Hi George:

I really don't think it's much of a matter of "how we develop a system", in reality, nor do I think it's going to be a matter of an event or two under the auspices of Jun or Stan.

Although some aspects of the jin/kokyu skills can be taught fairly rapidly, the general corpus of information is too broad to comfortably fit into a particular "emphasis" in one or two seminars. I've tried to say it before that shifting over to this way of movement involves a pretty radical re-coordination of movement. Only the dedicated are going to do it and of those, only a few will go the Full Monte and not drop off at some muscular, showy levels of skill ability.

Ted Ehara made an interesting comment the other day to the effect that one of the now-dropped Ki Breathing exercises in the early Tohei books came from O-Sensei. That's interesting because, as I'd noted in an earlier thread, that particular method was a recognizable part of a power gong. I.e., this facet of Aikido will by necessity need to go into power gongs, jin/kokyu manipulation, and a few other things, in order to be more than a lick and a promise. I suspect that in reality this sort of stuff is only going to be the purview of a limited few in the current generation of Aikido and won't come to fruition until the next generation. It means that, like Ikeda Sensei does in his relationship with Ushiro, this needs to be viewed as more than a matter of a couple of seminars worth of focus.

My opinion, FWIW

Mike Sigman