leer Despues
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http://www.budoshugyosha.com/ame-no-tori-fune/#more-152
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http://www.budoshugyosha.com/aikitaiso-sagawa-den-daito-ryu/#more-3641
http://www.budoshugyosha.com/tanren-sagawa/#more-305
http://www.budoshugyosha.com/veritable-tresor-cache/#more-1059
http://www.budoshugyosha.com/misogi-kami-no-michi/#more-2112
http://www.budoshugyosha.com/aikitaiso-sagawa-den-daito-ryu/#more-3641
Squats
http://www.budoshugyosha.com/methode-de-marche-de-survie/#more-302
Aikido Journal #118
http://www.budoshugyosha.com/tai-no-henka/#more-247
The shadow of Daito-ryu
Open letter in response to an interview with Olivier Gaurin by Guillaume Erard.http://www.guillaumeerard.fr/aikido/entretiens/entretien-avec-olivier-gaurin-un-aikidoka-sur-la-voie-de-la-disgrace
Hello Olivier.
We do not know, and yet we have in our respective courses, many coincidences that might have enabled our meeting. So I took the party tu you, hoping that you accept this facility for what it is: a way to give our conversation around the most natural and friendliest possible.
I do not answer you, in fact, to satisfy the pleasure controversy lovers. I write because your interview in my opinion raises important issues for all practicing Aikido. These questions are usually embedded in the confusion of modern Aikido. You have the merit of not avoiding them.
We both started Aikido in the mid 70s In 1984 I lived a few months in Paris and I trained at Vincennes, where Christian Tissier had welcomed me with great kindness. I knew the training partners you speak: Jean Michel Merit, Patrick Benezi Philippe Gouttard Bernard Palm, etc. It is therefore very likely that we exchanged at that time few shiho nage which we both lost memory.
We both parties for the first time in Japan that year, in 1986. You, if I read your interview, " the path of disgrace, "to find the best possible teachers, and for making around an attractive teaching his " panache "but whose thirst for power and commercial ambition suited you more. Me to look for it, with a single teacher, teaching Aikido fundamentals that I was not with Master Tamura.
The almost exclusive study of nagare during my first ten years of Aikido, and technical vagueness surrounding this practice had convinced me that we can not definitely run before learning to walk. And I have since explained on TAI site the impasse had been reached in modern Aikido was the result of a break with the study of the technical bases, without control which the nagare is just a game roles. This idea, we share since you say yourself:
The "Nagare" (...) is the typical characteristic of Aikido developed after the death of the founder. This "dynamic operating Aiki" is that somehow makes the particularity of Aikido "modern." And the Aikikai, the focus was quickly put on this unique slope of Aiki. Today we can see the positive and negative effects.
The negative effects of nagare when one does not work as you say that on this unique slope of Aiki is in my inability to understand the precise technical bases of the movements that we practice, and thus the unable to execute properly. Here again it seems that we thought the same way as you explain:
advanced techniques of Daito-ryu techniques are Nagare, dynamic and without confrontation (...) O Sensei was doing this at this high level, but his students have been reduced to attend this very Daito-ryu advanced form without power switch by the lower bases for understanding.
But Olivier, if this is true, and it is not me who contradict you, then none of the teachers of the Aikikai which you have taken the courses arriving in Japan could not have the slightest idea of the bases of which you speak.Yamaguchi no more than another which you say thyself:
Yamaguchi Sensei was the deepest representation of a type of Aikido called the Nagare
You nuances it is true that general ignorance of the basics, explaining that some students of O Sensei's had still learned indirectly:
People like Yamaguchi Sensei Watanabe or which, although they showed a fairly thorough knowledge of the basics of Daito-ryu, did not know they had them because they have been taught indirectly.
I'd be curious to know what was exactly consist indirect mode of learning, to the extent that the teaching of O Sensei, in nagare therefore , was the same for all students of the Aikikai in the years 1950- 1960. In any case, unlike you, I do not believe for a second that the study of other martial arts could help in anything students like Yamaguchi or Tamura understand the structural basis of movements that O Sensei demonstrated nagare in their eyes. Besides, do you really believe, you who learn today Daito ryu with teachers able to clearly identify the fundamental gain, which measures, despite these ideal conditions, the amount of effort needed to acquire a careful definition and rigorous technical school? Like many teachers of the Aikikai I tried that route, I sought to understand Aikido through the study of disciplines such as iaido, ken jutsu and Jodo. It does not work, I will explain why a little further in responding to your arguments about weapons of education.
My analysis is as follows: each student that time has absorbed as he could, and the extent of its capabilities, O Sensei movements, rebuilding with more or less success, from the developed product that was the nagare, basic components, the fundamentals that made it possible truth . In this context, the motto of Tamura " must steal technology "itself as a burning necessity. Yamaguchi, Tamura, and some others were gifted people who have certainly done a long way in this direction, and found some bases themselves.
In this regard, I fully understand your feelings when you say:
Personally, it was only when I began the study of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu I understood why Yamaguchi Sensei made his movements like this or like that.
I understand, because it was my own feeling on my return from Japan. Seeing new master Tamura after my first stay in Iwama, my reaction was, " it completely changed his technique , "before I obviously that he had not changed at all, but simply that it was me who was finally able to recognize stealth bases but sharp enough movement under the veil hitherto opaque ki no nagare.
It was a revelation, but when I look back today, I told myself that it was at the back of very little importance for students as we were, our respective teachers have more or less intuitively found some bases, since they were in fact unable to teach for what they were. They could not pass that they did not know themselves possess , as you saw. Or rather, they could pass it on the way in which they had learned themselves. And " this exchange of intimate complicity heart to heart "with a sensei, you mention, is friendly course, necessary even, but not enough in my opinion if the genuine technical background is not as clear in its definition. This clear definition has been lacking. I remember the whole keiko Cannes club Aiki with Tiki Shewan, Daniel Leclerc, Werner Meier, devoted to look up the definition, the fundamental basis of ikkyo. It changed every two weeks. Some say it is evolution. No, the reality is that we advanced groping in the dark and trying without realizing it to do over again, alone and without real information, the route of O Sensei, we were guided not by " blind "- as you say, pushing a little cap - but certainly by the visually impaired.
For the scales finally fall from our eyes, so we had to you the study of Daito ryu to me teaching Iwama. And that's where things get interesting. Indeed, one can understand that this very strong sense of an unveiling of the basic techniques, a sudden revelation, intervened for you by entering the Daito ryu because through that door you "leaving" school of Aikido for school origins of Aikido. But I, who entered only in the Iwama dojo, I who would stand in the lap of Aikido, how could I live - in the same school - experience in every way comparable to yours, rich same feelings, the same absolute contrast and the same revelations?
My answer is far to the bottom of what separates our two itineraries, Olivier: it's because I put my bags without knowing one morning in February 1986 in a no man's land , a place halfway between Takeda ryu and Aikikai, a strange place where teaching a student remained somewhat behind the personal evolution of O Sensei, a midway between the master Daito ryu Aikido.
You declare with perhaps too much certainty:
No student postwar never learned directly [O Sensei], I say "directly" the old techniques of Daito ryu he had inherited from Sokaku Takeda. But Saito Sensei began studying Aikido in 1946 (...)
I will say more cautiously that nobody can say for sure what that O Sensei or did not teach his pupil Saito. But I can however testify knowing how Saito taught, and I guarantee it was not nagare. I saw before me sharply back his student Tomita who thought his 7th dan absolve the laborious static work kotai which was the rule in Iwama. And I could have written the word about this sentence is for you:
In Daito-ryu we start with the basic jutsu, primary techniques that understand the meaning of Aiki but practical and statically. It's boring Daito-ryu at the beginning Aikidoka for us, we do not move and they catch us like cattle to hurt us. This creates the need for cons to understand why this one does not work, and why it would be better that it works.
I only replaced Daito ryu by Iwama style. However, I do not agree when you continue:
This does not exist in Aikido, because if we resist, we just told to do otherwise, to follow, to learn, that is not good, it is zero, that is not strong etc. I spend and best. "
Because you am referring to a conception of Aikido is widespread, which you and I have faced our inception, but do not apply everywhere, not the master of Shioda Yoshinkan for example, and not the Iwama dojo, where " this finding "has always existed.
When the first partner of my friend Paolo Corallini on the tatami Iwama grabbed her wrist, he was unable to move. Paolo was then 4th dan by Nocquet, 4th dan nagare therefore, his partner, an American of good build, was white belt. This type of incident was daily in Iwama, nobody has ever thought to complain and reject any fault on uke. In kotai uke securely holds, it is normal to find its way tori. Regular practice at Iwama dojo was kotai
During the time I spent in Iwama, I saw once master Saito teach nagare. It was during aiki ken the morning, he visibly tried an experiment: we gradually moved towards a more fluid practice. It lasted two days. At the end of the second drive, he said " groomed! "and we returned the next morning to our kotai practice. And he was right, two days were enough for everyone started playing small samurai. The practice imposed by Master Saito was the opposite so drift "all nagare" of modern Aikido you describe with clarity that does not mince words:
The O Sensei students at the end of his life have learned to play the movements he showed them without going through the basics needed to do this or that way, or in a particular situation. So we finally techniques that only work under certain conditions ease or connivance, but that's it. This is what has created the fundamental problem of Aikido "modern": it is a Nagare Aikido does not work if you stop in movements where one comes across stronger than oneself. We are therefore obliged to invent tricks to make this Aikido works anyway. But it is unlikely to fall back on real and fair basis in this way. There is thus a gap between what is and what should be done.
[...]
It is a little mess in Aikido today. And this is the problem of the current Aikido; this Aikido has no markings, over Aiki bases. So everyone is going to his small kitchen.
I fully share this vision.
Now, what information can we learn teaching without nagare systematically static and power that was the rule in Iwama? This I believe: Master Saito received from O Sensei teaching that allowed him to know and understand the techniques in their most basic definition, which allowed him later to teach himself these techniques in a way static, precise, rigorous and systematic, without any use of ki no nagare.
What techniques do we speak, will you tell me. Well, like you, I say that the kihon I studied kotai in Iwama for thousands of hours were not the original techniques of Daito ryu such qu'apprises in their pure form Ueshiba by Sokaku Takeda, in Hokkaido, in the 1915-1917 years. I also think that there was no reason why Master Saito gets better than that Tamura Yamaguchi or the constituent bases of the movement, from a permanent nagare O Sensei. I do not think more than he was able to reach only the encyclopedic knowledge of kihon was his, in other words I do not think he invented what he taught. And even if this were the case, I have personally experienced and I know enough scrupulous conscience Master Saito had its historical duty to O Sensei, to assert that he would never attributed to Ueshiba an invention of his own, never passed his teaching to that of his master.
So what? Hence Saito he drew his technical knowledge bases, the kihon, since that's right he taught almost exclusively, and could he teach in the elementary form was not as technical Daito-ryu?
Well here Olivier your analysis a hit to me on many points, but thou BASED ON A continuation of the practice of O Sensei compared to Daito-ryu. You say, for example:
Many people do not want to admit it, but technically speaking, Morihei Ueshiba Sensei never stopped doing Daito-ryu his life.
[...]
What was O Sensei Aikido postwar in fact Daito-ryu techniques of the highest level.
