 AM   #72
James Young
Location: Orange County, CA
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 87
United_States
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Re: Breath, Aikido & Misogi

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
Thanks again, James. I'm not sure exactly what you're saying since it looks like the definition of "kokyu" is varying again...

If you "cultivate" (renma) "kokyu", that can mean several things to me. It's sort of like trying to decide between the realistic description for an internal strength (used in a kokyu throw or kokyu-ho-dosa or shodo) as opposed to using the word to mean vaguely "energy" or "breath". It appears that you're using kokyu in an "energy" sense. Can you clarify what you're talking about using one of the exercises as an example, please? I.e., did you do anything besides variations of breathing in these exercises?
You are probably right that I may have been unintentionally mixing up definitions. Sorry for the confusion, but as you said cultivating kokyu can mean several things, and in fact many of the Ki no renma exercises probably have more than one purpose, i.e cultivating both kokyu breathing and energy at the same time, so it can be confusing for even myself. For example (again off the website I referenced) some of the various kokyu variations listed are: Gassho no (putting your palms together in praying fashion) kokyu; Kihon no (fundamental) kokyu; Ki o neru (polishing your ki) kokyu; six-sound kokyu; and tanden no (lower abdomen) kokyu. Perhaps kokyu is being used as a misnomer here based on your accepted definition and I wouldn't necessarily dispute that (since it's not my list) but as you can probably ascertain from this list some of these kokyu practices are more for "internal strength" and others for "energy" as you put it.

I know you would like me to give you some good, specific exercise examples of these, but I have to apologize since it's been almost ten years since I've done those Ki no renma exercises and I've forgotten a lot of them and I can't really recall them to give good examples. Heck, as a beginner doing them back then I didn't even know the purpose behind most of them when I did them, I just did them and later caught bits and pieces of their purpose from my sempai. I guess as one example at the beginning of each practice we would stand in place and raise our arms slowly above our head and back down slowly near our sides and repeat several times at a constant slow tempo (think tai chi pace) and then afterwards we would bring our hands together in front of us in praying form, closing our eyes, and remaining in silence for a few moments. I guess that was part of the gassho no kokyu practice. Of course proper breathing was integral to even that, but that didn't seem to be the primary purpose of that kokyu exercise, so I think that may be one example of a kokyu practice that didn't focus on breathing specifically. I have to apologize since I can't really provide better examples and make better connections to the subject at hand. Perhaps someone who was a long-term student of Tada-sensei with better knowledge would be able to better speak on the subject, because I think there is a lot within that practice there that relates to this subject of kokyu.
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