Greetings to all,
I am doing some personal research into stretching and specifically "Meridians Stretching". I have found a number of articles on the net and some interesting info from "Acu-Yoga" which seems to combine yoga asanas with Shiatsu; I am waiting for a book to look into this more.
One reason for my interest is the type of warm-up we do at our dojo which incorporates many "Do-In" warm-up activities with regular/western stretches. I will classify them these (Do-In) since they appear in Japanese "health" books I have found, and are in many ways very different from the western athletic type procedure that, as a coach, I have used with athletes.
Over the past few years we have been doing more warm-up and soft techniques at the beginning of our two hour classes. In these warm-up periods we will do our standard warm-up and then do some "soft" techniques when instead of going to a throw we will go into a stretch for our uke.
If anyone has seen videos or been to seminars with Asai Sensei from Germany you might be familiar with some of these.
For example we might start with a Katatedori Kaitennage (uchi mawari) then instead of throwing stand in front of the uke as he/she is bent over (back straight, flat parallel to the floor) and then assist them in doing an upper body twist until they have stretched to the point that they walk out of it to the outside.
Another one we will do a Shihonage technique where we finish with the uke stepping into a lunge type position ( leading leg knee over to foot facing forward, back leg locked behind, straight line from ankle to hip to back to head with leading arm ( also ankle to fingers projecting up at +- 45 degrees ( held and stretched by nage)
I wish I had a clip or could draw!!
I am looking for information from anyone who does this type of stretching activity and the similarities between these and yoga/meridian stretches.
I was wondering if out there in the ocean of Aikido knowledge could anyone help me with some info or leads.
Thanks
Andrew