This interpretation separates us. I do not of course deny the Daito-ryu origin shiho nage, kote gaeshi, irimi nage etc. I think no one disputes the importance of Daito-ryu in the formation of Ueshiba. But I tell myself that there was no continuity but to break between the teaching of Sokaku Takeda and that of O Sensei. You mention the break by bringing the real problems but remain in my minors:
Morihei Ueshiba had various problems with Takeda Sokaku, financial or otherwise. In particular, O Sensei could not teach Daito-ryu under that name since it did not have a teaching license.
I think that O Sensei does not have founded Aikido because he did not have permission to teach Daito ryu.The break between Takeda and Ueshiba's my much more fundamental sense: it is technical . Ueshiba changed a foundation of Daito ryu: shikaku the position, the position of square feet. It adopted - probably in 1920 - the sankaku position (hanmi). This technical change is not a detail. Why? Because the fact of starting a technical position in the triangular rather than square position has an effect on the one hand a very practical way to perform this technique, and secondly on mobility in the space of tori and thus on its response capacity in the eight directions.
Note that I'm not saying that the triangular position is not used in the Daito ryu in the course of a given body erasing technique, I say that the triangle position is not the fundamental guard one of the art, it is not the position where one starts systematically to execute each technique, and the one we always return once the technique. This requirement is intended to hanmi Aikido, it is repeated with significant emphasis O Sensei in his book " Budo ", she imposed upon the novice who makes his first course, it does not exist as such in the Daito ryu. You agree also that specificity of hanmi position in Aikido, since you say:
Few know [...] where does this position Hanmi characteristic and fundamental to Aikido compared to Daito-ryu.
And that's without any spirit of provocation I plagiarize your sentence to go further than you: few people so, and few people even within the Daito-ryu , know where this position hanmi characteristic and fundamental to Aikido compared to Daito-ryu. They do not know it because they have no idea why Ueshiba broke one day with the foundations of their school. Why - I try to explain it for some time on the site TAI in the files " Roppo "- is that it is not possible to work in the 360 ° of the circle from a square position . Only hanmi triangular position can work at any time and instantly in all directions of space, giving life to this famous position of the six directions (Roppo) . And practitioners of Daito-ryu Aikido practice their nagare call, as you remember, only justify the famous phrase Ueshiba:
I called Aiki has nothing in common with what was called Aiki in the martial arts before.
This sentence of O Sensei becomes even in the context of the explanation I give here a strong argument.
I do not doubt that it exists, at an advanced level of Daito ryu, a nagare version of these basic techniques studied so long by practitioners in their single static version, and I do not doubt that there are significant variations between kihon and nagare Daito-ryu. But I do not see any concrete evidence in the basic techniques of Daito-ryu, a future work taking into account the eight directions. But these indices do exist, from the outset , in the basic techniques of Aikido such as teaching master Saito, and the first of them is hanmi.
When I write in fact that Saito sensei was between Daito-ryu and Aikido is an image for the understanding he had with regard to the kihon an "attitude, an approach Daito-ryu " In contrast, the content of the kihon was not that of Daito-ryu. And this for the same reason that had removed O Sensei of Daito-ryu: Morihiro Saito, like his master Ueshiba, practiced giving paramount importance to hanmi was the heart of his teaching. Or hanmi is not the heart of the teaching of Daito-ryu.
And that is why I say, unlike you, the fundamental work of O Sensei between 1930 and 1960 has not been refined every day competence in high technology level of Daito ryu. His job was to build a new foundation for an art out of the belly of Daito ryu, but that a major genetic change vowed to develop a way radically different - and that word is to be taken here in its etymological sense. Daito ryu kihon of the "stickier do" with the new laws of the movement of O Sensei, he had to create - not from nothing, from his encyclopedic knowledge of Daito-ryu course, but taking into account now the requirements arising from custody Roppo - the kihon of Aikido. It is in this work where Saito participated as uke, because he lived with O Sensei for 23 years between 1946 and the death of the Founder. No other student that Saito was uke for O Sensei for a long period, and especially no other student has lived with him for so long. Receive being a master and live with him are two different things. Whether this is a matter of fate or chance, we can not kick for touch such a reality by reducing it as you do to a point of detail:
For example, it is said that Saito Sensei received more than others, I will, but it's still in a very circumscribed in relation to the long evolution [O Sensei] period.
23 years of living with the Founder of Aikido is not " a very specific period , "and it is a circumstance of history that has had a major consequence: while during these two decades - and you said - the Aikikai students had access to the famous technical foundations of their discipline that through nagare O Sensei, Saito him received them in the same process of gestation, because that O Sensei needed a partner for his research. And although the young Morihiro could not then make the best of what was happening before his eyes, it is nonetheless true that he witnessed, as uke, the birth of an art, and childbirth by O Sensei all the fundamentals of a discipline that had broken any direct link with the Daito-ryu. You ask in your interview that " we'll explain the criteria "against which to spread the idea that Saito had received from O Sensei more than others, that's what my explanation, and I am part of those who can claim some legitimacy to speak as I do.
You say this in the most appropriate sentence to me of your interview:
This is against the principles of Aiki that can be more or less true and not with respect to persons, and even less with respect to O Sensei.
I would put principle in the singular, but with the proviso that sentence I sign with both hands. I agree with you that it is only from the principle of Aiki that the truth of a practice can be defined. And only in this sense that the truth can be held Saito master of education. But you will grant me logically that any judgment is impossible and should be suspended until the principle of Aiki has not been identified as such, if not the same criterion of judgment is lacking, and everyone goes there as its opinion, which has no interest.
What is this principle? You put us on his trail:
You can not see as well as Aiki when one knows the "engine". If one does not know, then the sense of what is happening is invisible (...)
I totally agree.
The motor is the rotation on itself of the vertical axis of the body, of which the physical image is the spine, this initial rotation causes the rotation of the hips, one forward, the other to the back necessarily. This rotation of the hips in tandem is an application of the yin-yang, what we call in Aikido irimi- tenkan. No irimi-tenkan not Aikido. O Sensei is very clear about this at the beginning of "Budo" in this crucial first chapter lays the foundation of his art, and that is the key to all the chapters devoted to technical applications. That is what is the plan:
Here we put our finger on the heart of the problem that the Daito- away Ueshiba ryu: shikaku the position does not allow to apply irimi-tenkan principle , only authorize hanmi position instantly and continuously rotating hips complementarity. And that is why it is absolutely vital to the beginning and end of the cycle of technology, that's why O Sensei insistence on the importance of hanmi movement starts (the first sentence of his book):
Fill yourself with ki and take the position hanmi - p. 39 of the English translation
That is why he insists as much on the essential nature of this position at the end of the movement:
When the movement ends, it is essential to always adopt the position Roppo (hanmi). - P. 39 of the English translation
Roppo is indeed the sine qua non of irimi. The irimi Aikido has nothing in common with what is called in Daito-ryu irimi because the Daito-ryu does not use hanmi as a foundation of art. This is the cause of the rupture of O Sensei with this school and why Aikido can not be confused with Daito-ryu practice, be it high-level.
And besides, since we are there, what koryu, what traditional Japanese martial school so uses hanmi positionin the fundamental context defined by O Sensei? None to my knowledge.
You say:
If one wants to study the weapons in Japan, you are spoiled for choice, we can even directly to study the original Itto-ryu school Ono-ha or in traditional stick schools are so numerous. There Kashima stick techniques too, and why not? All these also can build a good Aikido.
Not Olivier, we can not " build a good Aikido "without hanmi. Or all the arts which you speak do not know what the hanmi position as defined by O Sensei. There are of course here and there a profile position, a kamae waki, deletion of the leg, etc., but none of this has to do with the structural role played by the founder hanmi position in Aikido. And it is also the underlying reason that has given the atypical nature Founder of the sword that is his own, and that has always prevented the contemporary masters of O Sensei truly understand what he was doing.
The mistake of thinking that the understanding of Aikido out of the study of koryu Ueshiba has more or less frequented before the foundation of his art is the result of a misunderstanding of the concept of riai of the synthetic unity that makes every movement Aikido a member of the same family. As I said earlier, I have made this mistake at a time when I did not even know what the hanmi position. I practiced Muso Shinden ryu and Katori Shinto Ryu for saber and Shindo Muso Ryu for jo. Or hanmi is absent from these schools, as it is absent of Ono-ha Itto ryu and Yagyu Ryu Sinkage. And without this basis, no unity around a common principle can appear between the techniques proposed by the schools and irimi-tenkan of Aikido, even gestures such as cutting or picnic could let see points of resemblance.
Guillaume Erard asks you a direct question on the practice of Master Saito weapons with which you answer this:
If fire Saito Sensei had practiced Ono-ha school, I would not necessarily say it was right, but: it is placed in the right line of great historical Aiki. [...] Saito Sensei practiced something else, an art weapons fabricated, concocted by O Sensei O Sensei, for his own driving in his own personal journey and that O Sensei taught himself elsewhere never even really regular and generally to all its students.
This analysis is a foot against logic. Indeed, if Saito had wanted to study the Ono-ha school, he would naturally turned to a master of Ono-ha. Or Ueshiba was not a master of Ono-ha and did not teach this art, he taught Aikido. But precisely Saito wanted to Aikido and had no desire to leave his master to study another discipline.By what strange Saito approach, which served as uke to O Sensei for ken jo and tai jutsu, would he have decided that to learn Aikido, he had to leave the Founder of Aikido with whom he lived and taught him every day?
" Saito sensei practiced something else "you say. Yes, certainly.
He practiced " art weapons manufactured by O Sensei O Sensei, for his own driving in his own personal approach . " Yes, perfectly.
But the other thing , the art produced by O Sensei has a name, it is called Aikido. And that is what Ueshiba transmitted to Saito, with among others the aiki ken and aiki jo. By what logic Saito, who had the historic opportunity to be there at the time of this " production "of Aikido, he should have leave to study another discipline to understand his master? The name of a historical lineage that profound transformations of O Sensei had reduced to almost nothing, and in any case non-essential elements?
This art weapons, O Sensei does the " also taught himself never really regular and generally to all its pupils . "Yes again, Olivier, of course yes, and that's why it was so difficult for all of its students to understand what it really was, especially at the Aikikai. And that is why today the students of these students think that this was nothing more than a negligible change from the koryu, a minor discrepancy, a digression , and the limit as you let him hear a simple training method.
Do not confuse the creative abundance of O Sensei in the development of Aikido with the method developed by Morihiro Saito to try to understand the great work that was taking place before his eyes. I spoke about it on the site TAI, especially in technical books devoted to the Saito method.
I am in total disagreement with the idea that the study of koryu aid to understanding of Aikido. As if the Master Ueshiba whole life took place in a purring continuity with traditional schools in Japan, and as if the Cubs lost Poucets Aikido had only come back to the steps of the Founder to find their way and fold. This is the opposite: the whole life of O Sensei was to transcend the ancient martial arts, modifying precisely the root bases that underpin them, to make them produce what they had not produced so far is the deeper meaning of takemusu.And the paradox is that the bases of these schools have become, by this authentic transformation , a true lure for anyone to seek a form of basic Aikido, on the pretext that kiri otoshi like another kiri otoshi and gaeshi a kote kote gaeshi to another. Ask yourself well, Olivier, if " Highway of ignorance "you stigmatized, not as go through the process that seems all mapped out, so natural and obvious to go to the source , to the extent that these sources are no more, since the breakdown of O Sensei with Takeda, a trompe l'oeil.
I think about it, and yet I do not argue with you when you say,
What is the point of learning Aikido weapons if not for the establishment in the practitioner of the fundamental principles of Aiki, this engine?
