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Old 05-24-2013, 06:12 AM   #1
osaya
 
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Fascia and the story about Fuzz

i saw this video some years ago under a different context, but it only recently clicked in my head that it was linked to the IP/IS stuff that we've been talking about here all the while.

WARNING: the video contains clips of an human cadaver.

i don't think this has been shared here at aikiweb before, but for those of you who are interested about fascia, and how it actually looks like in the human body, you can view the video here [NSFW].

WARNING: the video contains clips of an human cadaver.

like i said, this video is not directly related to IP/IS but is simply to show what fascia looks like in humans. i'll leave it the other experts on this forum to connect what we've just seen with IP/IS work.
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Old 05-24-2013, 08:15 AM   #2
Dan Richards
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

This is brilliant. Thanks for that post, osaya. If anyone wants an explanation and reason behind "internal" training and alignment from a western pov, the "fuzz speech" is it. Simple and to the point.

Internal training has a lot less to do with constructing anything new, than it does deconstructing unconsciously-created and stored patterns (and experiences) of energy in the body - which also include emotions and thoughts. It's much more about removing distortions, cleaning the gutters and keeping out the cobwebs. Interesting that fascial build up resembles cobwebs.

One excellent point he makes is being "fuzzed over through lack of movement, either through injury or personality expression." That really ties in the mental, emotional, physical - and even spiritual. Think stiff, rigid thoughts, and become a stiff, rigid person and experience the fun and thrills of rigormortis while you're still alive.

I posted some info and a video in this forum on Creating the Disc. I find that the best time to do it is first thing in the morning after waking up. Every morning is a bit different, and it only takes twenty or so rotations to form "clean" circles. As I'm doing them initially, I can feel the "fuzz" - and the uneven circles - as I move. After I can feel a nice, clean, round disc, then I know I'm aligned. Once the center is aligned, everything else just sort of "falls" into place. This literally takes less than a minute.

Look at babies and animals as an example. Strength and power is intrinsic in our design.

Last edited by Dan Richards : 05-24-2013 at 08:21 AM.
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Old 05-24-2013, 09:18 AM   #3
Carsten Möllering
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Dan Richards wrote: View Post
Internal training has a lot less to do with constructing anything new, ...
Interesting. What I understand, practice and teach as "Internal training" is indeed exactly about constructing "something" new in the body that does not exist before.

Quote:
... than it does deconstructing unconsciously-created and stored patterns (and experiences) of energy in the body - which also include emotions and thoughts.
This is to me, what "normal" training of aikidō usually is about: Using what ist allready there in better, more efficient way.
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Old 05-24-2013, 09:39 AM   #4
Bernd Lehnen
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
Interesting. What I understand, practice and teach as "Internal training" is indeed exactly about constructing "something" new in the body that does not exist before.

This is to me, what "normal" training of aikidō usually is about: Using what ist allready there in better, more efficient way.
Hi Carsten,
You seem (tatsächlich) to know what you're talking about. "This old man" is looking forward to meeting you one day.

Ehrlich.

Best
Bernd
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Old 05-24-2013, 03:44 PM   #5
Dave de Vos
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

I think these are two different things:

1: moving naturally, optimizing normal movement, moving like babies or animals, getting rid of obstacles in the body.

2: movement and power that emerges from internal training. This requires a different conditioning of body and mind than 1.

It seems many people equate 1 and 2. But in my understanding, 1 and 2 are not the same (I think Carsten is right).
I don't think there is anything wrong with 1. 1 is good. But it's not 2.
Animals and babies don't have 2. They can't condition their mind and bodies to get 2, because they don't have the mind to drive the conditioning and use it.
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Old 05-24-2013, 06:31 PM   #6
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Well said Dave and Carsten, that's my opinion.

I gave more than a year of my life to "stop doing wrong things." (Still working on it.) I would say it is of vital importance.
But, at some point you have to add "start doing right things." I'd say that's the bulk of internal training. You build the infrastructure that supports new things. But "stop doing wrong" is still important because bad habits can prevent you from using or building these new mechanisms. Looking forward to watching the video, thanks for posting....
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Old 05-25-2013, 09:12 AM   #7
Marie Noelle Fequiere
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Gross, but important information. I'll definitely pass it around.
I already know who will hate me for this.
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Old 05-25-2013, 01:27 PM   #8
RonRagusa
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
Interesting. What I understand, practice and teach as "Internal training" is indeed exactly about constructing "something" new in the body that does not exist before.
So what is this "something" that you are referring to Carsten? Can you be more explicit? Are you putting the word something in quotes because it's not an actual "thing" that is being created in your body? Something in your body did not exist prior to your beginning internal training. After some period of time (weeks?, months?, years?...) practicing internal training methods it emerged. Fair enough. But what is it?

