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Old 07-16-2008, 10:38 PM   #126
gdandscompserv
 
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

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Robert John wrote: View Post
there's always someone more skilled at this stuff.
That's something worth remembering and worth looking for.
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Old 07-17-2008, 06:06 AM   #127
Cady Goldfield
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Allen and Rob -- thanks for the info. I'll have to dig around. "Challenge" stories always give me pause, though, as they tend to gain new twists with every telling, till they reach the status of Legend. Often they start around a kernel of truth, but get embellished.

The Okinawan one sounds almost hackneyed because I've both heard about and seen such challenges where someone says "try anything" and promptly gets clocked because he didn't anticipate the opponent responding in any way other than the one he was "supposed" to. Being that Takeda was so martially conditioned, and from an early age, it's hard to believe that he would have assumed that his opponent/challengee would react in only one "possible" way and not be prepared for any other manner of responses. But hey, I wasn't there.

You're right though, they make great stories. In fact, the shuriken one reminds me of the tale of the three samurai and the fly...

Bringing this back almost on-topic, I have to agree with those who eschew videos -- especially the public accessibility of them -- not just because they are useless at conveying what is really being done (especially in the case of internal movements), but also because they tell some viewers much more than they should be telling them about the actual knowledge and skill of the person demonstrating in the video. Discretion is sometimes a wiser course, although ego and self-delusion are often the impetus for these guys to put their stuff on video for public consumption in the first place.

Quote:
Robert John wrote: View Post
I heard it went something like this.
Takeda held the Okinawan's wrists down, and told him "now, try anything!"
So the Okinawan, in typical Okinawan fashion, ignored the wrists, jumped up and kicked Takeda in the face (Takeda wasn't that tall so it's pretty easy to imagine), knocking him out.

Another story running around was about Takeda's students begging him to show his skill at throwing shuriken.
Takeda eventually obliged, throwing three shuriken in a row at some wooden beam.
Everyone does the whole "wow you're so awesome" speal,
but from the corner some old geezer spouted "Any ass with half their wits could throw something pointy into a piece of wood!"
Takeda gets pissed and challenges the old man,
who promptly threw 3 coins into the beam of wood, forming a neat triangle
Takeda shut up, face went purple, and supposedly shuriken were never to be mentioned in his presence ever again

True or not?
Dunno, makes for a good story though.
Just means that there's always someone more skilled at this stuff.
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Old 07-17-2008, 07:14 AM   #128
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

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Chuck Clark wrote: View Post
Even in the kata yakusoku, uke's role is to cause problems that tori must solve and not be "easy." Of course the levels of "I'm not going to let you do that" should be appropriate to the skill levels involved. Then our randori is all about "I'm not gonna let you get me... I'm gonna get you"... until something happens that is decisive. I try my best to make that happen in one action. If that doesn't happen, then we're both learning new lessons. I think our real job is to continue to give each other problems to solve and learn from the process until we die. I do not want any "sensitive uke" that aren't trying to continue to give me those problems... even in public demos. Anything else seems demeaning to the art and our trust in each other.
Hi Chuck,
This was roughly the way we took ukemi when I trained with Saotome Sensei. The drawback to giving each other problems to solve was that we were far better at creating problems than we were at doing our waza. I believe that we spent far too much time imprinting tension in our bodies which actually made it impossible for us to higher level technique.

As Allen stated, and you agreed, there really is no uke nage dichotomy. Each role should be imprinting the same lessons in the body and the mind. I am still experimenting with this myself having not been satisfied with the progress my peers and I had made for 25 plus years. I'm fairly happy with the way my students are progressing now... they are far ahead of where i was at the same stage. But it's not perfect and I still strive for the right balance.

