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Old 07-18-2011, 10:07 AM   #29
mathewjgano
 
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Dojo: Tsubaki Kannagara Jinja Aikidojo; Himeji Shodokan Dojo
Location: Renton
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 2,276
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Re: Moving with your center

Quote:
Lee Salzman wrote: View Post
Let's just take that phrase, "when one thing moves, everything moves". This does not mean...your arms are rigid sticks affixed to a body that is moving, such that the arms get pushed along in space like they were just that, dead sticks. This does not mean your arms are limp noodles being whipped around as if they were injected with botulinum It means they actually move, as in they articulate, relative to their parent body. Dead sticks is no ki. Limp noodles is no ki.
Great points! The way the cart analogy was described to me (bearing in mind this was a first-day level of instruction) was that the arms are relaxed and sort of pushed by the center, but I really like that balancing Armsly analogy! I'll have to read that a few more times.

Quote:
And that gets back to, who made up the moving with the center thing anyway? Perhaps an oversimplification overglorification of that whole hara thing the Japanese seem so obsessed with? I don't think it was O'Sensei, that's for sure. Oh sure, he mentioned a hara, but did he really say it was a single point or that it operated in isolation? I really don't know the answer to those questions myself. I am no scholar or historian. But, are we putting too much stock in one, perhaps even misguided, interpretation amongst any other cool ones we could create that might work better, or just as well? Hmmm. What's aikido? What's not aikido? Probably doesn't matter at all anymore, so long as it improves performance in the thing.
In my dojo there is the concept of working on parts in order to integrate into the whole. The goal is whole-body interaction, so any time any part is given emphasis, that emphasis is (hopefully) understood to be a degree of progression, to be then added to the whole "tool set."

Last edited by mathewjgano : 07-18-2011 at 10:10 AM.

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