Hakaru Mori on the Aiki of Tenouchi

New blog post!

"Hakaru Mori on the Aiki of Tenouchi"

Enjoy!

Chris

Again excellent, Chris. I enjoyed this very much.

Traditionally a gokui might be given after the student has made the ground fertile and it will be nothing dramatically new to him because he has already put in a lot of thought and sweat, but with my western-mindset I feel it would be more promising (for the student and the teacher) if the student knew about what goals to set out for and would be given that as quasi an eye-opener straight from the beginning.

It might depend on the synergy of teacher and student and cultural environment, though.

Best,
Bernd

Thank you, again, Chris and nice finds!

If I read them through my lens there's two different types of applications being discussed 1) the external parts to move to make the correct shape 2) the internal parts to move to make the insides (tendons, bones, muscle) move along the joints to make the correct shape. Then verbiage about what you're doing to yourself versus what you're doing to yourself to do to someone else.

One of my suspicions is that the taiso that's practiced acts basically as a set of qigongs - this coupled with learning to steal the correct feeling from your seniors is actually the basis for how the set of internal skills gets passed on. As usual, there's no way to tell the level of complexity, sophistication nor completeness --> but it's fascinating that such importance gets placed on a thing with so little indication of the how's and what's.

Thanks for translating this very interesting article Chris! Lots of goodies there.

I only knew of "tenouchi" from weapons work, so I was very curious when I saw the term show up in the previous aiki articles you translated. I have recently wondered how asagao, "elbow extension", and other Daito ryu teachings could translate to wielding weapons and not just in the application of aiki from holds etc.; this article has provided much food for thought.

Thanks,
Gerardo

Nice essay, particularly the allusion to the necessity of being soft in the application of aiki, not blowing through with "overkill," so you can naturally flow, stick, fit and control uke.

It seems like Mori is talking about pretty much the same thing that Takahashi talked about in his "What is aiki?" pieces.

Both are still pretty vague about describing just what aiki is, but if one already has a sense of it, there are some tidbits of interest. I thought this version was a little clearer in that respect.

Cady Goldfield wrote: Both are still pretty vague about describing just what aiki is, but if one already has a sense of it, there are some tidbits of interest. I thought this version was a little clearer in that respect.

Yes, I agree with you, FWIW.

Now in Romanian, courtesy of Aikido Jurnal. The original English version is available on the Aikido Sangenkai blog.

Best,

Chris