Are you invincible if you possess Aiki?

Igor Vojnović wrote: OK, i'l bite. This isn't simply about whether somebody's Aikido is "fulfilling" or not, it's whether their Aikido can be actually used as a martial art. Many will say:"Oh, there's the missing ingredient from my Aikido practice, now i can finally use my Aikido against an unwilling, uncooperative opponent." when in fact the main reason their Aikido sucks is because they suck at training it. I just can't seem to understand how does somebody think they can use something so hard to attain in their daily training when they can't even attain good grounding in basic/regular/external training. The fact that they suck at one thing is unfortunately a pretty good indicator that they will suck at another unless they make some root changes. Not to mention if they try "adding Aiki" to something in the "real" context of martial arts.

I think you're modifying the intent of my original post (which is fine, it's a good subject and while the subject of the thread, I think it's a moot argument) from "what is your aikido intended to be able to do or achieve?" (with the implied component of "how are you measuring it?") to "can you use it as a martial art?" . . I'd counter that it depends on what you mean by "use" . . Personally, I had years of sport martial arts prior to ever doing aikido so I never came at aikido from the perspective of it being my sole source of martial effectiveness (and early on it was important that my aikido was consistent with my grappling, so I'd often linked them in my head as one thing even if the practices on the mat had certain guidelines in an aikido context versus judo or wrestling).

Igor Vojnović wrote: Just out of curiosity, what would you define as a "stupid jin trick"?

Grounding a push, floating somebody, etc. Something I can show someone how to do within one practice session.

Igor Vojnović wrote: Based on the concept of what is used, when and how i would tend do disagree on the note that "nothing" makes you invincible.

That's fine, we don't need to agree. I often detest absolutes - especially in the context of martial arts as my experience has been the opposite.

Igor Vojnović wrote: When you are talking about misalignment, do you mean just the training part or some broader reference? As for the training part, from many of the posts here one would think that nothing of today's Aikido training, besides some of Taiso training, is aligned with IS training. It's also been mentioned that people tend to change the way they do their "regular" Aikido training so it's aligned to the internal training because of the before mentioned misalignment. What it your opinion on the subject?

I think that there's different levels of practice with regard to internal strength stuffs and how many aikido places train. My personal experience has been that a lot of organized martial arts place just as much value on community, the rank structure, role-playing and other forms of sociological dominance/integration (which makes sense given the feudal-structures the more traditional schools came from, the quasi-military propagation from servicemen bringing it back from the East and the basic "pecking order" mentality that many schools reinforce, along with the costume role-playing aspects that also perpetuate the "fit in" model) that it makes it more difficult to spend the amount of individual attention that the internal strength practices demand when it's usually viewed as just another aspect that competes with Sensei's approval, can I beat up the other guy, did that person just block my technique to be a jerk, etc.

I do think the body changes as you go through this practice, but I've not had any trouble still showing up to aikido seminars and participating just fine every couple years (without doing anything other than just fitting into their dojo, practice, etc.). It's not how I prefer to train anymore, but it's still fun and I have friends that do it so it can be an enjoyable method to still relate to them. If I need to show someone the efficacy of internal strength, I ask them to joint lock me (pretty easy to counter when you know it's coming with stupid jin and basic connection - still kinda a stupid trick tho), then I offer to hit them with my shoulder from a zero wind up - usually ends the discussion of whether or not internal strength is effective or not. But then I'll show them how they can use basic jin (and even a little connection ) to counter a joint lock. Then I explain how I use the same but more developed principles to power the no wind-up shoulder strike. Usually by then people with some experience can extrapolate as to where it can logically fit into their existing aikido practice (presuming they do the work) and the same holds true for practitioners of other arts.

It's all related somewhere after all. But if you aren't doing some of the basics very intentionally, no matter the art, the specific development of internal strength thingies will be more accidental than something than can be mindfully trained, let alone optimized over time.