For it is from this that it is indeed. But I feel that we have the one and the other a different conception of this engine. The engine of Aikido is not the engine Daito- ryu or Itto-ryu. And we can not blame O Sensei not having insisted, both in his book and in his lectures on the uniqueness of Aikido, irreducible to anything that had existed previously in Japan in martial arts .
As critical as I have been in the past to the Doshu Ueshiba Kisshomaru technically, I will not insult him to think that the commitment that was hers in spreading Aikido internationally, could be the result of a common calculation. I do not follow you more when you say that:
At while Sensei died, a stabilization and transmission problem arose for Aikido as an art autogenous. One way to do was cut with the History of Aiki-jutsu. It was obvious, because from the time when you could say, "Aikido is new, it was invented," so we had to make anyone accountable.
Aikido is not new, Aikido is as old as man, but Aikido is profoundly different from conventional jutsu, profoundly original for the reasons I have mentioned, and Kisshomaru Ueshiba knew. He did not master all the technical aspect, that's all. And I never criticized the " package easily exportable "he created as you explain it to respond to the internationalization of Aikido, and I fully understand the need, if he had developed the point in the rules of art .
So when I compare a technique executed by O Sensei, and the same technique performed by his son in his "package ", I compare two elements well very nature , contrary to what you reproach me. Why Kisshomaru "showed what he showed as he showed "has nothing to do with why he included this technology in a package to the world. This reason is independent of the technology itself, and even more in the manner of the latter to perform this technique. However, if it does not run - in my opinion - according to the rules of Aikido, what better way to show it than to check the difference with the above model we respect these rules: the father? It makes sense to do so , and that his father had learned the technique of Daito-ryu, Ba Gua Zhang, and he has invented, does not change the nature of the technique is compared, at the time of comparison. And if " con game "there, it is not in such a comparison, it is in the effort is to impersonate indescribable" revenge . " The Aikikai does me nothing, and I have to get back at anyone or anything, Olivier.
If I could give the impression of waving flags in the past, it was to shake up an evil empire and founded a stifling consensus to lift a little wall of silence that hung there thirty years on teaching Aikido in France and elsewhere. I did sometimes iconoclastic way, scratching some idols, but this is by attacking the head that has a chance to overthrow an empire. I have not reversed course, but this lead ignorance somewhat since cracked, and the contribution that you bring from your experience and your thinking is not negligible with respect to this.
I want to thank you for this and for giving me the opportunity in this response, to express my ideas on the various points that you raise and which are, for the most part, the testimony of a clear vision problems of the so-called modern Aikido today, or rather, as preferred to call master Arikawa, sports Budo.
I also send you my cordial greetings.
Philippe Voarino, Cape Clear, 15 January 2015
Next internship Philippe Voarino: Sunday, April 26, 2015 , Aikido Gasshuku 2015, Antibes, France
CommentsSubmitted by GMD on Sun, 18/01/2015 - 8:58 p.m. - Permalink
Philippe goodnight, you seem to say that Saito has little or no demonstrated KI NO NAGARE and yet there are videos has plenty of that, with kihon, nagare and ki no nagare, nothing is missing at the sudden release SAITO.Du ki no nagare SAITO must be aikido founder and YET !!! qu'ais I missed?cordialement.gilles
Submitted by philippevoarino the Sun, 01/18/2015 - 11:15 p.m. - Permalink
Good evening Gilles.
I have not written that Saito had not practiced or demonstrated nagare, I wrote that it basically Iwama taught the basics (it was 90% of practice), and that these bases he taught systematically in kotai.This is the fundamental difference with the teachers from the Aikikai, who passed these bases through the practice of nagare without ever going through the kotai box, as explained rightly Olivier Gaurin. It is on this very specific point that I was responding to Olivier.
Philippe Voarino
Submitted by GMD on Mon, 1/19/2015 - 7:25 p.m. - Permalink
Philippe goodnight, I wrote "little or no" the "is not too much but what about my second question seems essential and I care because I'm not on your demonstrations stick at any point with ki no MASTER of nagare SAITO unless you on the next step. cordialement.gilles
Submitted by philippevoarino the Sun, 01/02/2015 - 9:53 p.m. - Permalink
Hello Gilles.
When we practice kotai level, voluntarily cancels the dynamic dimension of Aikido movement, one removes the variable "time". This is quite obviously artificial, but in doing so we simplify the exercise by eliminating the stress of timing, and thus permits a more serene and more accurate learning the basic technique shape, kihon. We his time , no one walks cow. This is a training method that has been overlooked in modern Aikido, but is essential in Daito ryu for example, and of course in Saito master of education.
It would be a mistake to think that it is enough to pass the stage of ki no nagare to be immediately and automatically in the reality of Aikido movement. The nagare also, as kotai has been simplified to acquire what is to be gained at this stage, and this time is no longer the technical form, as in the stadium kotai but now awase. The study of awase is indeed possible from the moment is reintroduced the concept of "time" which had been artificially removed from kotai.
But another variable in turn removed from nagare, with the same goal of making it easier to study.This new variable is the martial context, I mean, the reality of the battlefield and the multiple attackssimultaneously .
So, in the same way that a static movement may be just the point of view of kotai but false perspective of nagare a nagare may be just the point of view of this stage nagare, but wrong from the point of for martial reality.
In other words, much of the nagare part of the study of Aikido is still a work agreement for this study.And there is still one stage after that.
There is a way to learn that everyone follows, which is given, which is apparent is the sense of omote, and there is a reality that does not come in this appearance, which is hidden the light, and that is the sense of ura.
Philippe Voarino
Submitted by rusty 9 on Thurs, 01/29/2015 - 2:18 p.m. - Permalink
Hello, out of curiosity (ignoring the techiques of daito ryu, I have watched different video Mr Gaurin visibly is a great very practicing, just a question: bcp technical grow Uke, moreover I find ca antagonist because for me in any case can not grow (because in this case we remain in the dangerous position -Omote) except of course the school form as mentioned. cdt Serge
Submitted by GMD on Mon 02/02/2015 - 11:30 - Permalink
Hello Philippe, it is thus the suivante.Merci walking formally answer to a question many people were asking and especially critics rightly but now things are claires.Ce that surprises me is the reaction MARTIAL sure the word as a martial one answer was necessarily lethal, it just seems to me that Aikido offers a flexible response to the situation. best regards. gilles
Open letter in response to an interview with Olivier Gaurin by Guillaume Erard.http://www.guillaumeerard.fr/aikido/entretiens/entretien-avec-olivier-gaurin-un-aikidoka-sur-la-voie-de-la-disgrace
Hello Olivier.
We do not know, and yet we have in our respective courses, many coincidences that might have enabled our meeting. So I took the party tu you, hoping that you accept this facility for what it is: a way to give our conversation around the most natural and friendliest possible.
I do not answer you, in fact, to satisfy the pleasure controversy lovers. I write because your interview in my opinion raises important issues for all practicing Aikido. These questions are usually embedded in the confusion of modern Aikido. You have the merit of not avoiding them.
We both started Aikido in the mid 70s In 1984 I lived a few months in Paris and I trained at Vincennes, where Christian Tissier had welcomed me with great kindness. I knew the training partners you speak: Jean Michel Merit, Patrick Benezi Philippe Gouttard Bernard Palm, etc. It is therefore very likely that we exchanged at that time few shiho nage which we both lost memory.
We both parties for the first time in Japan that year, in 1986. You, if I read your interview, " the path of disgrace, "to find the best possible teachers, and for making around an attractive teaching his " panache "but whose thirst for power and commercial ambition suited you more. Me to look for it, with a single teacher, teaching Aikido fundamentals that I was not with Master Tamura.
The almost exclusive study of nagare during my first ten years of Aikido, and technical vagueness surrounding this practice had convinced me that we can not definitely run before learning to walk. And I have since explained on TAI site the impasse had been reached in modern Aikido was the result of a break with the study of the technical bases, without control which the nagare is just a game roles. This idea, we share since you say yourself:
The "Nagare" (...) is the typical characteristic of Aikido developed after the death of the founder. This "dynamic operating Aiki" is that somehow makes the particularity of Aikido "modern." And the Aikikai, the focus was quickly put on this unique slope of Aiki. Today we can see the positive and negative effects.
The negative effects of nagare when one does not work as you say that on this unique slope of Aiki is in my inability to understand the precise technical bases of the movements that we practice, and thus the unable to execute properly. Here again it seems that we thought the same way as you explain:
advanced techniques of Daito-ryu techniques are Nagare, dynamic and without confrontation (...) O Sensei was doing this at this high level, but his students have been reduced to attend this very Daito-ryu advanced form without power switch by the lower bases for understanding.
But Olivier, if this is true, and it is not me who contradict you, then none of the teachers of the Aikikai which you have taken the courses arriving in Japan could not have the slightest idea of the bases of which you speak.Yamaguchi no more than another which you say thyself:
Yamaguchi Sensei was the deepest representation of a type of Aikido called the Nagare
You nuances it is true that general ignorance of the basics, explaining that some students of O Sensei's had still learned indirectly:
People like Yamaguchi Sensei Watanabe or which, although they showed a fairly thorough knowledge of the basics of Daito-ryu, did not know they had them because they have been taught indirectly.
I'd be curious to know what was exactly consist indirect mode of learning, to the extent that the teaching of O Sensei, in nagare therefore , was the same for all students of the Aikikai in the years 1950- 1960. In any case, unlike you, I do not believe for a second that the study of other martial arts could help in anything students like Yamaguchi or Tamura understand the structural basis of movements that O Sensei demonstrated nagare in their eyes. Besides, do you really believe, you who learn today Daito ryu with teachers able to clearly identify the fundamental gain, which measures, despite these ideal conditions, the amount of effort needed to acquire a careful definition and rigorous technical school? Like many teachers of the Aikikai I tried that route, I sought to understand Aikido through the study of disciplines such as iaido, ken jutsu and Jodo. It does not work, I will explain why a little further in responding to your arguments about weapons of education.
My analysis is as follows: each student that time has absorbed as he could, and the extent of its capabilities, O Sensei movements, rebuilding with more or less success, from the developed product that was the nagare, basic components, the fundamentals that made it possible truth . In this context, the motto of Tamura " must steal technology "itself as a burning necessity. Yamaguchi, Tamura, and some others were gifted people who have certainly done a long way in this direction, and found some bases themselves.
In this regard, I fully understand your feelings when you say:
Personally, it was only when I began the study of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu I understood why Yamaguchi Sensei made his movements like this or like that.
I understand, because it was my own feeling on my return from Japan. Seeing new master Tamura after my first stay in Iwama, my reaction was, " it completely changed his technique , "before I obviously that he had not changed at all, but simply that it was me who was finally able to recognize stealth bases but sharp enough movement under the veil hitherto opaque ki no nagare.
It was a revelation, but when I look back today, I told myself that it was at the back of very little importance for students as we were, our respective teachers have more or less intuitively found some bases, since they were in fact unable to teach for what they were. They could not pass that they did not know themselves possess , as you saw. Or rather, they could pass it on the way in which they had learned themselves. And " this exchange of intimate complicity heart to heart "with a sensei, you mention, is friendly course, necessary even, but not enough in my opinion if the genuine technical background is not as clear in its definition. This clear definition has been lacking. I remember the whole keiko Cannes club Aiki with Tiki Shewan, Daniel Leclerc, Werner Meier, devoted to look up the definition, the fundamental basis of ikkyo. It changed every two weeks. Some say it is evolution. No, the reality is that we advanced groping in the dark and trying without realizing it to do over again, alone and without real information, the route of O Sensei, we were guided not by " blind "- as you say, pushing a little cap - but certainly by the visually impaired.
