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Old 01-08-2005, 11:08 AM   #53
Ed Stansfield
 
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Dojo: Mason Street Dojo
Location: Manchester
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 53
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Re: Learning How to Learn Aikido

Quote:
Mary Kuhner wrote:
We worked on kata tori nikyo last Monday with a fairly junior instructor. I was failing almost every time to throw him: what I was doing looked good to me, but it didn't move him at all.

We traded places, and he said "Here is how your nikyo feels to me." It was a revelation: he managed to show me physically what it felt like if nage was not attached to uke's center. Of course I wasn't throwing him: he wasn't throwing me either, doing that. And then he switched to doing it right....

So for me, I think there' s a lot of value in being shown how something is done wrong, if I was already doing it wrong. I agree with the comment that "Here's a common way this can be done wrong" is not a wise teaching technique unless the students in front of you are doing it here and now.

Mary Kaye
As a student, I think that this is one of most useful teaching methods for me. I think that sometimes my teachers credit me too much with being able to understand my mistakes just by seeing/feeling things done "the right way". My teacher will say "No, like this" and I'll say "So hang on, what am I doing?" I think it's probably most useful when you're looking at the feeling behind a technique rather than, say, the locations of hands and feet.

Then again, it could just be that I'm dense.

Going back to the "don't demonstrate the wrong way" point, from a ki style perspective, the ki excercises / tests would almost always be demonstrated "right way" and "wrong way", relaxed and tensed for example. The whys and wherefores of that could probably be a whole other thread but the idea would be that in demonstration there's a clear visual indication of why it's the wrong way eg. the person falls over.

So again, I think it's a useful teaching device. Where it fits into the "learning how to learn" debate may be another matter . . .


Best,

Ed

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

Winston Churchill, 1930.
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