Thread: What is "IT"?
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Old 10-12-2009, 09:00 AM   #189
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: What is "IT"?

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote: View Post
I dunno... I'm not partisan for anyone, but I don't see any need for the constant trivializing of Ueshiba and his skills.
FWIW
Mike Sigman
Neither am I partisan for, or against, anyone. Takeda and Ueshiba are both dead. I have better things to do and I am doing them. Were it to be proved that Ueshiba's skills came from something other than DR aiki- It wouldn't matter to me one bit; I would be discussing that. As it is, the only men with power who appeared in his time were all linked to…Takeda.
It's just the way it is.

To revisit the "supposed" and oft repeated "evolutionary" advancement of aikido over Daito ryu
1. No one in aikido is currently known to have any significant internal skills of the type being discussed here. And no one who has felt IP/ AIKI from men who have them is going to an Aikido teacher to learn these skills.
2. Instead Aikido people are going outside the art to learn aiki.
3. No one in Daito ryu is going to Aikido to find IP/ Aiki are they?

Trivializing Ueshiba
"Trivializing" is a word you attached to my suggestion that there is a more complete use of these skills than in what Ueshiba displayed. Comparisons and critiques are not so simplistic a concept, nor do they always polarize. There is a reason that Ueshiba may have chosen to express the art the way he did. It doesn't mean it's all he had or needed IN ORDER to display the art the way he did, nor does it mean it is trivial; either in concept or execution of that concept.
Then again, the entire framework of the Japanese Aiki arts (both DR and Aikido) is flawed in their approach and the effect on the execution of skills can be limiting. The Japanese arts are hamstrung by the training model of Uke / tori. A model, that will forever prevent the development of those deeper skills.
Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote: View Post
.... Similarly, a person developing I.S. skills only truly understands from within his personal skills and the grasp of higher skills can be equally blinded from below. A person does not "know I.S."... he only knows up to the level that he can do. Hence Ueshiba was not just talking idly when he discussed how long his journey had been.
I think that explains why you "see" and talk about Ueshiba's skills so highly the way you do, and why I never have. IMO, you see him as "more complete" than he really was; I see him as just another step along the way. I let it go before because it served the purposes of bringing the discussion forward. It's gotten a bit out of hand lately with some of the repeated cautions and suggestions to the community. Pointing out what is missing and then showing them how to do it is as far as I am comfortable with going. I think the decision about just what belongs in aikido and where to get it is best left to those in the art.
We have Ikeda going to Karate, Ledyard to Daito ryu and Systema, others to Koryu. I think they are smart enough to figure things out for themselves without all this "cautioning."

Quote:
Surely the topic of IS can be discussed without the constant "Ueshiba" implications or the "I" or "some people" stuff?
Not really. No one is willing to discuss details of what they are doing publicly. So we only discuss the visual effects, or the body attributes attained. There are very few doing the work, so the references to "some people," "others" and "I' remain the only reference points in the dialogue.
At this juncture; the work "I" am discussing in the prescribed methods and areas "I" am using it in can only be discussed-by- me. I'm the only one "I" know of who is going in the direction I am heading in. If you can name any other man who has incorporated internal power /aiki (from the aiki arts) into successful testing with ICMA and Koryu adepts with weapons and with out, into twin sticks and other freestyle weapons work, and freestyle fighting in MMA...name him. I'd like to meet him.
The few I have met in the ICMA who actually had something-were more concerned with their tradtional arts. No on the aiki arts I have met has much by way of IP / aiki- and of them -very few are much interested in expressing it outside of their traditional arts either.
I took the next step- to evolve the aiki arts into something more than either DR or Aikido could ever have offered in their present form; IP/ aiki from within the aiki arts- expressed in a manner beyond the staid executions of its forebears; Daito ryu and Aikido into traditonal and modern combatives.
That's my "IT."
And it is something new.
Cheers
Dan

Last edited by DH : 10-12-2009 at 09:12 AM.
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