For the scales finally fall from our eyes, so we had to you the study of Daito ryu to me teaching Iwama. And that's where things get interesting. Indeed, one can understand that this very strong sense of an unveiling of the basic techniques, a sudden revelation, intervened for you by entering the Daito ryu because through that door you "leaving" school of Aikido for school origins of Aikido. But I, who entered only in the Iwama dojo, I who would stand in the lap of Aikido, how could I live - in the same school - experience in every way comparable to yours, rich same feelings, the same absolute contrast and the same revelations?
My answer is far to the bottom of what separates our two itineraries, Olivier: it's because I put my bags without knowing one morning in February 1986 in a no man's land , a place halfway between Takeda ryu and Aikikai, a strange place where teaching a student remained somewhat behind the personal evolution of O Sensei, a midway between the master Daito ryu Aikido.
You declare with perhaps too much certainty:
No student postwar never learned directly [O Sensei], I say "directly" the old techniques of Daito ryu he had inherited from Sokaku Takeda. But Saito Sensei began studying Aikido in 1946 (...)
I will say more cautiously that nobody can say for sure what that O Sensei or did not teach his pupil Saito. But I can however testify knowing how Saito taught, and I guarantee it was not nagare. I saw before me sharply back his student Tomita who thought his 7th dan absolve the laborious static work kotai which was the rule in Iwama. And I could have written the word about this sentence is for you:
In Daito-ryu we start with the basic jutsu, primary techniques that understand the meaning of Aiki but practical and statically. It's boring Daito-ryu at the beginning Aikidoka for us, we do not move and they catch us like cattle to hurt us. This creates the need for cons to understand why this one does not work, and why it would be better that it works.
I only replaced Daito ryu by Iwama style. However, I do not agree when you continue:
This does not exist in Aikido, because if we resist, we just told to do otherwise, to follow, to learn, that is not good, it is zero, that is not strong etc. I spend and best. "
Because you am referring to a conception of Aikido is widespread, which you and I have faced our inception, but do not apply everywhere, not the master of Shioda Yoshinkan for example, and not the Iwama dojo, where " this finding "has always existed.
When the first partner of my friend Paolo Corallini on the tatami Iwama grabbed her wrist, he was unable to move. Paolo was then 4th dan by Nocquet, 4th dan nagare therefore, his partner, an American of good build, was white belt. This type of incident was daily in Iwama, nobody has ever thought to complain and reject any fault on uke. In kotai uke securely holds, it is normal to find its way tori. Regular practice at Iwama dojo was kotai
During the time I spent in Iwama, I saw once master Saito teach nagare. It was during aiki ken the morning, he visibly tried an experiment: we gradually moved towards a more fluid practice. It lasted two days. At the end of the second drive, he said " groomed! "and we returned the next morning to our kotai practice. And he was right, two days were enough for everyone started playing small samurai. The practice imposed by Master Saito was the opposite so drift "all nagare" of modern Aikido you describe with clarity that does not mince words:
The O Sensei students at the end of his life have learned to play the movements he showed them without going through the basics needed to do this or that way, or in a particular situation. So we finally techniques that only work under certain conditions ease or connivance, but that's it. This is what has created the fundamental problem of Aikido "modern": it is a Nagare Aikido does not work if you stop in movements where one comes across stronger than oneself. We are therefore obliged to invent tricks to make this Aikido works anyway. But it is unlikely to fall back on real and fair basis in this way. There is thus a gap between what is and what should be done.
[...]
It is a little mess in Aikido today. And this is the problem of the current Aikido; this Aikido has no markings, over Aiki bases. So everyone is going to his small kitchen.
I fully share this vision.
Now, what information can we learn teaching without nagare systematically static and power that was the rule in Iwama? This I believe: Master Saito received from O Sensei teaching that allowed him to know and understand the techniques in their most basic definition, which allowed him later to teach himself these techniques in a way static, precise, rigorous and systematic, without any use of ki no nagare.
What techniques do we speak, will you tell me. Well, like you, I say that the kihon I studied kotai in Iwama for thousands of hours were not the original techniques of Daito ryu such qu'apprises in their pure form Ueshiba by Sokaku Takeda, in Hokkaido, in the 1915-1917 years. I also think that there was no reason why Master Saito gets better than that Tamura Yamaguchi or the constituent bases of the movement, from a permanent nagare O Sensei. I do not think more than he was able to reach only the encyclopedic knowledge of kihon was his, in other words I do not think he invented what he taught. And even if this were the case, I have personally experienced and I know enough scrupulous conscience Master Saito had its historical duty to O Sensei, to assert that he would never attributed to Ueshiba an invention of his own, never passed his teaching to that of his master.
So what? Hence Saito he drew his technical knowledge bases, the kihon, since that's right he taught almost exclusively, and could he teach in the elementary form was not as technical Daito-ryu?
Well here Olivier your analysis a hit to me on many points, but thou BASED ON A continuation of the practice of O Sensei compared to Daito-ryu. You say, for example:
Many people do not want to admit it, but technically speaking, Morihei Ueshiba Sensei never stopped doing Daito-ryu his life.
[...]
What was O Sensei Aikido postwar in fact Daito-ryu techniques of the highest level.
This interpretation separates us. I do not of course deny the Daito-ryu origin shiho nage, kote gaeshi, irimi nage etc. I think no one disputes the importance of Daito-ryu in the formation of Ueshiba. But I tell myself that there was no continuity but to break between the teaching of Sokaku Takeda and that of O Sensei. You mention the break by bringing the real problems but remain in my minors:
Morihei Ueshiba had various problems with Takeda Sokaku, financial or otherwise. In particular, O Sensei could not teach Daito-ryu under that name since it did not have a teaching license.
I think that O Sensei does not have founded Aikido because he did not have permission to teach Daito ryu.The break between Takeda and Ueshiba's my much more fundamental sense: it is technical . Ueshiba changed a foundation of Daito ryu: shikaku the position, the position of square feet. It adopted - probably in 1920 - the sankaku position (hanmi). This technical change is not a detail. Why? Because the fact of starting a technical position in the triangular rather than square position has an effect on the one hand a very practical way to perform this technique, and secondly on mobility in the space of tori and thus on its response capacity in the eight directions.
Note that I'm not saying that the triangular position is not used in the Daito ryu in the course of a given body erasing technique, I say that the triangle position is not the fundamental guard one of the art, it is not the position where one starts systematically to execute each technique, and the one we always return once the technique. This requirement is intended to hanmi Aikido, it is repeated with significant emphasis O Sensei in his book " Budo ", she imposed upon the novice who makes his first course, it does not exist as such in the Daito ryu. You agree also that specificity of hanmi position in Aikido, since you say:
Few know [...] where does this position Hanmi characteristic and fundamental to Aikido compared to Daito-ryu.
And that's without any spirit of provocation I plagiarize your sentence to go further than you: few people so, and few people even within the Daito-ryu , know where this position hanmi characteristic and fundamental to Aikido compared to Daito-ryu. They do not know it because they have no idea why Ueshiba broke one day with the foundations of their school. Why - I try to explain it for some time on the site TAI in the files " Roppo "- is that it is not possible to work in the 360 ° of the circle from a square position . Only hanmi triangular position can work at any time and instantly in all directions of space, giving life to this famous position of the six directions (Roppo) . And practitioners of Daito-ryu Aikido practice their nagare call, as you remember, only justify the famous phrase Ueshiba:
I called Aiki has nothing in common with what was called Aiki in the martial arts before.
This sentence of O Sensei becomes even in the context of the explanation I give here a strong argument.
I do not doubt that it exists, at an advanced level of Daito ryu, a nagare version of these basic techniques studied so long by practitioners in their single static version, and I do not doubt that there are significant variations between kihon and nagare Daito-ryu. But I do not see any concrete evidence in the basic techniques of Daito-ryu, a future work taking into account the eight directions. But these indices do exist, from the outset , in the basic techniques of Aikido such as teaching master Saito, and the first of them is hanmi.
When I write in fact that Saito sensei was between Daito-ryu and Aikido is an image for the understanding he had with regard to the kihon an "attitude, an approach Daito-ryu " In contrast, the content of the kihon was not that of Daito-ryu. And this for the same reason that had removed O Sensei of Daito-ryu: Morihiro Saito, like his master Ueshiba, practiced giving paramount importance to hanmi was the heart of his teaching. Or hanmi is not the heart of the teaching of Daito-ryu.
And that is why I say, unlike you, the fundamental work of O Sensei between 1930 and 1960 has not been refined every day competence in high technology level of Daito ryu. His job was to build a new foundation for an art out of the belly of Daito ryu, but that a major genetic change vowed to develop a way radically different - and that word is to be taken here in its etymological sense. Daito ryu kihon of the "stickier do" with the new laws of the movement of O Sensei, he had to create - not from nothing, from his encyclopedic knowledge of Daito-ryu course, but taking into account now the requirements arising from custody Roppo - the kihon of Aikido. It is in this work where Saito participated as uke, because he lived with O Sensei for 23 years between 1946 and the death of the Founder. No other student that Saito was uke for O Sensei for a long period, and especially no other student has lived with him for so long. Receive being a master and live with him are two different things. Whether this is a matter of fate or chance, we can not kick for touch such a reality by reducing it as you do to a point of detail:
For example, it is said that Saito Sensei received more than others, I will, but it's still in a very circumscribed in relation to the long evolution [O Sensei] period.
23 years of living with the Founder of Aikido is not " a very specific period , "and it is a circumstance of history that has had a major consequence: while during these two decades - and you said - the Aikikai students had access to the famous technical foundations of their discipline that through nagare O Sensei, Saito him received them in the same process of gestation, because that O Sensei needed a partner for his research. And although the young Morihiro could not then make the best of what was happening before his eyes, it is nonetheless true that he witnessed, as uke, the birth of an art, and childbirth by O Sensei all the fundamentals of a discipline that had broken any direct link with the Daito-ryu. You ask in your interview that " we'll explain the criteria "against which to spread the idea that Saito had received from O Sensei more than others, that's what my explanation, and I am part of those who can claim some legitimacy to speak as I do.
You say this in the most appropriate sentence to me of your interview:
This is against the principles of Aiki that can be more or less true and not with respect to persons, and even less with respect to O Sensei.
I would put principle in the singular, but with the proviso that sentence I sign with both hands. I agree with you that it is only from the principle of Aiki that the truth of a practice can be defined. And only in this sense that the truth can be held Saito master of education. But you will grant me logically that any judgment is impossible and should be suspended until the principle of Aiki has not been identified as such, if not the same criterion of judgment is lacking, and everyone goes there as its opinion, which has no interest.
What is this principle? You put us on his trail:
You can not see as well as Aiki when one knows the "engine". If one does not know, then the sense of what is happening is invisible (...)
I totally agree.