George S. Ledyard
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Old 07-17-2008, 07:28 AM   #129
Fred Little
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

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Robert John wrote: View Post
....from the corner some old geezer spouted "Any ass with half their wits could throw something pointy into a piece of wood!"
Takeda gets pissed and challenges the old man,
who promptly threw 3 coins into the beam of wood, forming a neat triangle Takeda shut up, face went purple, and supposedly shuriken were never to be mentioned in his presence ever again .
I had no idea Ricky Jay was that old!
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Old 07-17-2008, 08:43 AM   #130
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Re: Do air cookies provide a minimum daily requirement of nourishment?

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Demetrio Cereijo wrote: View Post
I can't agree more, however when I see this kind of techniques not in TV humor shows but in "official" events like the Watanabe S. clip mentioned before or this one of Takeda Yoshinobu S., I can't figure what the reasons for high ranked Aikikai Hombu instructors to demonstrate these kind of err... pavlovian aikido skills in these kind of events.
I've been thinking about this demo. I still have no idea beyond the "practicing lines of intention to the absurd extreme" idea for the randori aspect.

But the first 2 "hand wave --> group fall downs" thing got me thinking. Is it possible that the meaning of that message was something like:
1 guy in the front of the group will stand there
a bunch of other guys will all push in various/random forces onto the group - guy number 2 is depending his weight on the lead guy, and guy number 3 is depending his weight on guy number 2 etc...
Then Takeda sensei waves his hand - not to throw anyone but simply to give the signal to the lead guy to just fall in that direction.
The chain effect happens, and the lesson is:

That large group is some analogy to a single human body where if you can lead a body part or the mind of that body part, and get it to move/fall then the rest will follow. kind of like grab someone's head and yank it down, and watch the whip effect it has on the rest of the poor guy. I don't know. But it just seems like something that could explain what he decided to show. Then again, maybe he is just sick of having to do those demos.

I know that when I attacked him over 10 years ago, I remember having no idea why I was falling or where he disappeared to.

And I spoke with people who trained with him prior to that who couldn't relate to the "light ukemi" idea at all because their experience was that he used to throw people such that they would hit the floor and then they would feel their ribs and everything inside also kind of impact the floor in kind of an internal splatter for every single throw.

My opinion is that the guy is operating on an entirely different plane after having some sort of spiritual enlightenment and I am just not meant to understand much of what he does. My guess is that it is similar with Abe sensei.

Rob
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Old 07-17-2008, 09:05 AM   #131
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Re: Do air cookies provide a minimum daily requirement of nourishment?

Quote:
Rob Liberti wrote: View Post
I've been thinking about this demo. I still have no idea beyond the "practicing lines of intention to the absurd extreme" idea for the randori aspect.

But the first 2 "hand wave --> group fall downs" thing got me thinking. Is it possible that the meaning of that message was something like:
1 guy in the front of the group will stand there
a bunch of other guys will all push in various/random forces onto the group - guy number 2 is depending his weight on the lead guy, and guy number 3 is depending his weight on guy number 2 etc...
Then Takeda sensei waves his hand - not to throw anyone but simply to give the signal to the lead guy to just fall in that direction.
The chain effect happens, and the lesson is:

That large group is some analogy to a single human body where if you can lead a body part or the mind of that body part, and get it to move/fall then the rest will follow. kind of like grab someone's head and yank it down, and watch the whip effect it has on the rest of the poor guy. I don't know. But it just seems like something that could explain what he decided to show. Then again, maybe he is just sick of having to do those demos.

I know that when I attacked him over 10 years ago, I remember having no idea why I was falling or where he disappeared to.

And I spoke with people who trained with him prior to that who couldn't relate to the "light ukemi" idea at all because their experience was that he used to throw people such that they would hit the floor and then they would feel their ribs and everything inside also kind of impact the floor in kind of an internal splatter for every single throw.
Whew! and I have been told that I over think things to the Nth degree... Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Quote:
Rob Liberti wrote: View Post
My opinion is that the guy is operating on an entirely different plane after having some sort of spiritual enlightenment and I am just not meant to understand much of what he does. My guess is that it is similar with Abe sensei.