Speaking for myself, with regard to specifics of our training:

Chris's blog, and now Allen's blog, explicitly provide exercises for heaven/Earth/man balance and I don't have much else to contribute, which is why I often refer people to read those blogs, rather than just rewriting something. Heck, I will occasionally still refer back to posts Dan made on Aikiweb that are 5/10 years old, because they are relevant. There are several old school instructions, many from O Sensei, if you know where to look. Mostly, I feel the value of my comments do not lie in repeating something that has already been said, but providing my perspective based on what I have seen in aikido, often as a humor to a serious issue. Saying the same thing more times does not make it more or less true; as a matter of convenience it maybe brings things back to the surface...

At its heart, IP is a methodology to support internal stability and generate whole body power, right? You'll have a "all directions" camp, an orbit or rotation camp, maybe an "opposites" camp. What am I missing? From there, I think you have the specific conversation about body work exercises - foundation exercises that dominate your physical training. After that, you'll have some movement coordination and maybe get into application, if you're good (moving with yin/yang balance at the attraction point of pressure). You have a variety of arts that sit on top of some internal training methodology, with parallels in movement and internal training. Since we are aikido, largely the conversation is limited to aikido.

We just don't train it enough, or explain it enough, or challenge ourselves to do it enough before moving onto something else. Standing in some variation of zhan zhuang is not how most people want to spend their "training" time. We have shizentai, a natural stance that most aikido people use more similarly to kendo or karate, but not quite hanmi. We stand in HEM in shizentai. We stand in HEM in hanmi. Think we are successful all of the time? Nope. Transfer that mentality to aikido - paired exercises, techniques, free style. This is a difficult thing to do and I think we brush past the obstacle that is a practicality of function. We have pretty good instructions and way marks for our training, it's whether or not we listen to them or defer to another authority.

Budd Yuhasz wrote: Good and busy, Demetrio! How have you been? Have you gotten your hands on anyone doing this stuff?

Been busy too.

I haven't personally interacted with any of the IP people, but people I know have and they're very happy, so I'm happy too.

Still doing BJJ, so I'm becoming the old small dude who goes Yoda on the big young guys. That's enough for me.

Been watching some of you in the youtubes, interesting work but.... don't you think your chi depot has grown too much lately?

Anyway, glad to see you back around here again.

Igor Vojnović wrote: Would the bold part be the "Turn their attack into nothing" or do all three ways generally fall into that group?

Yes, generally speaking when I reply with a strong ground force up, you will often respond instinctively against it. Same when I reply with gravity redirection, you will push up against it. But if I combine those two in myself and make your incoming force part of that overall "ground/gravity/external force" I'm managing, I can make it much harder for you to feel any resistance from me as well as much harder to find a foothold to direct your own force into, ideally speaking.

Igor Vojnović wrote: How would you define those implications? Timing of alignment of forces in your own body or something else?

Really, it's learning to leverage the ground/gravity powers to direct all of your movements, then at the same time training your body to be very relaxed, but building powerful connections through the bone/muscle/tendon/connective tissue to optimally convey the ground/gravity powers so that when one part moves, all parts move. This can then be enhanced via that whole body connection in a way that creates an elastic wrapping that travels throughout the body and can be enhanced via breath and other pressures to greatly increase your available power. That latter bit takes a long time and you can't get there without doing the building blocks - also why there's so many permutations of skills and types of developed applications because of various components being absent or partially developed.

Igor Vojnović wrote: So the general idea of Aiki being the blending or harmonizing the forces of you and your opponent is misguided, because the essential idea is to actually blend the forces of "heaven and earth" aka ground and gravity in you own body and use it to neutralize any foreign force, if possible of course, outside your body. Something like that?

I think it's inclusive of all of those factors in that the "basic" forces of ground/gravity are always in play, but you and another person are also managing you your own body aligns and responds to those forces. The skill aspect is how well you can manage your own interactions with ground and gravity along with "hacking into" another person's management of same such that you are coordinating or "harmonizing" with all of the forces (your own, ground/gravity, another person) to make "aiki".

Igor Vojnović wrote: So in general, my body, techniques, and everything else has to evolve over time to become aligned with the forces of gravity and earth, in my body, so that a can actually use them in a natural course of things? Or something similar to that?