The motor is the rotation on itself of the vertical axis of the body, of which the physical image is the spine, this initial rotation causes the rotation of the hips, one forward, the other to the back necessarily. This rotation of the hips in tandem is an application of the yin-yang, what we call in Aikido irimi- tenkan. No irimi-tenkan not Aikido. O Sensei is very clear about this at the beginning of "Budo" in this crucial first chapter lays the foundation of his art, and that is the key to all the chapters devoted to technical applications. That is what is the plan:
- - Hanmi
- - Irimi
- - Tai no henka
- - Irimi-tenkan
Here we put our finger on the heart of the problem that the Daito- away Ueshiba ryu: shikaku the position does not allow to apply irimi-tenkan principle , only authorize hanmi position instantly and continuously rotating hips complementarity. And that is why it is absolutely vital to the beginning and end of the cycle of technology, that's why O Sensei insistence on the importance of hanmi movement starts (the first sentence of his book):
Fill yourself with ki and take the position hanmi - p. 39 of the English translation
That is why he insists as much on the essential nature of this position at the end of the movement:
When the movement ends, it is essential to always adopt the position Roppo (hanmi). - P. 39 of the English translation
Roppo is indeed the sine qua non of irimi. The irimi Aikido has nothing in common with what is called in Daito-ryu irimi because the Daito-ryu does not use hanmi as a foundation of art. This is the cause of the rupture of O Sensei with this school and why Aikido can not be confused with Daito-ryu practice, be it high-level.
And besides, since we are there, what koryu, what traditional Japanese martial school so uses hanmi positionin the fundamental context defined by O Sensei? None to my knowledge.
You say:
If one wants to study the weapons in Japan, you are spoiled for choice, we can even directly to study the original Itto-ryu school Ono-ha or in traditional stick schools are so numerous. There Kashima stick techniques too, and why not? All these also can build a good Aikido.
Not Olivier, we can not " build a good Aikido "without hanmi. Or all the arts which you speak do not know what the hanmi position as defined by O Sensei. There are of course here and there a profile position, a kamae waki, deletion of the leg, etc., but none of this has to do with the structural role played by the founder hanmi position in Aikido. And it is also the underlying reason that has given the atypical nature Founder of the sword that is his own, and that has always prevented the contemporary masters of O Sensei truly understand what he was doing.
The mistake of thinking that the understanding of Aikido out of the study of koryu Ueshiba has more or less frequented before the foundation of his art is the result of a misunderstanding of the concept of riai of the synthetic unity that makes every movement Aikido a member of the same family. As I said earlier, I have made this mistake at a time when I did not even know what the hanmi position. I practiced Muso Shinden ryu and Katori Shinto Ryu for saber and Shindo Muso Ryu for jo. Or hanmi is absent from these schools, as it is absent of Ono-ha Itto ryu and Yagyu Ryu Sinkage. And without this basis, no unity around a common principle can appear between the techniques proposed by the schools and irimi-tenkan of Aikido, even gestures such as cutting or picnic could let see points of resemblance.
Guillaume Erard asks you a direct question on the practice of Master Saito weapons with which you answer this:
If fire Saito Sensei had practiced Ono-ha school, I would not necessarily say it was right, but: it is placed in the right line of great historical Aiki. [...] Saito Sensei practiced something else, an art weapons fabricated, concocted by O Sensei O Sensei, for his own driving in his own personal journey and that O Sensei taught himself elsewhere never even really regular and generally to all its students.
This analysis is a foot against logic. Indeed, if Saito had wanted to study the Ono-ha school, he would naturally turned to a master of Ono-ha. Or Ueshiba was not a master of Ono-ha and did not teach this art, he taught Aikido. But precisely Saito wanted to Aikido and had no desire to leave his master to study another discipline.By what strange Saito approach, which served as uke to O Sensei for ken jo and tai jutsu, would he have decided that to learn Aikido, he had to leave the Founder of Aikido with whom he lived and taught him every day?
" Saito sensei practiced something else "you say. Yes, certainly.
He practiced " art weapons manufactured by O Sensei O Sensei, for his own driving in his own personal approach . " Yes, perfectly.
But the other thing , the art produced by O Sensei has a name, it is called Aikido. And that is what Ueshiba transmitted to Saito, with among others the aiki ken and aiki jo. By what logic Saito, who had the historic opportunity to be there at the time of this " production "of Aikido, he should have leave to study another discipline to understand his master? The name of a historical lineage that profound transformations of O Sensei had reduced to almost nothing, and in any case non-essential elements?
This art weapons, O Sensei does the " also taught himself never really regular and generally to all its pupils . "Yes again, Olivier, of course yes, and that's why it was so difficult for all of its students to understand what it really was, especially at the Aikikai. And that is why today the students of these students think that this was nothing more than a negligible change from the koryu, a minor discrepancy, a digression , and the limit as you let him hear a simple training method.
Do not confuse the creative abundance of O Sensei in the development of Aikido with the method developed by Morihiro Saito to try to understand the great work that was taking place before his eyes. I spoke about it on the site TAI, especially in technical books devoted to the Saito method.
I am in total disagreement with the idea that the study of koryu aid to understanding of Aikido. As if the Master Ueshiba whole life took place in a purring continuity with traditional schools in Japan, and as if the Cubs lost Poucets Aikido had only come back to the steps of the Founder to find their way and fold. This is the opposite: the whole life of O Sensei was to transcend the ancient martial arts, modifying precisely the root bases that underpin them, to make them produce what they had not produced so far is the deeper meaning of takemusu.And the paradox is that the bases of these schools have become, by this authentic transformation , a true lure for anyone to seek a form of basic Aikido, on the pretext that kiri otoshi like another kiri otoshi and gaeshi a kote kote gaeshi to another. Ask yourself well, Olivier, if " Highway of ignorance "you stigmatized, not as go through the process that seems all mapped out, so natural and obvious to go to the source , to the extent that these sources are no more, since the breakdown of O Sensei with Takeda, a trompe l'oeil.
I think about it, and yet I do not argue with you when you say,
What is the point of learning Aikido weapons if not for the establishment in the practitioner of the fundamental principles of Aiki, this engine?
For it is from this that it is indeed. But I feel that we have the one and the other a different conception of this engine. The engine of Aikido is not the engine Daito- ryu or Itto-ryu. And we can not blame O Sensei not having insisted, both in his book and in his lectures on the uniqueness of Aikido, irreducible to anything that had existed previously in Japan in martial arts .
As critical as I have been in the past to the Doshu Ueshiba Kisshomaru technically, I will not insult him to think that the commitment that was hers in spreading Aikido internationally, could be the result of a common calculation. I do not follow you more when you say that:
At while Sensei died, a stabilization and transmission problem arose for Aikido as an art autogenous. One way to do was cut with the History of Aiki-jutsu. It was obvious, because from the time when you could say, "Aikido is new, it was invented," so we had to make anyone accountable.
Aikido is not new, Aikido is as old as man, but Aikido is profoundly different from conventional jutsu, profoundly original for the reasons I have mentioned, and Kisshomaru Ueshiba knew. He did not master all the technical aspect, that's all. And I never criticized the " package easily exportable "he created as you explain it to respond to the internationalization of Aikido, and I fully understand the need, if he had developed the point in the rules of art .
So when I compare a technique executed by O Sensei, and the same technique performed by his son in his "package ", I compare two elements well very nature , contrary to what you reproach me. Why Kisshomaru "showed what he showed as he showed "has nothing to do with why he included this technology in a package to the world. This reason is independent of the technology itself, and even more in the manner of the latter to perform this technique. However, if it does not run - in my opinion - according to the rules of Aikido, what better way to show it than to check the difference with the above model we respect these rules: the father? It makes sense to do so , and that his father had learned the technique of Daito-ryu, Ba Gua Zhang, and he has invented, does not change the nature of the technique is compared, at the time of comparison. And if " con game "there, it is not in such a comparison, it is in the effort is to impersonate indescribable" revenge . " The Aikikai does me nothing, and I have to get back at anyone or anything, Olivier.
If I could give the impression of waving flags in the past, it was to shake up an evil empire and founded a stifling consensus to lift a little wall of silence that hung there thirty years on teaching Aikido in France and elsewhere. I did sometimes iconoclastic way, scratching some idols, but this is by attacking the head that has a chance to overthrow an empire. I have not reversed course, but this lead ignorance somewhat since cracked, and the contribution that you bring from your experience and your thinking is not negligible with respect to this.
I want to thank you for this and for giving me the opportunity in this response, to express my ideas on the various points that you raise and which are, for the most part, the testimony of a clear vision problems of the so-called modern Aikido today, or rather, as preferred to call master Arikawa, sports Budo.
I also send you my cordial greetings.
Philippe Voarino, Cape Clear, 15 January 2015
Next internship Philippe Voarino: Sunday, April 26, 2015 , Aikido Gasshuku 2015, Antibes, France
CommentsSubmitted by GMD on Sun, 18/01/2015 - 8:58 p.m. - Permalink
Philippe goodnight, you seem to say that Saito has little or no demonstrated KI NO NAGARE and yet there are videos has plenty of that, with kihon, nagare and ki no nagare, nothing is missing at the sudden release SAITO.Du ki no nagare SAITO must be aikido founder and YET !!! qu'ais I missed?cordialement.gilles
Submitted by philippevoarino the Sun, 01/18/2015 - 11:15 p.m. - Permalink
Good evening Gilles.
I have not written that Saito had not practiced or demonstrated nagare, I wrote that it basically Iwama taught the basics (it was 90% of practice), and that these bases he taught systematically in kotai.This is the fundamental difference with the teachers from the Aikikai, who passed these bases through the practice of nagare without ever going through the kotai box, as explained rightly Olivier Gaurin. It is on this very specific point that I was responding to Olivier.
Philippe Voarino
Submitted by GMD on Mon, 1/19/2015 - 7:25 p.m. - Permalink
Philippe goodnight, I wrote "little or no" the "is not too much but what about my second question seems essential and I care because I'm not on your demonstrations stick at any point with ki no MASTER of nagare SAITO unless you on the next step. cordialement.gilles
Submitted by philippevoarino the Sun, 01/02/2015 - 9:53 p.m. - Permalink
Hello Gilles.
When we practice kotai level, voluntarily cancels the dynamic dimension of Aikido movement, one removes the variable "time". This is quite obviously artificial, but in doing so we simplify the exercise by eliminating the stress of timing, and thus permits a more serene and more accurate learning the basic technique shape, kihon. We his time , no one walks cow. This is a training method that has been overlooked in modern Aikido, but is essential in Daito ryu for example, and of course in Saito master of education.
It would be a mistake to think that it is enough to pass the stage of ki no nagare to be immediately and automatically in the reality of Aikido movement. The nagare also, as kotai has been simplified to acquire what is to be gained at this stage, and this time is no longer the technical form, as in the stadium kotai but now awase. The study of awase is indeed possible from the moment is reintroduced the concept of "time" which had been artificially removed from kotai.
But another variable in turn removed from nagare, with the same goal of making it easier to study.This new variable is the martial context, I mean, the reality of the battlefield and the multiple attackssimultaneously .
So, in the same way that a static movement may be just the point of view of kotai but false perspective of nagare a nagare may be just the point of view of this stage nagare, but wrong from the point of for martial reality.
In other words, much of the nagare part of the study of Aikido is still a work agreement for this study.And there is still one stage after that.
There is a way to learn that everyone follows, which is given, which is apparent is the sense of omote, and there is a reality that does not come in this appearance, which is hidden the light, and that is the sense of ura.