Rob
I may be going off on a limb here, but I can unequivocally say that Abe Sensei has never mentioned anything along those lines as long as I have been around. As a matter of fact, I had asked him directly about the importance of religion and spirituality at the first private training he held at our dojo. He told me that when it came to martial arts, that the most important thing was a point on the bottom of my foot. He then went on for about many minutes tying together various common sense things until everyone in the room went, "Ah Haaaaa!" Needless to say, after having spent a few years in a Shinto cult looking deeply into religion and spirituality, I suddenly realized that having asked such a question I had publicly inserted said foot in mouth and went back to training. So, in the case of some spiritual breakthrough that causes one to be seemingly deluded, well isn't that an oxymoron? Would any enlightened beings please care to chime in...? anyone...? ANYONE...? Bueller...?

.

I no longer participate in or read the discussion forums here on AikiWeb due to the unfair and uneven treatment of people by the owner/administrator.
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Old 07-17-2008, 09:36 AM   #132
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Re: Do air cookies provide a minimum daily requirement of nourishment?

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Rob Liberti wrote: View Post
My opinion is that the guy is operating on an entirely different plane after having some sort of spiritual enlightenment and I am just not meant to understand much of what he does.
Well, mine is more in this line:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=p958woXcYcI
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Old 07-17-2008, 10:15 AM   #133
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

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Allen Beebe wrote: View Post
Cady,
I read it somewhere, I'm sorry but I don't remember where. Maybe somebody here can help out my memory. It wasn't any place obscure. I also heard a version of the story last year where Takeda was knocked out. That version came from Ark Aizawa.

Allen
Cady, if memory serves, it can be found in the AJ series Sokaku Takeda Biography by Tokimune. Don't know where it is in there, but they are pretty chronological. I also recall the this vignette was about the same time Takeda was hanging with the troup of acrobats (and right before he discovered the bat cave )

-Doug Walker
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Old 07-17-2008, 10:19 AM   #134
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Insightful Demetrio. Makes you think doesn't it.

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Old 07-17-2008, 10:43 AM   #135
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Re: Do air cookies provide a minimum daily requirement of nourishment?

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Shaun Ravens wrote: View Post
Whew! and I have been told that I over think things to the Nth degree... Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Yeah, I like reading your posts!

Hey I can be wrong. But the thread is about "what is going on here" and I'm more than willing to run my ideas about what might be going on there up a flag pole and see if anyone salutes it.

No takers - okay.. I'm not enlightened. I don't know. Just making guesses. -Rob
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Old 07-17-2008, 10:58 AM   #136
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

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George S. Ledyard wrote: View Post
This was roughly the way we took ukemi when I trained with Saotome Sensei. The drawback to giving each other problems to solve was that we were far better at creating problems than we were at doing our waza. I believe that we spent far too much time imprinting tension in our bodies which actually made it impossible for us to higher level technique.
Hey George, I'm looking forward to getting together more now that I'm just a stone's throw down the road...

Holding and imprinting tension (trying TO DO stuff) is the real thing. Remember, Koichi Tohei said the most important thing he learned from Ueshiba Morihei was how to relax! Keeping the intent to create and solve the problems while being relaxed is the real practice... the struggle with ourself.... until we don't... and the sweet stuff just seems to happen. Felt power can seem like a whisper, a huge explosion, or an instantaneous tsunami to uke with very little feedback to tori. My practice is to just do what I do and give attention to the thing and accept whatever learning comes along until I die.

Chuck Clark
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Old 07-17-2008, 12:04 PM   #137
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

It seems I wasn't very clear in my earlier post and some folks, understandably, interpreted it in terms of pre-conditioning towards an authority figure, etc.

As far as my post is concerned, I wasn't really thinking about Abe sensei's thing or hierarchical relationships specifically, or anything much related to the thread. Which is why I invited Jun to trash or move my post.

