In another thread this quote from an interview with Nobuyoshi Tamura appeared:
"O-Sensei would slip into the dojo, show a few techniques, and then slip out. If he felt like it he would speak for a while. We were all young, so mostly we just wanted to get on with the practice. (on the content of the lectures) He would talk about the gods - Izanagi, Izanami and so forth. In Sakurazawa-shiki (Macrobiotics) they have some of the same ideas, so
I thought that he was speaking about something concerning In and Yo, but that's about as much as I understood."
The last sentence is very interesting in view of Ueshiba's saying:
"You can't do what I do because you don't understand in/yo."
Also, in another thread discussing Tamura's "warm up" (
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showth...ht=Tamura+warm) it is mentioned that they are doing Do-In (Daoyin) exercises. The exercises are similar to the ones described here (my previous sensei frequently refered to them as "Ki exercises"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baduanjin_qigong (BTW, how can be Baduanjin be translated?)
(in fact, there are a few more "warm up/breathing/solo" exercises which are not shown here)
I had only one chance to see Tamura in person doing these exercises. For an untrained eye like mine, when Tamura did them there was something else, something more than I saw in some of his students (my previous sensei included). Since I am no expert the only thing I can say is that while I could see that my sensei was actually "doing" these exercises, it looked like if Tamura was really not "doing" them, but the movements came from somewhere else.
I wonder where/when/how Tamura learnt these exercises and how he taught them. In addition, Tamura apparently attached great importance to them. I am not an expert, but it appears that these might convey some IT. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to meet some of the IT guys and have my eyes opened...
Roberto.