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Old 07-13-2007, 08:59 PM   #38
jennifer paige smith
 
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Dojo: Confluence Aiki-Dojo / Santa Cruz Sword Club
Location: Santa Cruz
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 1,049
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Re: Understanding fascia and tensegrity

Quote:
Tarik Ghbeish wrote: View Post
No letter, just the usual generic invite to the retreat and a verbal invite to visit from Anno's host when running into him at the grocery store. Unfortunately, I have some significant family obligations this week and I'm not sure I can even spare an hour to introduce him to my daughter much less talk about aikido, so I had to send my regards.

He does talk about focusing on certain energies or principles (as you mention); specifically certain kami and what they represent in the practice and how we should meditate and visualize what they represent and flow through us. It's an interesting approach that can be seen as intellectual in a mystical sense, but certainly not in the latter day scientific sense wherein science tries to explain why instead of just being content with being.

But he has also talked at times very firmly about budo in terms that were less than poetic and more direct and specific. I've heard him use technical terms that were not included in some of the translation I've experienced, so it all goes through our internal filters of what we are personally studying and capable of comprehending in that moment.

The technical side Chris is curious about it, correctly done, these exercises have the potential to refine significant internal skills. Yet many people (some here would say most) who practice these exercises for a long time, show no such skills. So the conclusion becomes that something has either been lost in the teaching or that it is being hidden in plain site, with important details being omitted except for certain dedicated students who are let in on the differences.

When I practice this now, the first thing I try to pay attention to is my posture and my structure, and adjusting the tension and relaxation in my body appropriately and the integrity of my movements. Then I try to empty my mind to focus on the various meditations as they come, but I'm still weak on posture, structure, etc., so I periodically return to trying to fix that. :-)

Lately, however, I generally work on simpler solo and paired exercises that have direct practical application to my training. I really have no idea if they develop 'internal' skills, but they definitely are slowly helping me to use my body as a single unit instead of a collection of individual coordinating pieces and are much more about what I am doing instead of what I am doing to uke.

Regards,
glad I could help.

Jennifer Paige Smith
Confluence Aikido Systems
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