Thread: The Way of Aiki
View Single Post
Old 12-30-2016, 12:21 AM   #159
tarik
 
tarik's Avatar
Dojo: Iwae Dojo
Location: Boulder Creek, CA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 568
United_States
Offline
Re: The Way of Aiki

Quote:
Ron Ragusa wrote: View Post
Blending, in it's most general form, is a process of mixing. In the context of Aikido, blending refers to the mixing of uke's and nage's individual motions so as to bring their conflicting trajectories into congruence in order to facilitate the execution of a technique.
The language just doesn't work for me. I don't consider my harmony or any of the definitions of congruence, mathematical or otherwise, (except maybe compatibility) to describe well what is going on when I receive uke's attacking energy into my physical system and use it to affect their structure.

Compatibility is closest because I make their structure dependent upon mine, but I don't still don't feel that I'm blending my energy with theirs. I'm letting it move through me and adding a tweak here and there to change it's trajectory or rebound upon them. It's definitely not what I consider blending.

But maybe I am just worrying too much about semantics here, although at especially beginning levels of training I find sematic descriptions incredibly important in the responses they illicit from untrained students.

Tarik Ghbeish
Jiyūshin-ryū AikiBudō - Iwae Dojo

MASAKATSU AGATSU -- "The true victory of self-mastery."
  Reply With Quote