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Lorel Latorilla wrote:
Hi Jason,
Yeah, I think that's naturally the effect. A guy pushing onto a guy who is "lower" than the other guy, will naturally prop himself up, because the guy who's low is directing his "energy" or "center" to the ground. In that case, yeah, the table image is suitable. I got some "a ha" moments from watching some Kondo videos of him teaching a seminar and while people might suggest other Daito Ryu guys for good examples of "aiki", his demonstrations of aiki, while lacking in subtlety, gave me ideas as to why it's easy for small guys to throw bigger guys. Kondo would do aiki using aiki-age, and put his attacker on his toes, upon which Kondo would throw him. If you are on your toes, you are basically powerless, and you can be easily thrown. But I figured, you don't literally need to be on your toes, you just need to be unbalanced for you to be throwable.
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Re: on your toes - Yah i think the up on the toes thing is more of an exagerated response. In reality, depending on the skill level of both people, you're probably going to be looking at it more as getting tension into various parts of their body to get their center up subtly (shoulder/chest, lower back, etc) and then capitalizing on it from there. I think that what you look for in the other person changes depending on their skill level. Someone with some body skill isn't going to attach their center to their power output in the same way a strong but otherwise disconnected person would. Ikeda actually has some good ways of talking about this at his seminars. He calls it making a line and breaking the line and goes to great lengths to show the early, more exagerated version (from both uke and nage sides) to the more subtle and desired end product.
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That's what I mean by "dynamic downweight". I didn't really explain. Why is that if a strong guy lifts a 150 pound weight and curls like its nothing, but can't throw a 100 pound dude (like Mifune)? The weight has a recognizable "center". It won't move. If you are strong enough, and can "sense" where the gravitational pull is on the weight, you can move it. But with a 100 pound guy, he can hide his "center" while maintaining a downweight anywhere on his body. So the guy will not be able to sense where the pull is on the 100 pounder, while the 100 pounder is mentally directing gravitional force affecting his body and consequently aligning his body in such a way that it desires to stay clamped to the ground.
I don't know if that makes sense. Jeez this is hard to explain.
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It makes sense and yes, it is hard to explain without having felt it first. The first time I really felt it was from Toby Threadgill and the whole concept of it has really only started coming together for me over the last few months or so. It's definitely something that needs to be felt though.