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Old 12-28-2016, 08:17 PM   #12
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
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Re: Descriptions of Ueshiba's Aiki compared to Aiki 1,2,3

Quote:
Rupert Atkinson wrote: View Post
Eric: Clear as mud??? To me, #1 sounds like push-pull; #2 sounds like a lever; and #3 sounds like a twist. Which anyone could understand, but no use to grasp aiki. Obviously I must be missing something ... but how on earth do you expect people to understand your explanation? Have you taught anyone with this that can now do aiki?
Everybody complains that there are no physical mechanisms to describe it . They are there, but they are a step further into the physics, just as the thing itself is a step further into the martial interaction.

1. push-pull is force v. resistance in direct conflict, but reciprocating, alternating. Linear shear, in contrast, is the opposed forces operating simultaneously in contact but unopposed, unconflicting, undiminished -- sliding past one another at the same time -- think suri-age with the sword.

2. is not leverage because a force couple has no fulcrum, it is just pure rotation (or moment = potential rotational energy) in the plane. In fact, it is contrary to leverage principles. In leverage, the longer the fulcrum, the more mass can be moved with less applied constant force. In this mode, however, the more the radius of action reduces in the course of the action the more powerful the effect of the movement -- just as he shortening radius of the sword cut concentrates its kinetic power without adding additional applied force. By approaching as close as possible to the center of our combined interaction, I reduce and transfer my rotational energy about the center and add it to my coupled partner (conservation).

3. You are not wrong about a twist. But manipulating the lines of stress independently allows one to magnify or diminish the twist by action 90 degrees in orientation to the opponent's applied force (and their proprioceptive attention to it) in the torque, and so the action remains unperceived, and unopposed. Put more prosaically, if I meet an incoming push on my arm and relay that in a chain from, say, left hand down to right foot, it forms one of the spirals (compression). I can diminish the force in the "push" along that spiral by stretching or extending the spiral that runs from left foot to right hand (tension). If there is enough force in the push relative to the opponents stability base, this in itself can achieve kuzushi.

In real, live bodies there are biomechanical reflexive aspects of both participants that play off of these stresses and movements to create true aiki (as I understand it). One cannot do aiki on a rock.

Last edited by Erick Mead : 12-28-2016 at 08:20 PM.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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