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Old 02-24-2011, 09:29 PM   #18
JW
 
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Location: San Diego CA USA
Join Date: Aug 2000
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Re: Ikeda's videos, my video, your video. Kuzushi on contact.

Hi Jonathan, I think those exercises are great ideas. I've done a version of the open palm one, but the other is a little tricky sounding. Meaning, the people I know would not want to grab in the first place, so if I say "grab, but let go to strike any time," then they will not really grab, they'll just fake it and strike. Is that what you mean? In other words I have to fully connect even through this "token grab?" I like the idea but I think I have to work on static grabs more first.
Of course this converges on the idea of what happens before contact having value in my initial kuzushi.

But ultimately, I do want to make it so they can't let go. How to do this is more obvious within a more compressive connection based interaction: even if they let go, I am pressing in, so the connection stays (to a large degree). Just like the open-palm exercise. But realizing that this could happen in reverse, within an interaction that more favors the tensile connection has been big in my mind recently. (As they try to let go, force would continue to be exerted on their fingers against my wrist for example)

And all that is in addition to the 2 classic aikido ideas about why uke can't or shouldn't let go: 1. He will be falling if he does, or 2. He will be struck or pushed by the point of contact if he does.

I am trying to keep the 2 types of connection fused into a single percept from my point of view, so that the "inescapable connection" would operate seamlessly in either tensile or compressive directions. After all, I am trying to maintain both of these connections at all times.

Daniel I.: I can see what you mean. I want to work with intertia later (which is how I think of "using someones momentum"). But for me, that will be an adjunct skill. (That is a big part of what "ki no nagare training" means to me, and kihon comes first.) And if I didn't think I was getting any results from what I showed, I would be frustrated.

But I think it is working. In fact this whole training direction came to me when I realized that even in a light grab, with very little intent, and no motion, there are 2 tools that uke can't easily stop me from using: his own body's involuntary and dependable conduction of compressive force along his skeleton, and tensile force along his soft tissues.
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