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Old 05-10-2013, 08:41 AM   #3
Ecosamurai
 
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Dojo: Takagashira Dojo
Join Date: Jun 2002
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Re: Investing in loss (yielding)

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
Honestly the first thing that comes to my mind is ju...specifically the "Yoshin" principle as i understand it. The branch of the willow tree collects snow which weights it down, until it reaches an angle where the snow sloughs off and then it SPRINGS back into place with a vigorous and smooth movement.

I think in Aikido training you would necessarily have to offer something to the attack rather than removing yourself completely from the line or blending completely. You need to learn to accept the attack rather than avoiding it so you can absorb some of the energy. Then the difficult part of learning what to do with it....I'm merely the person to speculate about that. Seems that some techniques are better for exploring this than others. As uke perhaps you can learn to take some of the energy of a technique into your body before taking the fall or the roll.

As a sidenote....Kevin Leavitt recommended this book a couple weeks ago and it was a good read: The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. He was a student of Cheng's and makes a huge deal out of "investing in loss" among other principles that he connects between high-level chess and high-level competition push-hands.
I can see why you might think of ju based on what I wrote but yielding is not quite the same IME, the yielding I'm talking about is more akin to the idea that aiki is non-dissent, accepting the attack in other words, not the idea of pulling when pushed, pushing when pulled etc. Perhaps it'd be better to phrase it as offering no opposition to the force being directed at you, rather than moving away from a force directed at you.

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
-Martin Luther King Jr
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