Passing the bottle: refining sensitivity for more effective technique

Has anyone played with something similar. I use a bottle for quite a few things in aikido training. Here's one of the first things I demonstrate.

This is using a 16 oz. 500 ml bottle of water as a training tool for aikido techniques.

Pass a bottle of water back and forth between you and a friend/uke. Notice how you feel when you do that. Notice the feeling in your hands, arms, shoulders - the feeling is alive and sensitive. Sqeeze and feel each others biceps and triceps as you do this. Notice how they feel. How they're soft and not contracting.

Notice also right at the point when you make contact, and how you sense the timing to "release" the bottle. Not too soon, and not too late. Notice how intelligent your hands and arms and body are making the movements. Become aware of how the two of you work together in the passing of the bottle.

Play and experiment with using that same feeling throughout your aikido movements.

How many are wondering if they should respond to this forum?

Good one .......

I'll jest use this in tonight in class !!!!!

Ha! Hey, Andrew. If you go to the seminar coming up with Igarashi, notice his hands. Look at the pic on the front of your dojo's website. He's taking a drink with one hand, and passing a drink with the other. : )

http://www.calgaryaikikai.com/



As humorous as this might seem, it's an amazingly effective tool for people to really become experientially aware of the texture and feeling in their upper body.

People tensing up, muscling, locking up, and being insensitive is a common problem in aikido. And it makes for ineffective techniques.

Will try it Dan. I was continually told, for my first decade in aikido, to relax. Should have used a bottle I guess
!
As for Igarashi Sensei, I have seen him take many relaxed drinks on and off the mat.

Cheers

Cool! I rarely find it helpful when people tell me to relax, or when I tell other people to do so, so I like this. From what I can see, I think almost no one actually wants to be tense (or to 'use a lot of strength', the other big one) and is deliberately trying to be tense in those moments when people end up telling us to relax - they (we ) mostly just tend to lack (or momentarily lose) the body awareness to sense our own tension in that moment, let alone to really feel in our own body what we DO need to do with our bodies, and to be able to consciously reproduce it.

So saying 'relax' or 'stop muscling it' doesn't actually help the person any, it just adds to the frustration.

Not that new. Rocky sometimes said imagine holding a cup of beer, pour it on the ground behind uke (iriminage) or other similar similes.
Sometimes he'd get a cup (sans beer) and demo what he meant.
Sometimes it was "drink some from your cup, and then throw it away" (one of the many kokyu-nage)