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Old 06-23-2010, 09:57 AM   #87
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: Ki Aikido - quote from Gleason Sensei

Quote:
Budd writes:
And I wouldn't necessarily go there, either if I hadn't talked to a few folks that, when feeling this kind of weird strength, didn't start talking about how their teachers or teacher's teacher in brazil would be talking about using breath and pressure and intent to effect a lock or submission or change in position. I tend not to put much stock into "my teacher sez" with regard to how something works because there have been whole generations of a system where the advocates parrot jargon and make things up.

However, if there is something to it, at the very least there's an implication that more of this ki/kokyu stuff was wider spread, wasn't well explained and subsequently has been lost in transmission in a number of places.

Who knows? Perhaps it was never that high a priority . . but in my experiences feeling someone with or without this sort of unusual power - regardless of your abilities to apply it - having this kind of development effects your overall quality of life (for the better - and that's a generalization, but I think relevant to the other "on fire" thread in the General section with regard to size, health, habits, etc.).

As it's been a hobby of mine to see how IS fits better into a grappling (and moving on into MMA) paradigm, I see some breadcrumbs that are already there, even if enough have been eaten or misplaced to obscure the path, it provides something of an "up" or "down" directional vector for hopefully further ascending the budo mountain.

In terms of aikido - at this point in my martial hobby training - aikido is a luxury choice you can make based on doing all of the "other work" that makes such a choice possible.



To address your point about how it may or may not have been in the arts, look again at the story in "The fighting arts of Japan"
It is poignant that a) his introduction to the aikijujutsu guy was as a reward . That denotes worth doesn't it? But therein lies the other interesting story b) when the Englishman inquired about it; the teacher answered "Few know about it and few practice it."

Of further interest, when our Englishman asked back at the Kodokan, he was told of only one guy-an undefeated 6th dan who when he used this power -could not be thrown. Imagine the unstated internal dialogue from the englishmen "What the_______?"
So there you were in Japan in the 1920's and it was all but unknown or lost even then.

I think there was, is, and always will be, a confusing factor involved when it comes to fighting with it or without it.
Fighting skills will suffice........period.
Fighting skills mask weaknesses.
IP/aiki (whatever degree you have it) will work on people in marginal environments and impress a hell of lot of people. However, that same level of IP/aiki may totally fall apart against a trained fighter.
Hence the skill of IP/aiki may be judged as less important.
Only in certain areas are you going to run into people who have it to a decent degree and also know how to fight with it. While IP/aiki and fighting are indeed two different subjects; it at least gets the attention of both parties concerned when you ca actually use the stuff in free from combatives.
I know I almost dismissed it when I could blow through people. Who cared, It was only being able to see it work in Judo that it got my attention for good.
So we are where they were a hundred years ago; at a certain level it speaks for itself, it either speaks horribly, and cannot defend its worth, it is laughably inept, it is fairly decent, or it can be truly profound. Most will never feel it, of those who do, most of them will never really train to get it. And of those who become really good at it.....the cycle just repeats itself. Who has it, who can fight it, how do you know? On to who will really train it...yaada yaada yaada
Bill tells me that this traininng has all but absorbed him. Yet he wonders who among those he is involved with will ever really pursue it and get anywhere with it. Was it ever any different?
Dan
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