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Old 03-26-2007, 12:50 AM   #39
tarik
 
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Dojo: Iwae Dojo
Location: Boulder Creek, CA
Join Date: Jun 2000
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Re: Ueshiba, Tohei, and "Non-Dissension"

Quote:
Edwin Neal wrote: View Post
"Internal stuff"... "but when I felt it, the difference was.. " ??? what? how about some examples please... saying someone has strong waza that has this internal power, and that you can feel the difference is not very helpful unless you can explain what that difference is and how it measure against waza without "it"...
Edwin, I don't think I'm talking about "strong waza", nor am I talking about anything any more mystical or magical (IMO) than the birth of a child. For that matter, what I've experienced may not be this 'it' that everyone seems to be talking about although there are consistencies with how they talk about this and explain themselves.

I probably shouldn't even try to answer you as I'm hardly skilled at this sort of thing. I *think* I've experienced a taste of "it" while training with one of Okamoto sensei's students who is also a friend and from other people whom I actively seek to train with now.

Have you ever experienced an arm wrestling match wherein you simply relaxed and, without moving or pushing back redirected your opponents power and prevented them from moving your hand down. It's the most mundane (and probably piss poor) example I can think of that you may have played with yourself and it only begins to touch on the feeling.. in my limited experience.. and it perhaps is a poor example at that since that is relatively static in comparison.

I think that what I am talking about is the difference between saying and _really_ doing many of these various aiki principles that are constantly talked about in almost any seminar and class I've attended, but really only practiced in a fairly superficial way.

How to really explain what I mean by that? Honestly, I think the best thread I've seen about it in a long time is the ukemi thread. I think the idea of being uke and receiving when I am tori is the first time that I began to get a taste for how to make some of this happen in my own training.

Once I began to watch my training partners ukemi and comparing it to their ukemi when practicing kaeshi-waza I began to see a disconnect in many people's training that reflects a difference in their ukemi and their nage-waza that is, to me right now, symptomatic of the problem.

However, unless you're some kind of special genius (and I'm not), it's not very helpful to talk about it when you don't have a shared experience since the language used to talk about aikido is so similar. I've had many conversations with people and realized that we were saying very similar things that ultimately ended up feeling SIGNIFICANTLY different when we finally met on the mat.

So there's a lot of words when I really conclude that it's rather a waste of time asking someone who can't really do this. Ultimately, you're asking the wrong person. Go and experience it for yourself with people who claim to be pretty good at it.

Tarik Ghbeish
Jiyūshin-ryū AikiBudō - Iwae Dojo

MASAKATSU AGATSU -- "The true victory of self-mastery."
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