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Old 11-04-2012, 10:30 AM   #8
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: Defining the word "Aiki" and looking at the phenomenon it describes.

Why exhaustively repeat. Phi will have a fit!!
Is this a discussion or a disingenuous effort toward a foregone conclusion and closed mind?

A, B, and C, are one but C comes first as part of and to make A and B more efficient.

The confusion over C and how it could possible related to A and B, is because so few get C that it is a non starter in any discussion. Once you come to fully realize C the entire "discussion" or debate is resolved and makes perfect sense.

Solo training
Why did Ueshiba continually discuss solo training and the individual model when asked about "aiki?"
When asked about aiki his drawing a circle and stating it is opposing forces has been mentioned by me several times and never addressed. Why and how does this make any sense in producing aiki what-so-ever?
When offering to define aiki his stating it was dual opposing spirals in the body makes sense how?
How does guest hand/ host hand and five and five make ten, seven and three make ten makes sense in solo first, then in an encounter?
Why were they ancient models re-quoted?
Discussing Koryu and vector approaches is interesting, though you are of course leaving out drawings of cones as multiple lines of force-starting once again with yourself.
How would Heaven/earth/man and six directions (other solo training methods taught as Katori and Kashima shrine) effect the founder of shinto ryu in such a profound way that he said no one could stop his ken once he understood them?
Why are those teachings thousands of years old?
Why do virtually all of the worlds high level arts focus on solo training?
In Taiji, what does it do to make jins? How are jins, aiki?

Paired encounters
How is the soft power gained and inherent in the type of solo training discussed by so many provide answers to several of the koryu models definition of producing the aiki offered in Yoshimine Yasuo's examples?
How would you successfully enter and overcome in those models? Lifting weights? Eating your Wheaties? Better timing? Then Aiki is timing and lifting weights?
Maybe solo training changes your body and organizes it in a sophisticated way that entering in and overcoming as outlined is so much easier that warriors noticed a profound difference ...thus giving this type of training a worthy notation as not only different but superior?

The masses are always right or the case for the lowest common denominator.
Why did certain men who stood out practice differently and so often point to the same methods; Solo training first?
What did solo training do for them to cause them to stand out in the first place?
What does "Stand out"....mean?

What does it mean to be arguing for a case... To feel like everyone else?

We can make a case for the gym rats being right; lift, run and practice timing. And that is all there ever was to doing those Asian arts better. I ain't bettin on that....ever.

The joining of Internal strength or internal power and aiki
I will make a case that solo training gained prominence because changing the body changed the way it responded and felt to the "majority" or masses. So much so, that the difference was profound and life altering for those who encountered it, that they sought out a means to train it. Hence those men in turn, stood out as different and dominant. The "feeling" they produced was soft power and aiki. This soft power creates aiki as a default state and also gave birth to aiki ....as a skill.
This is why Ueshiba could state "I...am aiki!" Or "I am the universe!"

It was this soft power that is inherent as part of you in a default state, that also produced a more sophisticated skill -that is also aiki. It was this that accomplished "the fitting in" models so described in the koryu models. In other words, Aiki exists as a state *and* a skill beyond the norm. So much so, that it stood out among warriors and fighters who were the masses of average Joe's. I find it perfectly natural that it is the average Joes, the masses, who are just as perplexed now as they were then.

It is precisely because of the masses not getting it that there is a yearning to know what the greats did. If not for the greats doing something out of the ordinary:
a. No one would have stood out.
b. No one would have felt different
c. We would not be here having this discussion.

The only real argument seems to be the masses wanting to argue that the results they gained (to feel like everyone else)
Is supposedly what those who did *not* feel like everyone else...were doing as well.
In other words...Do more of what the masses are doing....to be different?

Dan

Last edited by DH : 11-04-2012 at 10:44 AM.
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