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Old 11-20-2011, 11:14 PM   #28
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
United_States
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Re: A Primer on Aikido, Aiki and IS

Quote:
Janet Rosen wrote: View Post
Graham, as someone who is doing this training, I must respectfully disagree.
Where I agree is that a specific form of relaxation is key to doing martial arts - of course, this is not new, it's part and parcel of judo's "maximum efficiency with minimum effort" and presumably predates that - the idea of only engaging what needs to be engaged.
However, there is something much more active being done. What is being described is literally learning to isolate and work with specific body structures that are not those most of us have been aware of feeling much less being able to engage.
"Maximum efficiency with minimum effort" will not help.
"Knowing" Anatomy trains will not help.
It's not just knowing what to use. It isn't an exercise.
It knowing how to move what.
Intent is everything. You can know every single thing, but without intent...you're no good. It's all for not. So good luck putting the pieces together.
Motion in stillness training an absolute.
Union of opposites a requirement in specific ways.
Whole body movement, a trained and specific thing.
How to move the body in specific accurate ways, long before it becomes...natural.

No matter how hard they try
No matter what they think they know
Aikido..ka will never find it on their own or through any Japanese teacher I have seen, watched or read. Their teaching model for this work is a disaster. In the hands of the japanese ...this is lost.

And of those who are training it? They will forever rule those who do not know.
In time, everyone will turn to them and seek them out.
I have never met the person, who once they felt it and you started to show them how to do it...did not want it. As every...single...Shihan....has said to me
I wish I had met you thirty years ago.
The comedy is them feeling this...after...they have read all of the nonsense written on aikiweb speaking against it. They laugh harder than I do. And none of them, not one, has ever told me that their own Japanese Shihan can touch it. They all know it. So does most everyone else who is just too damn connected and afraid to say it.
As Gleason says...
"We should be shouting this from the roof tops! I don't care who knows!"
Or
"It's graduate school for teachers."
Do I really want to argue with some Nidan ro Sandan being all defensive about something they cannot grasp?
For this reason I no longer debate how to do this on the internet. Never again. It's not worth making enemies with words. They're happy, so let them go do their own thing. In time, when they touch you in person, there continues to be nothing they can do to stop you.
Besides, every art needs someone to throw around and wonder... "What just happened?"
You can't fix everyone. Hence the reason it was always kept closed and taught to only a few. It's going to be interesting to see who pulls it together and gets somewhere with it.
All the Best
Dan

Last edited by DH : 11-20-2011 at 11:22 PM.
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