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Old 10-04-2012, 11:06 PM   #39
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,511
United_States
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Re: More on Aikido and the Floating Bridge of Heaven

Quote:
Greg Steckel wrote: View Post
I like that !

Greg
Well, I'm not saying I've "got" it, but there is a big difference in my movement and abilities compared to 30 months ago. A big change in how I receive power and apply it, where it comes from in my body and, especially that it has transformed from "muscle-chaining" kinds of sequential movement to more due to the whole-body presence in place. It's springy (but not springy, more like Dan describes as like being a statue of hard rubber, or maybe like a shock absorber donut or something, solid springy...)yet softer than I've ever been. Yet I can produce more power with less effort.

And there is the mental side, too. It's a direct connection of awareness to the environment.

Lately, I've been thinking about how the fascia unites the body and also carries the ki...

How we interact with the six directions through our ki....

And then I thought, is the ki of the environment also reaching in toward me?

Of course, it is...but then I thought, where does the ki of the environment reside?

And I thought it resides in the "fascia" or "connective tissue" of the environment around us, meaning inside a room or out in a field or a forest or a bamboo grove. Can't you just feel a very different quality about each one of those places, just at perceiving the name of it? If you've ever been in a bamboo grove you probably feel it right now, just on thinking of it. That's the ki of the bamboo grove and it feels that way because of the connective qualities of the bamboo, its fibers, its shapes, its root system, the kinds of air that are caught in its foliage and everything about how that form manifests in large areas.

But you can feel a similar uniqueness about a forest, a field, the shore.

And you can feel it in any room. Like, think of being in a huge atrium at a hotel with dining, bar and a swimming pool all under a vast glass roof/wall.

Or think of the room you're in right now. What's around you?

If you do the six-direction training in the room where you are now...how do the walls affect your feeling about the six-direction forces?

I'm not saying they change it, but they may change your feelings while doing the exercises.

And that feeling is ki...so ....the ki of the room seems to me like it's affecting you by the shape of it and the substance of the walls and so on. Which is...the connective tissue of the room.

So the ki that resides in the connective structure of the room where you're training, you deal with that when you work with the six directions.

So now the big thing: can your ki "grab hold" of the ki in the environment so that your physical body is "supported" (or even pressed away) by the physical structure of the room around you, at a distance, but through your ki's "musubi" with the whole room around you in every direction: musubi with the walls around you, as if you were tied with ropes in the six directons

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

"Eternity forever!"

www.esotericorange.com
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