Philippe Voarino
Submitted by rusty 9 on Thurs, 01/29/2015 - 2:18 p.m. - Permalink
Hello, out of curiosity (ignoring the techiques of daito ryu, I have watched different video Mr Gaurin visibly is a great very practicing, just a question: bcp technical grow Uke, moreover I find ca antagonist because for me in any case can not grow (because in this case we remain in the dangerous position -Omote) except of course the school form as mentioned. cdt Serge
Submitted by GMD on Mon 02/02/2015 - 11:30 - Permalink
Hello Philippe, it is thus the suivante.Merci walking formally answer to a question many people were asking and especially critics rightly but now things are claires.Ce that surprises me is the reaction MARTIAL sure the word as a martial one answer was necessarily lethal, it just seems to me that Aikido offers a flexible response to the situation. best regards. gilles
http://www.aikidostudent.com/ASCv2/?cat=18
The origin and purpose of solo practice in Aikido
Mistake #10 - Kote gaeshi: throwing uke in the wrong angle
http://www.munendoaikido.com/videos-ineditos-de-morihei-ueshiba-o-sensei/
http://www.guillaumeerard.com/aikido/interviews/interview-with-ellis-amdur-part-1-martial-journey-from-aikido-to-koryu
http://www.tsquarehealth.com/2013/10/31/tone-stand-strengthen-connective-tissues-tensegrity/
http://www.tsquarehealth.com/2012/05/16/open-heart-breathing-winter-2012-newsletter-2/
http://warriorfitness.org/tag/dan-harden/
mikesigman.blogspot.com
1
2
The origin and purpose of solo practice in Aikido
Mistake #10 - Kote gaeshi: throwing uke in the wrong angle
http://www.munendoaikido.com/videos-ineditos-de-morihei-ueshiba-o-sensei/
http://www.guillaumeerard.com/aikido/interviews/interview-with-ellis-amdur-part-1-martial-journey-from-aikido-to-koryu
http://www.tsquarehealth.com/2013/10/31/tone-stand-strengthen-connective-tissues-tensegrity/
http://www.tsquarehealth.com/2012/05/16/open-heart-breathing-winter-2012-newsletter-2/
http://warriorfitness.org/tag/dan-harden/
mikesigman.blogspot.com
1
2
Dan Harden Internal Power seminarPosted on October 16, 2013The weekend of 10-4-2013, I attended a seminar at Randall Smith Sensei’s Aikido of Palm Beach County with Dan Harden. It was an internal power seminar. It was good and Dan is intense.
I was only able to attend the Friday and Sunday sessions. I missed Saturday.
Let me start with two quotes:
As I understand it, to get to the point where you can feel that radiating internal energy, you need to manipulate your body, with active intent. You need to think of your body in new ways such as, shoulders below elbows below hands.
So in this concept, you let your shoulders drop into their shoulder sockets where they should naturally be. Easier said than done. Especially when you have been carrying your shoulders high and pumping your chest out for years. Most of us carry ourselves this way, me included.
The magic to dropping your shoulders is that you release the energy block that exists. Carrying your shoulders high is done by muscle. Dropping your shoulders into thier sockets releases the muscle and you can really start to move. Your body opens and you free yourself. You attenuate a different part of your being.
Since I actively started dropping my shoulders, I can now feel the connection between my hands and my dantien. I mostly feel this when I am doing my solo exercises.
Dropping your shoulders then starts to engage your whole body. To maximize this engagement, you need to concentrate on dropping your shoulders below your elbows. Yes I know, physically speaking, this is an impossibility. But energetically, this is where you want to be. Your intent will get you there.
Once you get this and have a feeling that your shoulders are below your elbows, you apply this same intent to dropping you elbows below your hands. The whole time, energetically, your power is going down. Dropping your elbows below your hands opens up your hands. Your wrists become lose and your hands become the expression of your intent. You end up moving under your opponent’s center.
The catch is that your hands are not necessarily following the same order as your shoulders and your elbows. Hence, quote number two; your hand should be doing something different than your elbow.
This concept, has the effect of your hands moving separate from your elbows with your forearm as the fulcrum. You move your elbow so that it is going over, under or around your attacker’s point of center. The place where they are attacking you. It can be them holding your forearm or wrist of something different.
Anyway, this is an ongoing process. I know where I want to get to, and I think I found the path that will get me there.
This entry was posted in Internal Energy by Alexander Socia. Bookmark the permalink
I was only able to attend the Friday and Sunday sessions. I missed Saturday.
Let me start with two quotes:
- shoulder below elbow below hand
- your hand should always be doing something different than your elbow
As I understand it, to get to the point where you can feel that radiating internal energy, you need to manipulate your body, with active intent. You need to think of your body in new ways such as, shoulders below elbows below hands.
So in this concept, you let your shoulders drop into their shoulder sockets where they should naturally be. Easier said than done. Especially when you have been carrying your shoulders high and pumping your chest out for years. Most of us carry ourselves this way, me included.
The magic to dropping your shoulders is that you release the energy block that exists. Carrying your shoulders high is done by muscle. Dropping your shoulders into thier sockets releases the muscle and you can really start to move. Your body opens and you free yourself. You attenuate a different part of your being.
Since I actively started dropping my shoulders, I can now feel the connection between my hands and my dantien. I mostly feel this when I am doing my solo exercises.
Dropping your shoulders then starts to engage your whole body. To maximize this engagement, you need to concentrate on dropping your shoulders below your elbows. Yes I know, physically speaking, this is an impossibility. But energetically, this is where you want to be. Your intent will get you there.
Once you get this and have a feeling that your shoulders are below your elbows, you apply this same intent to dropping you elbows below your hands. The whole time, energetically, your power is going down. Dropping your elbows below your hands opens up your hands. Your wrists become lose and your hands become the expression of your intent. You end up moving under your opponent’s center.
The catch is that your hands are not necessarily following the same order as your shoulders and your elbows. Hence, quote number two; your hand should be doing something different than your elbow.
This concept, has the effect of your hands moving separate from your elbows with your forearm as the fulcrum. You move your elbow so that it is going over, under or around your attacker’s point of center. The place where they are attacking you. It can be them holding your forearm or wrist of something different.
Anyway, this is an ongoing process. I know where I want to get to, and I think I found the path that will get me there.
This entry was posted in Internal Energy by Alexander Socia. Bookmark the permalink
Mike Sigman has 34 years of experience in the martial arts. After initially studying Judo, Okinawan Karate (Uechi Ryu), and Aikido, he has devoted the last 15 years to the Chinese martial arts of Taiji (Yang and Chen), Xingyi, and Bagua. His Chinese teachers have been Dr. Her Yue Wong, Mr. Chi Ben Denh, Liang Shou Yu, and Liang Bai Ping
Mike has written numerous magazine articles and officiated at many tournaments; he also participates in the Neijia mailing list on the Internet. He lives near Denver, Colorado: he is six feet tall and weighs 225 pounds. In Europe, Mike is probably best known for his Internal Strength workshops: I attended one of these in London in May 1996 and took the opportunity to ask Mike some questions about what he does.
Your primary focus in the martial arts is "Internal Strength", but that phrase might mean almost anything: can you give me a few words explaining what "Internal Strength" means to you?
No, not really: it has to be shown. Originally, I did Judo and Karate extensively and met all kinds of people; then I ran into a Japanese guy who did Aikido. While he was showing me some things I realised he was using a very unusual form of strength: my definition always hinges on people who can manifest that kind of strength. And that's sort of validated by the fact that other people - not everyone - but somebody who is reasonably intelligent and has some physical skills will say "Wow: that feels odd": so they know it too. When you meet somebody who doesn't have a vestige of that, I don't care how many forms he knows, techniques and applications that he does, if he's not able to manifest that, he doesn't use Internal Strength.
In my getting support for that over the years, there have been a number of Chinese who are recognised as being really good who have recognised it the same way as I do. They sit there and just like me they watch somebody - at a certain level, you don't need to really touch somebody, just watch them move - and the question is always in their mind: "does he have this form of strength or not."
How about "Internal Martial Art"; what's your definition there?
Well, what it boils down to is the unusual form of strength that's used. The conventional way of saying this was that the internal martial arts all use "Qi" or "Jing" instead of "Li" (muscular
strength). It was a big breakthrough for me to realise that this didn't refer to the etheric Qi. I remember reading a book about Qi when I was about 18-20 and taking Okinawan Karate: the book had several sections about this kind of Qi and that kind of Qi: under the heading of "Martial Arts and Qi" Iremember it started off saying that "In the Martial Arts, Qi is best translated as ground strength".
There are peripheral strengths, but that's the core strength, always. And it's used in every movement, not just in an impulse hit: a lot of the external styles can do an impulse hit pretty much in the same way. The difference would be that someone who uses a pure internal art will use that in all of their movements.
This meaning of Qi isn't the one that most people would accept as traditional, is it?
It's now pretty widely accepted that unless you have a martial background in your Chinese, you really can't translate written stuff about the martial arts. At the time that a lot of the translations that we currently have to depend upon became available, nobody knew or understood that, so when "Qi" appeared, the assumption was made that the reference was to the etheric Qi. Since then, a lot of people have rested their weight heavily on that and believe firmly in it: yet, the two teachers who I've spent the most time with speak pretty functionally and mechanistically to me, and they're obviously carrying on a tradition within the training that they've had. One of them is a member of the Beijing Chen style society and one of them is a widely recognised martial arts master in China, so I think what you're calling "traditional" would fall more under the term "Western perspective": a lot of things have been glorified and mystified which are considered more straight-forward by the Northern Chinese in particular. Actually, one of my teachers uses terms that I don't like because they're too reductionist: where I will refer to Peng strength, a lot of times when he and I are doing things, he will say "Oh, yes, bring the leg strength here," and I balk at just "leg strength": he's more simplistic than I am!
Wang Xiang Zhai, the founder of I-Chuan, was also well known for talking in terms of force vectors and so forth in exactly the same way, saying that most people are distracted by all the talk about Qi and nine thises and five thats and he went right to it. So I'm not setting a precedent, I'm following a precedent: it's an unusual one but the results that are gained from it are fairly obvious to anybody who has taken a look at it like that. It's not that I'm a good talker, most of the people who have been to workshops maintain their own style of practice: they take this information because it's functional; they'll use it the way they want to, and the logic of it is fairly inescapable.
A lot of respected Taiji practitioners, including yourself, have extensive prior knowledge of the harder, more obviously martial styles. Is that a good route to Internal Strength in your view?
Well, in a sense that somebody coming into the martial arts has a lot of questions and a lot of grey areas that they don't know about, so they spend a lot of time nosing into those or not being sure and following false trails. Somebody who has previous experience can set aside a great portion of the things which would distract him and go right to what he needs to, and I think that's the key. Somebody who's already fought doesn't have the worries and the doubts about themselves, they've already done all that, so they are not distracted, they go right after what they want.
You know, Taiji has often been presented as sort of a soft, slow-moving choreographed thing and mainly for that reason it hasn't attracted many martial artists to it: it's attracted people who are looking for the 98 pound weakling beats the 200 pound bully situation. Because those people all lack exactly the experience you're talking about, they waste inordinate amounts of time chasing peripheral issues that aren't germane, and the generally low level of Taiji reflects that.
You've said many times that what you do in the workshops is not high-level material, but more at the level of fundamentals. If that's true, why can't everybody do it already?
It is fundamental material, but it involves changing the way the body moves. The Taiji form is done slowly to retrain the way the body moves. At the workshops you see people realise, on a functional level, how to do that - and then they go home and they realise that this means they've got to change everything they were doing: and they can't do that, or they can only do it at best partially. It's very difficult to make a radical change like that: and yet, there are always the small few who catch it, take the time, devote themselves and work it out, and they become our next generation of good people.
What do you expect somebody to learn from a workshop?