I was thinking about how weapons practice, sword practice in particular (either shinken or very intense bokken), can enhance one's taijutsu training by narrowing the permissible slop in one's physical response, technical execution and mental perception, evaluation and response.

I guess I didn't state it very clearly but, when it comes to intense weapons work the the time between perception, evaluation, and action ideally diminish considerably while the consequences greatly increase.

One possible positive result of such training is one's sensitivity can greatly increase, usually because one is scared to death. My point was, that being scared to death (with its appendant potentially heightened sensitivity) is a consequence of a mental process (one's evaluation of the situation) rather than the actually change in the physical situation. The implication of this is that one can theoretically avail themselves of this hypersensitivity without necessarily being scared to death, one just has to learn how to alter their consciousness. Ideally, one trains to become "hyper" sensitive without being hyper reactive.

An ideal example of this is the "flinch response" once thought to be built into the human system. Now we find that with proper mental training one can register an unexpected loud noise (which always illicit a flinch response even from trained professional shooters) without the flinch response . . . something earlier thought to be impossible.

Another topic is, how does one train this without further imbedding the undesired response?

Anyway, in order to pull this post back on topic, here is another reframing of what I was originally contemplating during my "seated meditiation": If the root of the desired outcome is to adjust one's internal "signal to noise ratio" how does one best do this while engaging in partner practice? In other words, just being sensitive (increasing the sensitivity to a signal) isn't likely to be very beneficial if one equally increases the noise (internal modeling of what is happening and the consequences of that, etc.) is it? So what is the best approach?

~ Allen Beebe
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Old 07-17-2008, 12:34 PM   #138
Cady Goldfield
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

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Doug Walker wrote: View Post
Cady, if memory serves, it can be found in the AJ series Sokaku Takeda Biography by Tokimune. Don't know where it is in there, but they are pretty chronological. I also recall the this vignette was about the same time Takeda was hanging with the troup of acrobats (and right before he discovered the bat cave )
Thanks, Doug. Someone PMed me the links to the AJ articles, which I'll enjoy browsing over the weekend. I hope they include Tomikmune's stories about Sokaku's alleged telepathic abilities, too.
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Old 07-17-2008, 12:50 PM   #139
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Cady,

I sent you those same links last night . . . telepathically. You didn't receive them?

Allen

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Old 07-17-2008, 01:21 PM   #140
Ron Tisdale
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

She didn't get the links...but you should have SEEN the UKEMI!!



Best,
Ron

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Old 07-17-2008, 03:39 PM   #141
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Sending you my regards Ron . . .



,
Allen

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Old 07-17-2008, 03:49 PM   #142
Cady Goldfield
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Ukemi? It was more like levitation!
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Old 07-17-2008, 05:20 PM   #143
Aikilove
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Hello Peter
Just a couple of comments to your comments:
Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
However, I am certain that Yamaguchi Sensei would never have given a demonstration in which he causes several ukes to fall over merely by raising his arm. I may be wrong, but I do not think that O Sensei ever did this, either. I know about the controversial 'jo trick', but his deshi were actually holding on to the jo: they were not several feet away when they fell over.
Well I have seen a couple of clips. Here's one: http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=bCjySZuVDkQ
I just think it has to do with, like what second Dushu said, the founder, in demos, moving in accord aiki (or to that affect) rather than doing aikido kihon. I mean why should he (or Takeda Y, S Abe or the like). Kihon is kihon and moving in accord with the principles of aiki/universe is moving in accord with the principles if aiki/universe... Btw. this is not directed towards you Peter, but it seems lately that one has to specify everything or risk being mis-understod...
Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
As an example, you trained in Iwama for many years. How often did you practice with Isoyama Sensei, especially his classic kata-guruma? On the videos Saito Sensei always did this in reverse. However, until a few years ago, before Isoyama Sensei became 'erai' and gave speeches at the demonstration, he always appeared at the All-Japan Demonstration, with chosen uke, and did the required waza. I know his favored uke and he trained severely, in order to take 'good' ukemi. He can no longer take ukemi because his body cannot take the punishment .
If I remember correctly Isoyama sensei stated that he "invented" the kata guruma (belly over shoulders) when trying to teach koshinage to huge American MPs. Saito's technique (back over shoulders) was called ganseki otoshi. FWIW Koshi nage, kata guruma and ganseki otoshi are all the same from nage's perspective if done á la Saito M.