I'm interested because I'd like to have more that a vague reference to "something" as a description so I can relate it to my own training and see if there exist points at which our views converge and meet.

Ron

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Old 05-25-2013, 02:07 PM   #9
JW
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

The video has more to do with pathological "stickiness" between sheets of connective tissue than it has to do with elasticity or tensile strength along the length of those sheets.

So, it doesn't have much to do with IS in my opinion.

But it is nice to be in a world where the idea that connective tissue is actively changing in response to behavior is taking hold. This video talks about the "fuzz" stuff as well as lots of other current ideas in connective tissue research-- it's a great overview. (It shows some promising live imaging techniques.) But it also touches on what I and others consider another red herring for IS discussion, the Schleip discovery of fascia contracting over a timescale of minues and hours in response to hormones.

So, there is a lot of stuff coming out that does not happen to be IS-orientedø because things like pathology are more interesting to lots of people, and because there is so many different things going on in connective tissue.
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Old 05-26-2013, 10:09 AM   #10
Carsten Möllering
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Ron Ragusa wrote: View Post
So what is this "something" that you are referring to Carsten?
Connective tissue.
As far as I understand it, internal practice is about "recruiting" tissue and about using trains/threads/chains of tissue which run throughout the body.

Quote:
Are you putting the word something in quotes because ...
I put that in quotes because I refered to the words "... less to do with creating anything new ..." in the post of Dan.

Quote:
After some period of time (weeks?, months?, years?...) practicing internal training methods it emerged.
Well, it is my experience that some effects could be felt on the spot with a good teacher. (And it is those effects which I can reproduce to some degree with my students when I am teaching.)
But most of the effects have to be trained in daily practice. And they need a period of weeks and months, and longer, just to emerge. Not even talking about being able to really use those features.

@ Bernd:
I want to point out, that I am just a beginner regarding internal practice. So, you should go an see someone who is really able to do and teach the things I am only trying to talk about. Go and see the source. It is rewarding!

Last edited by Carsten Möllering : 05-26-2013 at 10:13 AM.
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Old 05-26-2013, 12:09 PM   #11
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Well, I want to add that internal practice clearly is not only about recruiting tissue. There are definitely some more components ... ;-)
But as an answer to Ron's specific question about what is to be created or build up in the body by internal practice, I think it to be important, that this way of practice is indeed aiming to really change the body in a certain way.

I do point this out because when I only read Dan's (here Dan Harden) posts but did not have practical experience of this way of practice, it was difficult for me to understand that there indeed is a difference between learning to use the body in a certain way - which had been an important part of my aikidō practice - and to actually rebuild/change the body in a certain way.
I myself thought "I know this. I'm doing this. This is common knowledge in my aikidō context ... So why is he allways arguing about this stuff to be new or different?!?" It was only when I experienced this stuff for the first time that I understood that it was different from the body work I had known before. (And that there are very good reasons for those IHTBF criterion. But I don't want to reopen this bottle. Just saying that I've got a better understanding of what was going on here.)

Last edited by Carsten Möllering : 05-26-2013 at 12:16 PM.
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Old 06-16-2013, 12:00 PM   #12
Walter Martindale
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

BS.
fuzz.. give me a break.
It's called "connective tissue". If, after an injury, the person doesn't do mobility/stretching, it's called "scar tissue". if, on the other hand, after an injury, it's not given time to heal, muscle can start to ossify (turn to bone - calcify) to keep from being continually damaged before they've had time to heal. I think this is called "myositis ossificans".

fuzz. seriously?
When you lie down at night and spend 8 hours or so sleeping with no gravity on your spine, the discs re-hydrate and swell - you end up as much as 1.5 cm taller in the morning than you were at night. Stand up, stay up, and after an hour you're back to normal as the effects of gravity re-compress your vertebral discs and squish out all the water they accumulated overnight. Muscles, having also laid down overnight, tend to stiffen a little - it only takes 6 hours of immobilization for a muscle to start making permanent structural changes to its length - and I think that lesson was from an anatomy professor way back when I was learning my coaching career...
Fuzz... Some martial arts people will believe anything.
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Old 06-18-2013, 06:23 AM   #13
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

That guy is a joke. The "fuzz" is just connective tissue. Normally, surfaces in the body are in contact, not being pulled apart. The tissues don't grow with space to be pulled apart, so when you do pull them apart, any normal connective tissue gets abnormally pulled apart and looks like "fuzz".