Yes, it's a gradual process - the very reason why in some systems you just spend time getting the alignment of body development, skill, conditioning, etc. first before you learn techniques or forms - the old axiom of "Taiji is easy to learn, but difficult to correct" in that if you learned to do the forms with the wrong body mechanics it's much harder to go relearn them with the correct movement when muscle memory and other things get in the way. But, it can't be insurmountable because nobody starts out moving "correctly" so there has to be allowances for going back to rewire, else there'd never be any proficient

Igor Vojnović wrote: And that's one of the issues, who would you propose as being the best suitable teacher for a beginner in this process? If you rather would't answer i can understand that.

It's a fair question and the best advice I can give is to try to meet with other people that are working on this stuff, or showing it in seminars - various folks have spoken up in support of Mike Sigman, Dan Harden, Akuzawa - though I'd say all three are doing something different even if using recognizable principles from above - Sam Chin has gotten good notices, for more formal traditional Chinese martial arts, most of the standard bearers of Chen village are often put up there as a league in their own for attainment, but it's also been said it can be hard to get the focus just on internal strength as it's partly family-owned intellectual property baked into their tradition.

More generically, I look for people that are willing to talk about the internal strength skills in very concrete physical terms, can show what they are talking about and are invested in helping me reproduce the same (or understanding what skill and conditioning I should expect to invest to get there). Those that can't separate the "how" internal strength works with "Look how tough I am or how well I can fight" I'm less interested in as I'm happy to scrap, but it's distracting to making progress in IS because then people jump to what they believe is effective rather than doing the work to develop their bodies (and it's a process that involves some degree in investing in "loss" if you have to undo a bunch of your existing development to rewire on to the IS track).

Any other questions I'm happy to answer in PM.

Demetrio Cereijo wrote: Been busy too. I haven't personally interacted with any of the IP people, but people I know have and they're very happy, so I'm happy too. Still doing BJJ, so I'm becoming the old small dude who goes Yoda on the big young guys. That's enough for me. Been watching some of you in the youtubes, interesting work but.... don't you think your chi depot has grown too much lately? Anyway, glad to see you back around here again.

Hah, yup definitely working on it - was doing a powerlifting side study that did more growth in some areas than others But getting back into more of the interval HIT stuffs for conditioning, so the body composition should start adjusting.

Some of my guys in MD are plugged into the mainstream BJJ groups, so it's been cool to see where they're finding value bringing the IS stuff into the game.

As long as you don't start sounding like Yoda . . .

Jon Reading wrote: Standing in some variation of zhan zhuang is not how most people want to spend their "training" time. We have shizentai, a natural stance that most aikido people use more similarly to kendo or karate, but not quite hanmi. We stand in HEM in shizentai. We stand in HEM in hanmi.

I practice zhan zhuang because I haven't found anything more effective for eliminating excessive tension from my shoulders. There's been so many times that I thought I was suitably relaxed, but I actually wasn't. I guess it's one of those things that you stop noticing if you've had in your body for a really long time. I've tried less tedious and painful methods for supposedly relaxing the shoulders like stretching, doing yoga routines, drinking multiple shots of whiskey, etc. but nothing has given me the same kind of feedback and results as zhan zhuang practice.

My thinking was initially influenced by Mike Sigman and other practitioners Chinese MA who are big fans of standing practice. Budd of course has been a more recent influence. Mike recently stated that he has consistently observed progress in individuals who do some sort of standing practice for at least 3 months - it didn't matter if said individual had awareness of force vectors or what posture/position he/she stood in.

So do you practice standing in shizentai? How long do you typically practice standing in this posture? Under 2 min. or longer than that?

I've worked up to 18 min. in zhan zhuang. I'm not saying other people have to stand in that posture for that long. I'm definitely not saying one should stand in zhan zhuang or do any standing practice - just reporting what has worked for me. I use it to both train to relax my upper body, and to train the use of the two basic force vectors at the same time - so it's not a totally inefficient practice for me.

