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Old 02-24-2006, 05:50 AM   #3
Pauliina Lievonen
 
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Dojo: Jiki Shin Kan Utrecht
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Re: Article: Fighting Patterns by "The Mirror"

Thank you for posting Olaf.
Quote:
Olaf Schubert wrote:
But I would watch out for one thing in here: we don't want to let the "new" movement become a pattern either - do we? Like in "from now on we always move this way..."
Well, yes and no. I agree that you wouldn't want to start thinking "from now on we always move like this" but the reality is, everything becomes a pattern. It's how ours brains work. The trick is to keep recognizing it and adapting again when it becomes necessary.

A dojo mate of mine made the observation that this is how meditation works as well - you don't try to not think while meditating, but instead recognize each thought that comes, and let it go again.
Quote:
And I am certain that after learning the basic direction of, say, Ikkyo, even beginners can very early on try to do that Ikkyo not against the partners force, i.e. adapt movement.
This is adapting movement on the level that I was speaking of in the beginning of the article. Its possible to adapt to the direction of your partners force, and always essentially stay the same "inside" yourself so to speak. Do you see what I mean?

I have to say that in my experience, even experienced people tend to repeat the same kind of mistakes in say a basic ikkyo. They just do it on a more subtle level, but the same "clash" against uke's force is still there. Or it's avoided, but not by changing something in tori, but by making big circular movements, that avoid the clash, but don't really add to the effectiveness of the technique. In order to really fundamentally change this I think it's necessary to go very slow sometimes, and not avoid the clash, but to see what really happens at the moment of that clash.
Quote:
... if you consider that we are in this for the long run anyway.
Yeah, the way I think is, if I'm in this for the long run, then there's no reason to not make experiments, I can afford the time. And sometimes something really cool comes out of it.
Quote:
I completely agree, though, that this breaking away from set patterns is hard to do, and I believe you described well how to go about it... just don't let the new thing become a pattern again.
I just wanted to repeat that I think it's inevitable the the new thing becomes a pattern...if it didn't, we'd revert to the old pattern. Or just move sort of aimlessly. The trick is to keep recognizing this.

Thanks for taking the time to post!
kvaak
Pauliina
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