If you want to learn about anatomy, takes courses and videos from normal medical A&P sources, not bozos.

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Old 06-18-2013, 11:30 AM   #14
JW
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Change in the connective tissue is one of the most important physiological concepts in both IMA and is an open frontier that western science is also exploring (see the German vid I posted).
Both the evolution of adaptive change in connective tissue and the evolution of pathology in it are a really interesting and only partially understood topic.

And here is a guy with first-hand experience sharing it with us with video and qualitative description, in order to try to push science toward deeper understanding, and you ridicule him?

He never said it was science, in fact he almost said it was pseudoscience in his own paragraph! We're supposed to take it with a grain of salt and start thinking about the possible mechanisms by which the body may change, given his observations of this state of connective tissue growth. It could represent an intermediate state of connective-tissue development. His observations about its normal (and pathological) distribution through the body suggest that its formation may be subject to active (mis)regulation. And, the fact that the morphology of the pattern of growth of "filmy fascia" is not congruent with it being related to scar tissue formation is interesting.

One can ridicule it, or target research to investigate it. One of those paths leads to smarmy comments, and one may lead to actual understanding.

Quote:
Walter Martindale wrote: View Post
BS.
fuzz.. give me a break.
It's called "connective tissue".
Uh yeah, no one's disputing that:

Quote:
Gil Headly, the guy in the OP video wrote:
Filmy fascia is loose, aereolar connective tissue with relatively minimal adipocyte proliferation which intervenes at specifically predictable places between superficial and deep fascia, between deep fascia and muscle, and between specific compartmentalizations within the muscle layer.
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Old 06-18-2013, 11:35 AM   #15
JW
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Christian Mikkelson wrote: View Post
Normally, surfaces in the body are in contact, not being pulled apart. The tissues don't grow with space to be pulled apart, so when you do pull them apart, any normal connective tissue gets abnormally pulled apart and looks like "fuzz".
Well, if it happened everywhere he wouldn't be noting it. It is the fact that it is present in certain locations predictably (and absent in certain locations predictably) that is interesting. He also claimed that its ectopic presence is correlated with pathological states. That's kind of interesting.

At any rate I have no experience with human cadavers, and I don't want to over-defend this guy. I just think it's worth piggy-backing on his experience, considering his chance to dissect humans with an eye toward connective tissue development.
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Old 06-18-2013, 09:15 PM   #16
Walter Martindale
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote: View Post
Well, if it happened everywhere he wouldn't be noting it. It is the fact that it is present in certain locations predictably (and absent in certain locations predictably) that is interesting. He also claimed that its ectopic presence is correlated with pathological states. That's kind of interesting.

At any rate I have no experience with human cadavers, and I don't want to over-defend this guy. I just think it's worth piggy-backing on his experience, considering his chance to dissect humans with an eye toward connective tissue development.
I haven't dissected humans. Deer, yes (yummy). Guess what. They have this connective tissue, also.
My question is who let the OP loose in a human anatomy lab.

Peaches have fuzz. Wuzzy (Fuzzy) the bear has fuzz. Police departments have Fuzz. Adolescent males who aren't shaving yet have fuzz. This stuff is connective tissue - likely collagen - a protein...

Sigh.

Last edited by Walter Martindale : 06-18-2013 at 09:15 PM. Reason: What better way to waste time
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Old 06-18-2013, 11:05 PM   #17
JW
 
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

I don't know how he got access to cadavers either but I'm sure I could read all about it if I cared more.

Quote:
Walter Martindale wrote: View Post
Adolescent males who aren't shaving yet have fuzz. This stuff is connective tissue - likely collagen - a protein...
So he chose a simple name for a particular subtype of connective tissue and thus he is an idiot? He called it "loose, aereolar connective tissue with relatively minimal adipocyte proliferation which intervenes at specifically predictable places," but that's a terrible name. "Fuzz" is fine as a shorter nickname.

I think it is a pretty good idea to strive to differentiate a big category into smaller subcategories. That's a sign of learning. Connective tissue is a huge category, including bone and tendons, but we still lack so many important distinctions that we use "fascia" as a catch-all for all connective tissue that we don't understand. Should we try to figure out what makes up "fascia" or "miscellaneous connective tissue?" Sure! Or, we can mock anyone who tries to suggest that we do that.

Saying it's just a single protein like collagen is just rampant oversimplification (it's probably some complex of fibroblasts that are migrating and secreting new collagenous ECM as they migrate), and thus certainly wrong. But I doubt anyone will mock you here for saying that.