Budd Yuhasz wrote: So, dealing with an incoming force - in an aikido context, when someone grabs you (either wrist or shoulder), using vanilla internal strength concepts, you'd want to as very basics have the ability to meet that grab with the appropriate balance of ground and gravity strengths - meaning, I can either let the force transmit through me to reflect off of the ground back into the grabber, floating them upwards, or allow the gravity strength to kick in to plant them on their front foot and glue the grabber to you. Then there's balancing both forces so that the grabber feels like they are floated and their ability to apply power to you is disrupted. All three of the above can be explained as kuzushi on contact (though there's kuzushi before contact implications as well) and there's tactical and strategic reasons why one would want to emphasize one over the other - as just a basic training device to build conditioning and skill. - as well as being fully congruent in a physical sense with a practical definition of "aiki" as "harmonizing energy (or forces)", these initially being the naturally occurring forces of gravity pulling you down and the ground pushing you up and progressing from there. But wait, there's more - the ability to cleanly do these things (and initially think of them as ideals to strive for and have training partners that help you progressively improve based on the type of grabs and attacks they deliver - i.e. less talking and theorizing and more giving you less dumb forces to deal with over time) *ahem* the ability to cleanly do these things has implications with regard to how you will make techniques work over time, how techniques do or don't work on you as well as the ability to leverage the elasticity of the body to greatly enhance the power available to you (how your body responds to and initiates movement, force, etc.).

Great stuff!

I do want to take up Rob's open invitation to come back for more Taikyoku Budo training (ok, more like cross-training), once I'm done with some family stuff that'll keep me occupied for the next few months. Looking forward to playing with these ideas at the Aikido dojo as well.

Hey Paolo, yeah I'd def recommend you (and any others within the Maryland area interested in these things) keep up with Rob's group as they work on making progress in IS stuffs and layer it into their Taikyoku Budo expression. Also, their affiliation with Relson Gracie's org will be a good practical space for them to try these things in a different mode of sparring, etc.

Paolo Valladolid wrote: I practice zhan zhuang because I haven't found anything more effective for eliminating excessive tension from my shoulders. There's been so many times that I thought I was suitably relaxed, but I actually wasn't. I guess it's one of those things that you stop noticing if you've had in your body for a really long time. I've tried less tedious and painful methods for supposedly relaxing the shoulders like stretching, doing yoga routines, drinking multiple shots of whiskey, etc. but nothing has given me the same kind of feedback and results as zhan zhuang practice. My thinking was initially influenced by Mike Sigman and other practitioners Chinese MA who are big fans of standing practice. Budd of course has been a more recent influence. Mike recently stated that he has consistently observed progress in individuals who do some sort of standing practice for at least 3 months - it didn't matter if said individual had awareness of force vectors or what posture/position he/she stood in. So do you practice standing in shizentai? How long do you typically practice standing in this posture? Under 2 min. or longer than that? I've worked up to 18 min. in zhan zhuang. I'm not saying other people have to stand in that posture for that long. I'm definitely not saying one should stand in zhan zhuang or do any standing practice - just reporting what has worked for me. I use it to both train to relax my upper body, and to train the use of the two basic force vectors at the same time - so it's not a totally inefficient practice for me.

So when we look at shizentai, we practice that posture in a similar manner to how you would perform yoga mountain pose. As the yoga name implies, we should be fairly immovable. We'll practice standing while a partner applies pressure because that's a pretty good indicator of success (as long as you are honest in understanding whether you are standing with fullness or simply using muscle). We'll also look at standing as part of furi tama; the vibration of furi tama coming from the manipulation of HEM. A partner can also push in furi tama, but when you "pulse" (i.e. shake your center), your partner should feel it - many aikido people shake with their hands so pressure on the stomach is unaffected. As a general rule, we spend a lot of time standing and working on the vertical aspects of our movement (heaven/earth) - anytime we are moving, we have the expectation that the movement should be done with that posture. This is my perspective to inherit a truly "natural" stance (shizentai).

Most of our standing exercises are pretty intense repetitions - hold for a short period of time (30 seconds or less), followed by a rest period. We'll work hard to create fullness in our posture, then extend that fullness into (and beyond) our hands and feet. We treat standing a little different than stretching, which we might do for a longer period of time. For example, we might stand against a wall for a longer period (maybe a minute) and press our heels, lower back, upper back, and head onto the wall to stretch, flatten, and broaden our back and stretch our vertical line. We will do it on the ground, too.

I feel tension in my shoulders and hips are perennial problems and generally speaking I am never soft enough. I try to stay away from "relaxed" because we are standing in a posture of potential energy - we are just trying to do it cleanly so the energy is 100% transferred, which means we don't muscles getting in the way of things.

