Thread: Feeling
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Old 01-25-2012, 05:48 AM   #8
graham christian
Dojo: golden center aikido-highgate
Location: london
Join Date: Oct 2010
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Re: Feeling

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
What changed my view completely was when I was thrown for the first time by Endo Seishiro.
I didn't feel anything. There was nothing to feel. I was sure he didn't even touch me. Next thing I realised was being hammered into the tatami. I felt the enormous energy of this throw only when it was over and sensei stood some steps away.

Then. What I feel when practicing with someone who is experienced with Endo's way of aikido is not my partner. I just feel that somebody laid his hand on my body. But I don' t feel that this hand does something to me. It just is there. So I just feel my own body. It's like I'm moving in a very pleasant and natural way, but it is not be felt why I am moving. I am just moving. And although it feels very "good", I am finally collapsing, going down to the ground. At no time I have to think about danger, have to jump or feel pain. I just move myself although I am not moving myself.
Sometimes it feels like every physical (not mental!) energy leaves me and my body is no longer able to stay upright.

When practicing with someone who is not so experienced I, and on the other side, people who practice with me, can feel that it is the hand, touching the body, that moves it and how the hand does it.

Another very interesting experience was being uke of Ikeda Hiroshi. He didn't move when grasped. And he didn't feel different in no way. It was just that I was off balance when he said I would be. And that I regained my balance, when he said so. On off on off ...
There was nothing to feel in his body, nothing that changed. But my body changed clearly.

Those three examples sound familiar to what I was taught and practiced over the first years. But what I tried to describe was/is fundamentally different from those familiar pictures and experiences. It was something I had not experienced ever before.
It feels kind of being connected to oneself. Like grabbing oneself and not at different person. There is not two bodys any more. So there is no letting go or connection to a center or something like that. Just me. And I am doing strange things.
And if there is resistance, it is not like moving against an unmovable thing. But like not being able to move further. Again it's me who can't go on. It is not a resistance outside of me.

I don't understand: You mean fives sense = feeling?
Or feeling is different from five senses?

"Feeling" in my textbook can mean an psychological phenomenon: Emotions. This is not what I am talking about in aikido.
"Feeling" can also mean a physiological phenomenon. Then it is the sensory impression or cognition of the surrounding world. This is what think to be related to aikido.

Neither of both in my understanding is related to "Spirituality".

I don't get how you understand this phrase in this context?
What is interesting to me is, that there is a different quality when touching Endo or Ikeda or my teacher or my students. Completely different. And touching Endo for the first time, like touching Ikeda, had no parallel in my life on and off the tatami. This was completely different.
Hearing Endo talking about spiritual issues was very familiar to me. I understand it, even if I don't understand everything he says.
Very nice experiences. I love the Endo one. I can't say exactly what he is doing there as I would have to ask him but it is very familiar so I could say I understand. I would call that true kokyu.

When I say spiritual I do mean it though. The feeling you felt from Endo was not physical, it was not mental, so what was it?

We have five senses we are used to, body senses. Thus five body perceptions. Then we have numerous spiritual perceptions, as we don't categorize them we put them down to feelings. As we get used to them and use them we can then 'see' perceive and detect more than what we could before.
Thus the 'Master' or 'Teacher' can see and do things differently.

All perceptions are a matter of outflow, inflow. Giving and receiving. The basic premise of yin and yang.

Regards.G.
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