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Old 02-02-2007, 01:35 PM   #338
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,619
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Re: Baseline skillset

Quote:
Ignatius Teo wrote:
Well Erick... perhaps you should take Frank Doran's advice....
Quote:
Frank Doran wrote:
Look beyond technique and discover the principle that gives it life.
Because that is precisely what we're trying to do, amidst your interjections and tangential arguments...
Interjections (irimi) and tangentials (tenkan). Those are the principles. I have it on good authority, confirmed by experience.
Quote:
Ignatius Teo wrote:
Yes, it (principle) may just be "an idea", but it is a idea that begs further exploration - off the mat. Which is what some of us are trying to do here, using the appropriate medium.
No actually, you are not using an appropriate medium. The appropriate medium is one in which the basic terms of reference are already clearly understood by the audience you are addressing before you begin the dicussion to elaborate their operation in particular circumstances.
Quote:
Ignatius Teo wrote:
... since it is quite obvious that you have NO IDEA what the principle is that we are talking about anyway....
Please. The problem is that your desired audience has no idea what YOU are talking about. The terms of reference are too obscure.

Last night we did standing kokyu tanden ho -- from two hand grab as warmup for some rank beginners, as we have done in the past and in my own background. It is virtually indistinguishable from the main movement in the san jan/san chin, and probably for very good reason . We also did kokyu tanden exercise from a shomenuchi engagement posture as preface to shomenuchi ikkyo and iriminage.

If you want people like that to hear you -- you need to speak a language they are prepared to hear. Not one you prefer to talk in. Or, if the discussion does necessarily become detailed at least one they can learn with some reasonably available independent resources, so they can try to keep up.

You are obscuring your valid points by esoteric usage. MY point is that your discussion in an aikido forum of sanchin or sanjan or all the other Chinese stuff is misplaced (and I get it better than most here, since I studied for a degree in it). Valid though it may be so far as it goes, it will result in your continuing to bemoan the fact, five years hence that no one is listening to you -- and still labors in the sad error of their ways.

MY approach to common ground may be "technical" in looking to mechanics. But that has an utterly neutral and easily verifiable knowledge base. It is freely available online for the most part and is not metaphorical. It is not subject to differences of opinion about the root terms of discussion (avoiding the ceaseless debates about different flavors of jin and whether we are really "reeling silk" or "pulling silk.", for instance).

It IS in the aikido curriculum, but it is equally true that sloppy practice or sloppy teaching may overlook or skip over the significance of the things that are there -- if one is paying attention to what one is actually doing or teaching. There is no reason to be hunting underneath the street lamp across the road for the car keys you lost here in the bushes, merely because the light makes the search easier on your eyes. The keys are really still over here in the bushes, and any keys you do find over there are unlikely to fit the intended purposes as well, if at all, as the ones you did not look for hard enough over here.

Find some common ground for discussion and seeking here in the bushes, or find yourselves talking pointlessly amongst yourselves across the road by the lamppost -- there really is no other alternative.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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