Budd Yuhasz wrote: Some of my guys in MD are plugged into the mainstream BJJ groups, so it's been cool to see where they're finding value bringing the IS stuff into the game.

As in causing inavoidable death, maiming and even worse things to other zhoozhitzoo players because they have t3h Internalz?

As long as you don't start sounding like Yoda . . .

More like Renato Laranja.

Thanks for the explanation, Jon. Sounds like your standing practice is quite different, which is cool with me.

I got Jon Haas' book "Integrated Strength". He describes wuji standing, followed by zhan zhuang. He says in the book that he studied with Dan Harden, so I thought IP people were doing standing practice a certain way, but I didn't take into account that he also studies Yiquan, which is a CMA known for devoting tons of training time to standing practices.

With "aiki" as described, are you defeating your uke?

Uke is always "defeated", with or without aiki being involved, for that is his role.

Demetrio Cereijo wrote: Uke is always "defeated", with or without aiki being involved, for that is his role.

That is the fundamental difference between an aikido way and an aiki way.

The Doka of O Sensei according to Seiseki Abe:

The enemy comes running in to strike
At the instant of the attack
Avoid his strike with one step
And counter attack in that instant.

Of course the enemy is defeated. Use however is not an enemy, he or she Is either a partner in Shugyo or an unwilling actor in joint delusion.

To train aiki from an IS skills or conditioning perspective- I don't think winning v losing should be factoring into it other than when choosing the setting to bring your IS skills to bear in an application sense. Certainly types of push hands, or aikido randori have more competitive elements, as does judo, but they also are intended to be training devices more so than outright competitive shiai. My personal opinion is that well rounded training should include all of those things in a martial arts setting, while I acknowledge that some schools may choose to focus on all or none of these things (hopefully they are also self-aware and honest about their marketing of this). But aiki, in as much as it aligns to the bigger category of internal strength in the Eastern sense, by itself is intended to describe a specific type of skill and conditioning, rather than any assumption of victory and defeat.

Mary, I think that aiki as originally designed was much more pragmatic about the harmonization with the natural forces we encounter as material world entities (gravity, ground, other entities, etc). I also think Ueshiba was pretty blatantly aligning to that in his writings, even as he layered in his religious beliefs around opening up to the divine and transforming the world via your connection to it. So I'd argue that the aikido as described by Ueshiba and then spread by his family and disciples is fully intended to include aiki as described here, while also agreeing that it also included more religious and psycho-sociological considerations, even as it was spread and influenced by the consumers and market world views of the 60s-80s.

A little more,

By means of the way
Call out the misguided enemy
Advance and persuade him with words of instruction
Through the Sword of Love.

Enlightenment or delusion?
Who is to say which person has which
Like the evening moon they appear and fade
Not one knows exactly when.

And from Ellis Amdur ( pleas accept my apologies for quoting you from "Duelling with O Sensei"

The sword itself was the embodiment of the principle of law founded upon hierarchy, the ruling warriors' power rooted in their submission to a web of obligations and loyalties to superiors, their weapons instruments of service rather than of freedom. In religious iconography, the Taoist sword cut through undifferentiated chaos, introducing deliniation into the universe, creating darkness and light, yin and yang, positive and negative and from this duality, the birth of the myriad forms of the universe. The Buddhist sword is the sword which cuts through illusion, the bright cold edge of mindful consciousness which requires one to face reality with open eyes and courageous heart.

Why don't we try to drop agendas, hidden or otherwise. Aiki does not make you invincible, nor does aikido produce a peaceful heart. I have found more serious concern about the meaning of violence amongst soldiers than I ever have amongst martial artists. We do not need to agree, we need to respect, and move on.

But it really does create a peaceful heart and it matters how we talk to each other. When I hear people saying "i suck", I cringe because what we say matters.

I don't have an agenda...I just wish we could talk about this with a basic acknowledgement that we all understand it. That different ways can produce results.

So what usually happens is now someone will say we can't all win and "insert certain agenda" is the right way and that we just don't get it.

Aikido and aiki is transformative and can change us in ways that we don't even know. Connection matters and so does unbalancing. The idea of learning inner strength from a non competitive model does not have to wrong. It really is a novel idea. And it really works.