How to move in fairly rudimentary ways using Jing, or ground strength, to move things outward and pull things inward, lift things up, or to use closing force slightly downward, and that all movements are some aspect of those four directions. With that, they've got their foot in the door.
Why in general don't you run workshops concerned with higher level material?
The first level is to learn how this movement works. Then, when your movement is correct, you should start worrying about techniques, applications and adding peripheral strengths or overlaying strengths to it. To do it before that is a waste of time.
Isn't this just Chen style evangelism under another name? How style-specific is the stuff that you're doing here?
Not a bit. I've had Cheng Man-Ch'ing style, Yang style, Wu styles, Karate, Arnis, Aikido people, Wing Chung people, and in no sense have I proselytised. They all go back and continue practising what they're doing: there's no evangelism at all. I would say that people that come to the workshops - and there have been a large number of them - aren't swayed by my glib tongue: they get results, and they're unavoidably the kind of results that have been talked about and written about for a long period of time. I think that a lot of people leave a workshop and then go home and furiously work on these things and never even think again about me: so it's not evangelical in that sense, there's no messiah involved, it's like shop talk: this is how it works, they look at it and see that yes, it does work: then they go and do it.
Does everybody take the material on board to the same extent?
In my experience, the people who do best have actually been Chinese, and/or Chinese-Americans, who have enough of a background in the vernacular of the martial arts and the histories of the stories that they are not confused and lost with the peripheral issues. They see what's going on and they approach it quite logically, so they tend to be the best. After them tend to be people who are athletically well co-ordinated and yet have had no martial training. Everyone else to some degree has great difficulty in overcoming the habits that they've trained over a period of time: that's part of the rationale behind the saying that "Taiji is easy to learn, but difficult to correct".
Basically, at a workshop, I lay out how to do things. People can do them: there's no escaping that they work. The logic is that either this is how it really works or I have stumbled on, by myself, a third system of movement that is just as effective: I'm not that much of a genius. So, I lay it out but I don't say much to anybody personally. Some of them know it: they suddenly know that they've wasted time. I did: at a certain point I realised that as beautiful a form as I did, and as much as I was learning at push hands and so on, I wasn't doing Taiji. I had to stop and go back to absolute scratch. Actually, that's one of the reasons why I don't teach a local class right now: it was horribly brought home to me that I really didn't know enough to be teaching Taiji and I thought, well, I'll spend the time learning. But generally speaking if people have done Taiji for a long period of time, the statistical majority won't change: it's just against human nature.
Too much invested in what they already have?
Yes, exactly. In some cases, there are a lot of things that are dependent upon what they're doing: status, pride, but in some cases it goes up into economics too; this may be one-half of their livelihood or something. So I don't say much: I show them, they can take it and do what they will with it.
Why isn't this material more widely known in the West?
The real problem is that the amount of knowledge available in the West is quite small, and many of the people who have come to the West weren't necessarily that well schooled themselves. In many cases Chinese teachers were assumed, because of their ethnicity, that they should know but in many cases they didn't: that's done much to obscure what really goes on and keep Taiji and the other internal arts at a much younger stage than most people realise. You hear often: "I've taught for twenty years"; but it doesn't matter, if they didn't really know what they were teaching for twenty years, the twenty years doesn't validate teaching stuff they don't really know. That's true of Chinese as well as Westerners: just because someone's Chinese, it doesn't mean that they know; or because they studied with a certain teacher, doesn't mean they know. That sort of knowledge is kept within reasonably closed circles.
You emphasise results, but presumably not results at any cost: how does somebody distinguish between the right kind of results and the wrong kind of results?
It's just like any other thing, you need to have a qualified teacher: and that's not necessarily the one you're studying from right now. If it was me, and I wanted to validate what I thought were goals and results, I would go - and I have done this - to Chinese who are recognised in mainland China as masters.
How do you think someone should go about assessing a teacher?
One method you can use to tell whether someone is really trained to do an internal martial art or not is pretty straightforward: they place their fist or palm on your chest, and then hit using their waist without their shoulder or hand moving back. It's not a 100% guarantee, but it's a pretty good indicator: if they're good, they should be able to do it no problem. If they can't do it, they shouldn't be teaching: it's a simple "teacher test".
Also, people shouldn't be too influenced by what big people can do: like some other teachers, I'm a fairly big guy, but so what? You should always judge a teacher by their smallest student. I've trained a 135 pound guy who could hit me hard enough in the "teacher test" that I didn't want to get hit again because I didn't need any damage. And with a 135 pound guy, that's mostly the training.
Some people would say "it's not Taiji unless it's martially applicable". Others look at discussions about ground paths and Jing and say "that's really martial stuff we're talking about here, and that's not really required if what you're interested in is health".
It's easy to come up with quotations from people like Ma Yueh Liang, Feng ZhiQiang, Chen Fa Ke, Yang Zhen Duo and so on, all saying in essence that Taiji is 99% Peng Jing. If you don't understand that, and you don't know how to really do that through all of your movements, then you're not doing an internal art: it's not Taiji whether it's martial or not. So, until you learn how to manipulate and use basic Jing, whether you do Taiji for health - which is mainly what I do, I don't worry that much about fighting - or whether you do it for martial arts, you don't have Taiji. So, it's not a criterion for doing martial arts to use the Jing aspects, it's the basic criterion for doing any internal martial art. If you don't know how to do that, or you don't do it full time, but you have a pretty form, you're not doing an internal martial art.
Mike has written numerous magazine articles and officiated at many tournaments; he also participates in the Neijia mailing list on the Internet. He lives near Denver, Colorado: he is six feet tall and weighs 225 pounds. In Europe, Mike is probably best known for his Internal Strength workshops: I attended one of these in London in May 1996 and took the opportunity to ask Mike some questions about what he does.
Your primary focus in the martial arts is "Internal Strength", but that phrase might mean almost anything: can you give me a few words explaining what "Internal Strength" means to you?
No, not really: it has to be shown. Originally, I did Judo and Karate extensively and met all kinds of people; then I ran into a Japanese guy who did Aikido. While he was showing me some things I realised he was using a very unusual form of strength: my definition always hinges on people who can manifest that kind of strength. And that's sort of validated by the fact that other people - not everyone - but somebody who is reasonably intelligent and has some physical skills will say "Wow: that feels odd": so they know it too. When you meet somebody who doesn't have a vestige of that, I don't care how many forms he knows, techniques and applications that he does, if he's not able to manifest that, he doesn't use Internal Strength.
In my getting support for that over the years, there have been a number of Chinese who are recognised as being really good who have recognised it the same way as I do. They sit there and just like me they watch somebody - at a certain level, you don't need to really touch somebody, just watch them move - and the question is always in their mind: "does he have this form of strength or not."
How about "Internal Martial Art"; what's your definition there?
Well, what it boils down to is the unusual form of strength that's used. The conventional way of saying this was that the internal martial arts all use "Qi" or "Jing" instead of "Li" (muscular
strength). It was a big breakthrough for me to realise that this didn't refer to the etheric Qi. I remember reading a book about Qi when I was about 18-20 and taking Okinawan Karate: the book had several sections about this kind of Qi and that kind of Qi: under the heading of "Martial Arts and Qi" Iremember it started off saying that "In the Martial Arts, Qi is best translated as ground strength".
There are peripheral strengths, but that's the core strength, always. And it's used in every movement, not just in an impulse hit: a lot of the external styles can do an impulse hit pretty much in the same way. The difference would be that someone who uses a pure internal art will use that in all of their movements.
This meaning of Qi isn't the one that most people would accept as traditional, is it?
It's now pretty widely accepted that unless you have a martial background in your Chinese, you really can't translate written stuff about the martial arts. At the time that a lot of the translations that we currently have to depend upon became available, nobody knew or understood that, so when "Qi" appeared, the assumption was made that the reference was to the etheric Qi. Since then, a lot of people have rested their weight heavily on that and believe firmly in it: yet, the two teachers who I've spent the most time with speak pretty functionally and mechanistically to me, and they're obviously carrying on a tradition within the training that they've had. One of them is a member of the Beijing Chen style society and one of them is a widely recognised martial arts master in China, so I think what you're calling "traditional" would fall more under the term "Western perspective": a lot of things have been glorified and mystified which are considered more straight-forward by the Northern Chinese in particular. Actually, one of my teachers uses terms that I don't like because they're too reductionist: where I will refer to Peng strength, a lot of times when he and I are doing things, he will say "Oh, yes, bring the leg strength here," and I balk at just "leg strength": he's more simplistic than I am!
Wang Xiang Zhai, the founder of I-Chuan, was also well known for talking in terms of force vectors and so forth in exactly the same way, saying that most people are distracted by all the talk about Qi and nine thises and five thats and he went right to it. So I'm not setting a precedent, I'm following a precedent: it's an unusual one but the results that are gained from it are fairly obvious to anybody who has taken a look at it like that. It's not that I'm a good talker, most of the people who have been to workshops maintain their own style of practice: they take this information because it's functional; they'll use it the way they want to, and the logic of it is fairly inescapable.
A lot of respected Taiji practitioners, including yourself, have extensive prior knowledge of the harder, more obviously martial styles. Is that a good route to Internal Strength in your view?
Well, in a sense that somebody coming into the martial arts has a lot of questions and a lot of grey areas that they don't know about, so they spend a lot of time nosing into those or not being sure and following false trails. Somebody who has previous experience can set aside a great portion of the things which would distract him and go right to what he needs to, and I think that's the key. Somebody who's already fought doesn't have the worries and the doubts about themselves, they've already done all that, so they are not distracted, they go right after what they want.
You know, Taiji has often been presented as sort of a soft, slow-moving choreographed thing and mainly for that reason it hasn't attracted many martial artists to it: it's attracted people who are looking for the 98 pound weakling beats the 200 pound bully situation. Because those people all lack exactly the experience you're talking about, they waste inordinate amounts of time chasing peripheral issues that aren't germane, and the generally low level of Taiji reflects that.
You've said many times that what you do in the workshops is not high-level material, but more at the level of fundamentals. If that's true, why can't everybody do it already?
It is fundamental material, but it involves changing the way the body moves. The Taiji form is done slowly to retrain the way the body moves. At the workshops you see people realise, on a functional level, how to do that - and then they go home and they realise that this means they've got to change everything they were doing: and they can't do that, or they can only do it at best partially. It's very difficult to make a radical change like that: and yet, there are always the small few who catch it, take the time, devote themselves and work it out, and they become our next generation of good people.
What do you expect somebody to learn from a workshop?
How to move in fairly rudimentary ways using Jing, or ground strength, to move things outward and pull things inward, lift things up, or to use closing force slightly downward, and that all movements are some aspect of those four directions. With that, they've got their foot in the door.
Why in general don't you run workshops concerned with higher level material?
The first level is to learn how this movement works. Then, when your movement is correct, you should start worrying about techniques, applications and adding peripheral strengths or overlaying strengths to it. To do it before that is a waste of time.
Isn't this just Chen style evangelism under another name? How style-specific is the stuff that you're doing here?
Not a bit. I've had Cheng Man-Ch'ing style, Yang style, Wu styles, Karate, Arnis, Aikido people, Wing Chung people, and in no sense have I proselytised. They all go back and continue practising what they're doing: there's no evangelism at all. I would say that people that come to the workshops - and there have been a large number of them - aren't swayed by my glib tongue: they get results, and they're unavoidably the kind of results that have been talked about and written about for a long period of time. I think that a lot of people leave a workshop and then go home and furiously work on these things and never even think again about me: so it's not evangelical in that sense, there's no messiah involved, it's like shop talk: this is how it works, they look at it and see that yes, it does work: then they go and do it.
