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Old 01-05-2009, 09:15 PM   #2
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
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Re: Uses of the Hara within different traditions

Quote:
Oisin Bourke wrote: View Post
For example, would an art such as hsing i condition a harder, more solid hara compared to an "aiki" art which cultivates a softer, more reflexive hara? Or is this "Quality" merely related to different stages of progression?
There would almost undoubtedly be differences between the hara development in different arts, but I think that often reflects how "pure" the "use the hara" is done in various arts.

In a very pure sense of "use the hara for your movements" there is a form of movement that is referred to as "six harmonies" type of movement. In the old days in China, when martial-arts and cultivating the body (as part of the Dao) were more important, a greater percentage of the arts bespoke themselves as utilizing "six harmonies" movement, the hallmark movement of a full-blown "internal art". Nowadays a lot of those arts still exist but they no longer use the six-harmonies movement and use more ordinary "external" aspects of ki and kokyu skills. The more "pure" a martial-art is, the more the hara/tanden/dantien area is used. I've seen practitioners of Chen's Taiji who have a development in the hara/dantien that comes from constantly manipulating the ki and kokyu skills... to the point that they can push out a small mound of specialized muscles at the dantien that is about the size of a large apple.

My point being that it's not so much that Aikido is different (there are other arts that pretty much use the hara as much as Aikido does), but that the level of hara-usage can vary. In fact, there is generally a lot of variance even within different martial arts, depending upon the skills of the practitioner.

FWIW

Mike Sigman
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