And a little more

"Blend the Ki within the self (ki-musubi)
Stand erect in the very center
Polish the spirit/mind (Kokoro)
"The Way of the Mountain Echo".

Which could be interpreted,
Heaven earth man standing, unified within self, the sphere of protection returning all energies without needing to apply self.

I agree with you Mary. We need to learn from a non- competitive model. I would only suggest that the alternative is not necessarily a "collusive" model. I think true cooperation is expressed in loving restistance to each others' flaws, wether technical or personal. All too often people say one thing and mean another, we all know this.
I don't know if we mean the same things even when we agree, let alone when we disagree. Unfortunately that is why IHTBF, as annoying as that may be. I am not always sure if when I am trying to study and practice aiki I am succeeding, there is as much potential for self delusion as anything else. That's why I need somebody to loan me their sincere and correct resistance, to help me try to shed delusion. For me this applies to all, from Shihan to beginner, in any art. So yes, today "I suck", but I hope a little less than yesterday. It keeps be from becoming inflated or satisfied.

Budd Yuhasz wrote: I think you're modifying the intent of my original post (which is fine, it's a good subject and while the subject of the thread, I think it's a moot argument) from "what is your aikido intended to be able to do or achieve?" (with the implied component of "how are you measuring it?") to "can you use it as a martial art?" . .

That wasn't my original intention but seeing as that there are a myriad of ways that people tend to "understand" Aikido i get what you are saying. Also, thanks for all the answers in the above posts.

Yeah I tend to leave the qualitative assumptions of a person's skills until we meet and even establish if we are talking about the same thing. Here I'd rather keep it at the level of "how's it work" with as few unqualified buzzwords or jargon and as many descriptive terms as will help make sure peeps are having a productive dialogue around the topic.

Igor Vojnović wrote: That wasn't my original intention but seeing as that there are a myriad of ways that people tend to "understand" Aikido i get what you are saying. Also, thanks for all the answers in the above posts.

Heard, Igor and you're most welcome.

Alec Corper wrote: We need to learn from a non- competitive model. I would only suggest that the alternative is not necessarily a "collusive" model. I think true cooperation is expressed in loving restistance to each others' flaws, wether technical or personal.

From a technical standpoint resistance should be both logical and relative to the experience of one's partner. Loving resistance to someone's personal flaws... I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. I try to accept where my partners are at any given moment and move forward from that point. Since an absence of personal flaws isn't part of my makeup, I do my best not to be judgemental of others.

Alec Corper wrote: All too often people say one thing and mean another, we all know this. I don't know if we mean the same things even when we agree, let alone when we disagree.

It is ironic that the written word, which should be a straight forward form of communication, is so often confoundedly confusing. Part of the problem may be that people read thru their own personal, socially conditioned and cultural filters which can lead to differences in interpretation of the same sentence.

Alec Corper wrote: Unfortunately that is why IHTBF, as annoying as that may be.

When discussing the subtleties of aiki or mind/body coordination or whatever one wants to call it, it really is necessary to feel what's going on. I don't see that as unfortunate, it's just a fact of life. Does make discussing it via an internet forum a trifle difficult though.

Alec Corper wrote: I am not always sure if when I am trying to study and practice aiki I am succeeding, there is as much potential for self delusion as anything else. That's why I need somebody to loan me their sincere and correct resistance, to help me try to shed delusion.

Makes sense.

Alec Corper wrote: For me this applies to all, from Shihan to beginner, in any art. So yes, today "I suck", but I hope a little less than yesterday. It keeps be from becoming inflated or satisfied.

I tend to agree with Mary about the "I suck" phrase. Words matter even when used in jest or tongue in cheek. The negative image invoked by that phrase will work its way into one's psyche and adversely affect internal posture. To maintain my beginner's mind I prefer to think of myself as being always in the question. Knowing I'll never "arrive" is enough to keep both my feet on the ground and always looking to peel back the next layer of the aikido onion to see what else there is to learn.

Ron

Since I think we have established that aiki doesn't make you invincible and while we may all have plenty to learn that doesn't mean we all suck. I'm going to start a new thread that can hopefully be more on "how to discussions".