Enough ranting...

/J

Last edited by Aikilove : 07-17-2008 at 05:23 PM.

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Old 07-17-2008, 06:02 PM   #144
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

When a superior man hears of the Way,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Way,
he half believes it, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Way,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn't laugh,
it wouldn't be the Way.
Lao Tsu-Tao te Ching

Seems relevant to this discussion.

William Hazen
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Old 07-17-2008, 06:10 PM   #145
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Re: Do air cookies provide a minimum daily requirement of nourishment?

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Demetrio Cereijo wrote: View Post
This discussion about "no touch throws" reminded me the following story told by Adam Alexander in his Iwama Monogatari:

We had someone from Tokyo come one Saturday to train with us over the weekend. This guy was very big, and I think he was a professional wrestler. Saito-sensei was off traveling somewhere and Hirosawa-sensei taught the Saturday night class.
I was in Tokyo on business and missed the class, but I came back later and heard about what happened. It seems that the visitor acted inappropriately toward Hirosawa-sensei during the class, and then went off to go to sleep.
The word about this spread surprisingly fast. Inagaki-sensei came by and was very angry. He showed his disapproval by smashing a steel bucket into a small ball with his fists. He also appointed himself to teach the Sunday morning class.
For the only time during the ten years I was in Iwama, the dojo was packed with spectators for the Sunday morning class. There were mothers with their little children, my wife was there, everyone wanted to see what would happen when Inagaki-sensei got the visitor on the mat.
The visitor woke up, looked at the spectacle in the dojo, apparently got the message, and quietly took off for the train station. We were all disappointed that the show we anticipated did not take place.
That was probably the smartest thing the visitor ever did.


Moral of the story: Context is everything.

Regards.
Yes Funny how stories goes around... The "wrestler" in the story is no less then Jan "Janne Yondan" Hermansson Shihan, 7th dan Aikikai. He has had quite a career in budo, starting with Karate in the 50's and was part of a group of judo people who started to train aikido 1960-1964 in Sweden. Moved to Tokyo 1965 or so and stayed in Japan until 1980 training aikido and Judo and alot of other things. He trained for the founder. He was and still is a train-o-holic. He trained (parallel with aikido) Judo and Jodo with Don Draeger at Kodokan, who also set him up with weight lifting. He got involved with Professional Wrestling. This is a man who "famously" pushed out Miyamoto sensei onto the 4th floor Hombu balcony when Miyamoto would try to go rough on the gaijin, who reversed Chiba's technique and simply lifted him out off the mat (prompting Chiba to Challenge him). Simply put he was and is a man who takes his training seriously and someone who wouldn't stand for foul play by abuse of the "rules" of aikido. Still he loves aikido and still practice it in Stockholm. (Ellis most likely has great stories of the beast)
Anyway... He was a great fan of Saito M and the respect was apperently mutual. One time during the 70's he went out to visit Iwama and train. Saito sensei was not present during the actual event (neither was David Alexander btw.). Iwama, then, was known as a place where outsider were put into place.
With his own words of the event: When Janne worked-out with someone (Hirosawa perhaps, wouldn't surprice me...) this Iwama fellow tried to reverse or stop Jannes technique (common phenomenon there). This led to a counter-counter by Janne, which in turn (as so often) led to anger by someone with too much of an ego (my interpetation). It ended up with Janne having had enough and simply lifting the fellow up in a irimi variation crashing him down leaving the guy with a concussion. Later everybody had their usual evening party and everyone had a good time, including Saito who had returned and who couldn't care less (it was the guys own fault so to speak). In the morning Janne noticed that there was alot of bad feelings in the air and took the (in my mind wise) decision to leave. Aikido is after all not about fighting or egos. Right? Right?

