I am up in Gibson's, BC at Allen Wynne's dojo. Friday night class went very well. It twas about center to center energy transfer. We covered the relationship between very concrete, tangible, body mechanics and the non-physical energetic connection between the partners.
The main theme of the class was complete relaxation of the arms so that power went from your own center to that of the partner without them feeling much of anything at the points of contact. In other words power passes "through the arms not from the arms".
We did exercises which were designed to isolate the importance of the pelvis and changing the angle by tucking the tail bone. This is how you give upward direction to the connection with the partner to "float" him off his base.
We also did exercises designed to isolate the importance of sliding the shoulder blades together in order to bring the partner's energy to the vertical axis of the spine.
By the end of class we took all those elements and put them together in ikkyo. First we did ikkyo with the partner simply standing with his arm out as if he were doing shomen uchi. The we did the same technique but the partner walked towards us as if they could walk right through us. Only at the end did we execute the technique from an attack with speed and power.
I was very happy with how the students, representing all experience levels, were able to access some very high level skills by giving them the step by step breakdown rather than by simply doing the technique holistically and then expecting them to intuit somehow what was going on. Personal experience would indicate that they can't, I certainly never did.
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