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Old 01-19-2011, 07:11 PM   #133
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
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Re: Training Internal Strength

Quote:
Attilio Anthony John Wagstaffe wrote: View Post
What I "feel" does seem to emanate from my "core" or should I say stomach area and it has a "feeling" of coming from the core out to the extremities, that is my hips, legs, chest, arms, and seems to "explode" (kind of) through the wrists right through to my fingertips.... it's kind of exhilarating..... maybe I have it, maybe I don't.... it is hard to describe, but I wouldn't call it "mystical"....... more of a feeling of coming together at the right moment........ Hope that doesn't sound weird, but it's the only way I can put it into words.....
'You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.' — Albert Einstein

The first thing I'd point out is that the ki things are a lot more complicated than a few jin/kokyu tricks, but most people trying to cobble together an 'understanding' of ki/kokyu/qi/jin skills haven't gotten far enough to grasp that fact yet. So the entire spectrum of knowledge is a lot more than most people are thinking in these early stages.

The kokyu/jin things are fairly simple to lead someone into and to describe. It doesn't take a lot of convoluted rigmarole to explain kokyu, even though it looks mysterious to someone who hasn't seen it. I've watched various people who had unclear understandings of kokyu/jin try complex and vague descriptions, and I've really tried to consider the idea that they learned by feel and never fully analysed the skill. Maybe. More likely their understanding is just incomplete. Watch Ikeda Sensei's attempts to describe (he has some videos out) sometime. It's interesting.

In terms of the Whole Banana (tm) of ki/kokyu/hara/misogi skills, most of what people are talking about now is not quite half. So if someone really had a broad view of the topic, describing the ki stuff that is being talked about on this thread isn't that much. If you understood the whole, I'm sure a man of your prestige and ability could easily find the words.

Because a lot of these physical but not intuitive skills have been lost in the past, there is a strong indicator that there's more to these things than a lot of the superficial approaches would now suggest. The main thing I'm worriedly watching is how many "experts" (often the same 'experts' who swore there was no such thing in very recent years) will step up and start teaching 'students' that which they themselves don't fully know/understand. I think it may well turn into a case of the schlemiel spills his soup on the schlimazel.

2 cents.

Mike Sigman
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