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Old 01-24-2009, 03:52 PM   #204
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
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Re: Using ki-skills for "aiki" in Daito-Ryu

Quote:
Cady Goldfield wrote: View Post
I don't know whether Chinese (and other) practitioners hundreds or thousands of years ago had the means by which to view myoneural cells within fascia to see them firing electrochemically. Lacking that medical/scientific technology, I attributed their understanding to an "intuitive" one perhaps augmented by the visual knowledge of the human body they had.
Hi Cady:

Well, I see where you're going and I simply disagree. I think it's fairly obvious (in hindsight; I've been doing this a long time, though) that what happened was empirical. There was no need to have some sage-like intuition about cellular activity; what they observed was physical and if you focus where they almost undoubtedly focused, you'd see it, too. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to attribute all of this to lost ancient wisdom or even a sprinkling of body-technology delivered by aliens to the lost kingdom of WatdaFu, but I think it's much simpler than that.
Quote:
If Western science has been dissecting human cadavers for centuries now, without understanding the role of fascia until fairly recently, I have to wonder how much greater an advance Chinese physiological knowledge had over 1,000 years ago? And even more so, the ability to make a connection between "intent" and the firing of fascia cells to effect movement in advance of muscle action? I think crediting the Chinese with empirical knowledge 1,000 years ago is a bit of a stretch (pardon the play on words).
Yeah, I don't have any problem with seeing what you're trying to say, I just think that you're looking in the wrong direction. But since that's an O.T. tangent, I won't go there (or even tip my hand. ).
Quote:
And why is "intuition" somehow looked down upon as an inferior sense (recall how "women's intuition" was viewed condescendingly in bygone days), rather than as a form of intelligence that simply isn't represented by forms of cognition that are "verbal" -- something the Western mind tends to value ("I THINK... therefore, I must know something..." )

In the absence of cognitively analyzed data, intuition was often the chief form of intelligence that allowed human beings to discover and utilize many resources that might otherwise have been unreachable. Give it some credit.
Er.... I didn't attack the idea of "intuition", Cady. At least I don't think I did. I dunno... I used to be indecisive about what "intuition" meant, but now I'm not so sure. Cogito, ergo curro.

Mike
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