Thread: Ueshiba's Aiki
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Old 11-14-2011, 05:02 PM   #299
Janet Rosen
 
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Re: Ueshiba's Aiki

Quote:
Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
In the YouTube era, I think most internet-savvy teachers are concerned about how out-of-context videos can be misinterpreted. I know Ikeda Sensei, for example, refuses to sell some of his videos to anyone except seminar attendees. He's afraid that they will look fake to anyone who wasn't actually present. It's a legitimate fear: there are plenty of examples of exactly that around these boards.

Katherine
Exactly. From my own posting earlier today in the thread on the SF seminar:
There is one thing I would like to address, which is the often-bandied about phrase "It has to be felt", used on aikiweb so often that it merits its own "IHTBF"
I had always taken this to mean that one has to be on the receiving end of Dan's stuff to truly gauge what it is. Now that is certainly true. But it applies just as much to the learning process.
I am lousy on learning movement in terms of really gross movement like stepping and turning. But I am one of those people who has the mixed blessing/curse of being very very sensitive to changes within my body - I've always been able to feel and relate whether a sensation or pain was coming from an organ or a muscle or something else, for instance.
So usually it is fairly easy for me to follow an instruction whether it's anatomic/physiologic, like engage your lats or do a Valsalva or more energetic, like breathe into your low back or move the heat from your head to your hands.
But there is NO WAY I could have correctly done most of what Dan was asking of us without his hands isolating on my body what to keep still/not engage and what to focus on engaging. A couple of the very basic things I was taught this wkend I still can't do but at least having had them isolated and felt, I can call upon that and focus on learning to isolate and engage.
So...yeah....videos pointless, even talking pointless....IHTBF!

***FOR PURPOSES OF CLARITY*** references to Valsalva maneuver, lats, moving heat and breathing into back are NOT references to anything Dan is doing. They are examples of things I have routinely done for years based on purely verbal instruction, so folks understand where I'm coming from.

Last edited by Janet Rosen : 11-14-2011 at 05:04 PM. Reason: clarity

Janet Rosen
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