/J

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Old 07-17-2008, 06:53 PM   #146
Ellis Amdur
 
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

I wasn't at Iwama. In fact, I never went. Because when I trained aikido, it was a guarantee that someone like Inagaki would try to cripple you - NOT in a fair fight, but, say, in the middle of a technique and you gave up the pin, and were waiting to tap out, and he would ignore the tap and rip out your shoulder. I'd already had the attempt made at another Iwama affiliate dojo.
This is not combat - nor a fair fight. It's obscene cowardice. And lest someone is offended that I mentioned Inagaki's name, I truly don't care. Saito sensei was quite fine with this, himself. Because it happened over and over again. Right in front of him. A friend of mine, a white belt who happened to be big, went Iwama all starry-eyed, and was crippled for life - he could no longer functionally bend his right arm. That was in Saito Morihiro's class.
My friend, Terry Dobson, worked out with Inagaki during one of Saito Morihiro's trips to Tokyo. Terry told him he had a separated shoulder, so "let's go easy," and Inagaki waited for nikkyo pin, which Terry gave him and Inagaki ripped the pins out of the bone.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the Iwama big-guys tried, in very studied fashion, to tear out my shoulder on shihonage, saying that he just wanted to show me something, moving very slowly, saying, "no need to take a break fall," and then suddenly tried to bridge my arm and tear it up. I was ready - forewarned by Terry - and took the fall, and then we had some - - - discussion.
More recently, Isat at a table at the aiki-expo listening to Saito Hitohiro bragging to others how they used to beat up guys from Honbu when they came to Iwama to train, but, and this is a direct quote, "It was done out of love, to give them a sense of how things should really be done."
You know, everyone made a big deal about the Ueshiba family taking back Iwama after Saito Morihiro's death. "Oh, it's politics." OR, "The Ueshiba family always resented Osensei's special relationship." Well, payback's a bitch, isn't it. This is the place Tokyo guys went to get injured. At the shrine. Yeah, if you were in-house, like some of my friends, things were fine. But, the place was a cesspool of cheap-shot violence.
Aikido is love? Or it's not. Fine. Nice debate. But Janne, who was a force of nature, did not deliberately set out to hurt people. I worked out with him a fair amount. But he would not accept cheap gratuitous attempts to injure or shame him.
I apologize for the rant. But one thing that has always offended me about aikido is that, often, what is used as "evidence" of aikido's real power is not one-on-one face-to-face, fighting, for whatever that's worth, but at least it's clean - but going backall the way back to Osensei and Yukawa in front of the emperor, it is cheap, nasty sucker punching and locking of people who trust you. Aikido is love? I guess, sometimes, it's also domestic violence - and far too many people call that love too.

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Old 07-17-2008, 07:05 PM   #147
raul rodrigo
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Thanks for the info, Jakob. I'd heard about the Janne stories before, eg, the fire escape story, but didn't know it was Miyamoto on the receiving end. I'd also read David Alexander's story about the incident with Inagaki and Hirosawa, and it's funny how these stories get retold and who is put in the best light, depending on who is telling the story. One wonders how a head-to-head encounter between Janne and Inagaki would have ended.
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Old 07-17-2008, 07:30 PM   #148
eyrie
 
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Re: Do air cookies provide a minimum daily requirement of nourishment?

Quote:
Demetrio Cereijo wrote: View Post
Well, mine is more in this line:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=p958woXcYcI
Precisely... exploiting the mind-body connection and accessing specific mind-states isn't new... as long as I can remember, the MA is all about mind-body control - yours and another's.

