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Old 03-03-2012, 07:33 AM   #51
gregstec
Dojo: Aiki Kurabu
Location: Elizabethtown, PA
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,110
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Re: Fingers spread or together?

Quote:
Jim Clark wrote: View Post
I understand the idea here, but think about this. If ki flows from each finger and they are all pointing in different directions when spread, aren't you sending ki in to non-useful directions instead of using it to influence uke?

This reminds me of a quote from a project manager at my old engineering job. When part of the project was falling behind, the team was directed to "concentrate their resources" on that part to get it back on schedule. A couple of months passed and we met again with status reports. The part that was behind and in fact a little bit ahead of schedule, while other parts of the project had moved ahead a little slower than previously. The manager was very excited about the progress we had made on the task that had been behind schedule (completely ignoring the other parts of the project). His comment was that we should "concentrate our resources on EVERYTHING" and then we could all get ahead of schedule..... Hmmm, wait, that doesn't work. There's only so much effort to go around and if you spread it over all directions, less goes into your intended target.

This is exactly what I'm talking about on this issue. I still think the tea ceremony post put it best about aligning fingers along the arm to unify intent....

I'm looking forward to seeing more posts.....
Funny you mentioned Project Management - I was a Project Manager before I retired last April. A successful project is dependent on how well the manager can balance the triple constraints of scope, time, and cost. This is best accomplished by proper planning to ensure all the scope detail is identified, a realistic timeline is estimated, and sufficient resources are assigned at the beginning of the project when the baseline is established. Sounds like the project manager in your example fell short in some of those areas. Large projects are complex entities with more that one thing going on at the same time with all efforts focusing on the overall project's objectives; you need to deploy the right resources at the right times to do that - An Aiki interaction between two people is a very complex thing as well requiring the same type of resource applications at the right time to be successful; it is not a singular and linear interaction.

IMO, I do not think I said ki is projecting from the fingers to affect uke - I think I said the fingers point the direction of where you want your intent/ki/energy to go. In reality, the intent/ki that will affect uke will come via the point of contact - the fingers, elbow, knee, or just about any other part of the body can be used to point in the direction of where you want your intent/ki to go; kind of like using a laser to light up the target and guide a missile to it. However, when directing energy to more than one point, like in aiki age to direct intent/ki behind uke, into uke's center, and down to uke's opposite hip all at the same time; using fingers to do that is easy because you have more that one finger. But as I previously said in post # 34 "this can be accomplished without spreading the fingers, but only after you have trained enough to have established a connected body" In this case, you can just use your mental intent to visualize the energy coming from your center out to uke in those three directions; the result will be the same. Of course, none of this can happen unless you have connected to uke's center and have established aiki in you first. The thing I don't like about the Tea Ceremony comparison is that alignment like that is linear and straight. Aiki is all about circular energy with spirals; by having the elbow and hand not aligned in the arm, you can manifest those types of movement much easier.

As I said, this is all my opinion based on previous training and experiences, and that your mileage may vary if you have not had the same training and/or experiences

Greg

Last edited by gregstec : 03-03-2012 at 07:37 AM.
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