Last edited by JW : 06-18-2013 at 11:09 PM.
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Old 06-19-2013, 07:56 AM   #18
SteliosPapadakis
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote: View Post
The video has more to do with pathological "stickiness" between sheets of connective tissue than it has to do with elasticity or tensile strength along the length of those sheets.
I seriously doubt that, Jonathan, it has to do with pathological cases alone.
Being a manual therapist i have yet to see someone of any age group that has no "stickiness" somewhere (or in multiple areas) in the body's tissues. Let alone fascia tender/trigger/reflex points which are quite distinct from muscle tissue tender/trigger/reflex points.
For those interested in learning more about the amazing world of our fascia, you can visit www.fasciaresearch.com

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Old 06-19-2013, 10:11 AM   #19
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

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Stelios Papadakis wrote: View Post
I seriously doubt that, Jonathan, it has to do with pathological cases alone.
Agreed, and I didn't mean to misrepresent Gil's idea:
"What is not correct in The Fuzz Speech is the impression that it gives that "the fuzz" does not belong there. The fuzz does belong there. [in locations where it is most often observed]"
But he claimed to occaisionally see it ectopically in cases of pathology, which is why I said that. I just meant, if you have interest in pathology this might be of more interest than if you have interest in internal MA.

Great fascia research link, thanks!
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Old 07-02-2013, 01:13 PM   #20
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

I have absolutely no problem with him calling it Fuzz, the only bit I disagreed with was his claim that muscle stiffness in the morning is hardening of the tissue ... rather than stiffness inside the muscles, which I tend to attribute it to. And ... scar tissue isn't Fuzz either ...
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Old 08-01-2013, 02:10 AM   #21
SteliosPapadakis
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

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Michael Douglas wrote: View Post
... scar tissue isn't Fuzz either ...
Well, on the other hand, fuzz could be scar tissue in the sense of similarity in properties.
Both delay/oppose free movement, both can be manipulated effectively so as to restore rom at a particular area. Both are made up of collagen fibres, both are sticky and rigid.
It is true that fuzz can be more easily manually manipulated but the same can be true for scar tissue if handled correctly as it is forming (fibre combing and straightening).
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Old 08-01-2013, 10:14 PM   #22
Krystal Locke
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

I am having a hard time finding any information on the guy in the OP video. Anyone know what Gil Hedley's PhD is in? What was the granting institution?
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Old 08-04-2013, 11:03 PM   #23
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Krystal Locke wrote: View Post
I am having a hard time finding any information on the guy in the OP video. Anyone know what Gil Hedley's PhD is in? What was the granting institution?
He has a 2 papers on google scholar
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar...1%2C5&as_sdtp=

I could only follow one of 2 listed publications (the second was a citation rather than full paper I think) and there is no google scholar profile (an author has toself sign up for that though)

Notes on visceral adhesions as fascial pathology
Gil Hedley
Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies
Volume 14, Issue 3, July 2010, Pages 255–261

Summary
Fascia is introduced as an organizing anatomical category for visceral mesothelia. Normal tissue relations are discussed in order to frame the presentation of abnormal visceral adhesions as fascial pathology, 4 types of which are identified. Laboratory dissections of fixed and unembalmed human cadavers provide the basis for insights into these pathologies as regards self-care and therapeutic technique.

The publication is a bit young for impact factor and there is no affiliation cited for the author, the references cite many works including the authors earlier work as published DVD but nothing that gives a institutional clue, eg a supervisors work in the field. Perhaps its an honorific such as sometimes adopted by practitioner in health related fields

The email link on science direct goes to a web page gilhedley dot com if you want to get in touch?

ah from his 'More!' tab
"Gil: While studying for my doctorate in theological ethics at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago..."

Last edited by danj : 08-04-2013 at 11:13 PM. Reason: bit more info

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Old 08-04-2013, 11:57 PM   #24
SteliosPapadakis
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

Quote:
Krystal Locke wrote: View Post
I am having a hard time finding any information on the guy in the OP video. Anyone know what Gil Hedley's PhD is in? What was the granting institution?
Gil has a BA in the study of Religion from Duke University, an MA in the study of Religion from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Philosophical and Theological Ethics from the University of Chicago...he cross trained in anatomy by doing dissection
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Old 08-06-2013, 09:01 AM   #25
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Re: Fascia and the story about Fuzz

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Stelios Papadakis wrote: View Post
Gil has a BA in the study of Religion from Duke University, an MA in the study of Religion from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Philosophical and Theological Ethics from the University of Chicago...he cross trained in anatomy by doing dissection
Great. Good to know. Thanks.
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