Notice that the first criteria was "open and responsive"... and then "amplify their behaviour" using various anchors.

Here's a few more...
Warning - partial nudity [spoiler]
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=rwvA0r...eature=related[/spoiler]
Yes... trust me completely...

And this one:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=gfffcj...eature=related

Can Derren really do a no-touch punch? I doubt it.... when he "punched" the guy in the back, the automatic response from being physically hit in the back would be to arch the back backwards at the point of contact... but the guy buckles forward... as if he was hit in the guts... again??

And one more - how to get a bunch of people to perform a specific behaviour:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=hClJLx...eature=related

[spoiler]Note how Derren anchors the final behaviour up front... "putting your hands up in the air"... he mentions the word "imagine", "mind", "head" several times... several times he raises his arms above his head...to the extent of animatedly shaking his fists overhead... etc. And thus the first 2 "predictions" lead into the final behaviour.[/spoiler]

Certainly, the specifics of how aikido is/can be performed is far more subtle than that, but no less insidious.

FWIW... a couple of years ago I did a no-touch irimi nage similar to the one that Ueshiba does at the end of that video... not on a trained aikidoka, BUT with a black belt jujitsuka I had been working with for a couple of weeks prior to his grading. We were working on his jujitsu grading syllabus (I was uke mostly.. um... because I had ------ sensitive ukemi) and one of the techniques they had was similar to iriminage but it involved a strike to the throat. So we did that for a bit and I can tell you, these guys were trained to take hits to certain areas that one would rarely see in most aikido. It was jujitsu of course, and pain is pretty much par for course. And then he asks to see my aikido version of iriminage... which I obligingly performed.

As I did a tenkan out and into the throw, my hand was barely a foot from his head when he came off the ground and was momentarily horizontal to the ground. Granted he had good ukemi skills to begin with, but that particular style of jujitsu did not perform ukemi the same way it is done in Aikido... at least not in my experience. And to this day, he still doesn't know how I did it...

By no means does this example put me in the same class as Ueshiba... it only illustrates the point that the mind-body connection can be manipulated to influence specific behaviours and "spontaneous" responses.

Ignatius
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Old 07-17-2008, 07:38 PM   #149
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

Ellis's post, about aikido as love, reminded me of some interesting antecedents I have come across while researching for my Aikiweb columns. Here is an interesting quote:

“The authoritarian basis of Japanese morality in this period can be seen very clearly in the habitual ill-treatment of Japanese soldiers by their officers. Discipline was conducted through bentatsu ([鞭撻: 鞭 means whip or rod; 撻 means to flog or strike: the combination means to goad someone or to urge them on]: the routine bashing and striking of soldiers), which was presented as an “act of love” by the officers for the soldiers. Even in the Japanese Navy—which was far more westernized in its conduct than in the Army—adopted a practice of harsh discipline known as tekken seisai (鉄拳 means a clenched fist; 制裁 means sanction or punishment: the combination means the 'law of the iron fist') in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War. It was often called the 愛の鞭 (ai-no-muchi, or ‘whip/rod of love’).”

O Sensei apparently distinguished himself in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and later taught many of the officers who administered the whip. I think it is always good to have some cultural context to O Sensei's "Aiki is Love" statements.

The quote, by the way, is from a Japanese scholar who is trying to explain the atrocities done by his countrymen on their foreign POWs in WWII.

All will be revealed in a future column .

Last edited by Peter Goldsbury : 07-17-2008 at 07:41 PM.

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Old 07-17-2008, 08:54 PM   #150
thisisnotreal
 
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Re: Seiseki Abe Sensei video....whats going on here?

ok; so now what about this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbiqVaxC8M
pretty good, or at least reasonable?

then what about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4q4z...eature=related
i'm guessing it's still real although quite ... 'theatrical'.

how does he lock up the uke? is it a cramp? is it a pulsation into your body? (a power release that shocks your nervous system?)

thanks.

Josh
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