Does everybody take the material on board to the same extent?
In my experience, the people who do best have actually been Chinese, and/or Chinese-Americans, who have enough of a background in the vernacular of the martial arts and the histories of the stories that they are not confused and lost with the peripheral issues. They see what's going on and they approach it quite logically, so they tend to be the best. After them tend to be people who are athletically well co-ordinated and yet have had no martial training. Everyone else to some degree has great difficulty in overcoming the habits that they've trained over a period of time: that's part of the rationale behind the saying that "Taiji is easy to learn, but difficult to correct".
Basically, at a workshop, I lay out how to do things. People can do them: there's no escaping that they work. The logic is that either this is how it really works or I have stumbled on, by myself, a third system of movement that is just as effective: I'm not that much of a genius. So, I lay it out but I don't say much to anybody personally. Some of them know it: they suddenly know that they've wasted time. I did: at a certain point I realised that as beautiful a form as I did, and as much as I was learning at push hands and so on, I wasn't doing Taiji. I had to stop and go back to absolute scratch. Actually, that's one of the reasons why I don't teach a local class right now: it was horribly brought home to me that I really didn't know enough to be teaching Taiji and I thought, well, I'll spend the time learning. But generally speaking if people have done Taiji for a long period of time, the statistical majority won't change: it's just against human nature.
Too much invested in what they already have?
Yes, exactly. In some cases, there are a lot of things that are dependent upon what they're doing: status, pride, but in some cases it goes up into economics too; this may be one-half of their livelihood or something. So I don't say much: I show them, they can take it and do what they will with it.
Why isn't this material more widely known in the West?
The real problem is that the amount of knowledge available in the West is quite small, and many of the people who have come to the West weren't necessarily that well schooled themselves. In many cases Chinese teachers were assumed, because of their ethnicity, that they should know but in many cases they didn't: that's done much to obscure what really goes on and keep Taiji and the other internal arts at a much younger stage than most people realise. You hear often: "I've taught for twenty years"; but it doesn't matter, if they didn't really know what they were teaching for twenty years, the twenty years doesn't validate teaching stuff they don't really know. That's true of Chinese as well as Westerners: just because someone's Chinese, it doesn't mean that they know; or because they studied with a certain teacher, doesn't mean they know. That sort of knowledge is kept within reasonably closed circles.
You emphasise results, but presumably not results at any cost: how does somebody distinguish between the right kind of results and the wrong kind of results?
It's just like any other thing, you need to have a qualified teacher: and that's not necessarily the one you're studying from right now. If it was me, and I wanted to validate what I thought were goals and results, I would go - and I have done this - to Chinese who are recognised in mainland China as masters.
How do you think someone should go about assessing a teacher?
One method you can use to tell whether someone is really trained to do an internal martial art or not is pretty straightforward: they place their fist or palm on your chest, and then hit using their waist without their shoulder or hand moving back. It's not a 100% guarantee, but it's a pretty good indicator: if they're good, they should be able to do it no problem. If they can't do it, they shouldn't be teaching: it's a simple "teacher test".
Also, people shouldn't be too influenced by what big people can do: like some other teachers, I'm a fairly big guy, but so what? You should always judge a teacher by their smallest student. I've trained a 135 pound guy who could hit me hard enough in the "teacher test" that I didn't want to get hit again because I didn't need any damage. And with a 135 pound guy, that's mostly the training.
Some people would say "it's not Taiji unless it's martially applicable". Others look at discussions about ground paths and Jing and say "that's really martial stuff we're talking about here, and that's not really required if what you're interested in is health".
It's easy to come up with quotations from people like Ma Yueh Liang, Feng ZhiQiang, Chen Fa Ke, Yang Zhen Duo and so on, all saying in essence that Taiji is 99% Peng Jing. If you don't understand that, and you don't know how to really do that through all of your movements, then you're not doing an internal art: it's not Taiji whether it's martial or not. So, until you learn how to manipulate and use basic Jing, whether you do Taiji for health - which is mainly what I do, I don't worry that much about fighting - or whether you do it for martial arts, you don't have Taiji. So, it's not a criterion for doing martial arts to use the Jing aspects, it's the basic criterion for doing any internal martial art. If you don't know how to do that, or you don't do it full time, but you have a pretty form, you're not doing an internal martial art.
Phi Truong wrote: here is a video of Ikeda sensei talking about using breathing to aid your movement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hB-knlRDZ8 using close and open body through breath
or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St7I0M2fx1c for dantien/hara movement
or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K3a9Z5DZnc - which sort of an SJT (stupid jin trick) where jin does not depend on structure. demo, not necessary training.
or this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epfWXEuEgYI - sort of basic "four-legged animal" and i am the control end. demo, not necessary training.
cross reference this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9FoeyLjDo with the aiki-taiso exercises
first movement is similar to open-close body to Ikeda video (tekubikosa and johokosa undo)
second movement - funakogi undo
third movement - ikkyo undo
fourth - sayu undo
problem is video won't show you what all the gazillion things going on inside the person body that the person is focus his/her intention on.
or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St7I0M2fx1c for dantien/hara movement
or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K3a9Z5DZnc - which sort of an SJT (stupid jin trick) where jin does not depend on structure. demo, not necessary training.
or this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epfWXEuEgYI - sort of basic "four-legged animal" and i am the control end. demo, not necessary training.
cross reference this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9FoeyLjDo with the aiki-taiso exercises
first movement is similar to open-close body to Ikeda video (tekubikosa and johokosa undo)
second movement - funakogi undo
third movement - ikkyo undo
fourth - sayu undo
problem is video won't show you what all the gazillion things going on inside the person body that the person is focus his/her intention on.
Squats
Sorry for not posting for a while, but I have been focusing more on practice than writing recently, and due to some work issues I haven't been in the mood to post. However there were a few interesting things that I came across recently in the news which are related to internal martial arts. One of which is the importance of squats. For those of you who train Yiquan, there are a number of shi li movements that mimic the effect of squats and if you look at the really good taiji grandmasters of the Chen school, you will see that their lower body is much more developed than their upper body as much of the power for their punches and fajin come from the lower body.
Researching the information on the internet I extracted the following information (unfortunately I lost the link):
Reason #1: Squats are a full-body exercise.
Many guys skip out on squats because they mistakenly believe that squats are just an exercise for your legs. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Your body uses over 200 different muscles when performing squats. And getting stronger on squats often has the somewhat “magical” effect of making you stronger on other exercises.
For example, it’s not uncommon for guys to add 50lbs to their best squat and suddenly discover that their bench press went up 15lbs as well.
Reason #2: Squats boost favorable hormones
Squats are the one of the best exercises (deadlifts being another good choice) for stimulating a favorable hormonal response. Meaning that heavy squats trigger the body to release testosterone and growth hormone, two crucial chemicals for building muscle.
And although I can’t track down the exact source, I’m told there are university studies that show an increase in UPPER body mass gains when squats are included in a training program. This is most likely because squats boost muscle-building hormones which help to build your entire body.
Reason #3: Squats built strength in your hips and core.
When you think about building muscle and strength, you probably think about biceps and pecs. And developing those muscles are great for looking good on the beach.
But strength and power originates in the hips and core. So if you want to increase your overall strength and power, work hard on an exercise that strengthens your hips and core. By this point, I’m sure you can guess the best exercise for developing strength and power in the hips and core. You guessed it: The squat.
To put it another way, the guy who can squat 405 pounds for reps has a huge advantage on the football field, in the octogon/wrestling mat or even in a common street fight.
If you’re looking for some anecdotal evidence, consider Adrian Peterson — star running back of the Minnesota Vikings. Why is he so good? Well, part of it’s his speed, part of it’s genetics and instincts.
But he squats over 530lbs at a bodyweight of 215. You might never run like Adrian Peterson but I guarantee that once you can squat 2.5 times your bodyweight like Adrian can, you’ll be a formidable force in any sport.
Reason #4: Squats build overall muscle mass.
If you want to gain MASS, then you’ve got to squat. As we discussed already, squats trigger the results of favorable growth hormones which contribute to gains in muscle size.
But squats are also great for stimulating the appetite.
Many guys who can’t gain weight complain that they’re just never hungry. But heavy squatting sessions will fix that in a heartbeat. Eight hours after a brutal squatting session I sometimes find myself unable to get full no matter how much I eat.
It’s like my body is sending a never-ending signal to shovel down the food and provide the energy to repair the damage from the heavy squats.
Reason #5: Squats build mental toughness.
This part might get a little weird, but I firmly believe that America (or any country for that matter) would be a better place if every male could squat at LEAST 225lbs. 315lbs would be better.
Because squatting builds mental toughness. Ask anyone who’s ever done a true session of the infamous 20-rep breathing squats. That’s when you take your 10 rep squat max and grind out 20 reps by taking as many breathes as you need between reps.
Posted 8th July 2012 by Bernard Kwan
Labels: fitness health taichi yiquan
3 View comments
Sorry for not posting for a while, but I have been focusing more on practice than writing recently, and due to some work issues I haven't been in the mood to post. However there were a few interesting things that I came across recently in the news which are related to internal martial arts. One of which is the importance of squats. For those of you who train Yiquan, there are a number of shi li movements that mimic the effect of squats and if you look at the really good taiji grandmasters of the Chen school, you will see that their lower body is much more developed than their upper body as much of the power for their punches and fajin come from the lower body.
Researching the information on the internet I extracted the following information (unfortunately I lost the link):
Reason #1: Squats are a full-body exercise.
Many guys skip out on squats because they mistakenly believe that squats are just an exercise for your legs. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Your body uses over 200 different muscles when performing squats. And getting stronger on squats often has the somewhat “magical” effect of making you stronger on other exercises.
For example, it’s not uncommon for guys to add 50lbs to their best squat and suddenly discover that their bench press went up 15lbs as well.
Reason #2: Squats boost favorable hormones
Squats are the one of the best exercises (deadlifts being another good choice) for stimulating a favorable hormonal response. Meaning that heavy squats trigger the body to release testosterone and growth hormone, two crucial chemicals for building muscle.
And although I can’t track down the exact source, I’m told there are university studies that show an increase in UPPER body mass gains when squats are included in a training program. This is most likely because squats boost muscle-building hormones which help to build your entire body.
Reason #3: Squats built strength in your hips and core.
When you think about building muscle and strength, you probably think about biceps and pecs. And developing those muscles are great for looking good on the beach.
But strength and power originates in the hips and core. So if you want to increase your overall strength and power, work hard on an exercise that strengthens your hips and core. By this point, I’m sure you can guess the best exercise for developing strength and power in the hips and core. You guessed it: The squat.
To put it another way, the guy who can squat 405 pounds for reps has a huge advantage on the football field, in the octogon/wrestling mat or even in a common street fight.
If you’re looking for some anecdotal evidence, consider Adrian Peterson — star running back of the Minnesota Vikings. Why is he so good? Well, part of it’s his speed, part of it’s genetics and instincts.
But he squats over 530lbs at a bodyweight of 215. You might never run like Adrian Peterson but I guarantee that once you can squat 2.5 times your bodyweight like Adrian can, you’ll be a formidable force in any sport.
Reason #4: Squats build overall muscle mass.
If you want to gain MASS, then you’ve got to squat. As we discussed already, squats trigger the results of favorable growth hormones which contribute to gains in muscle size.
But squats are also great for stimulating the appetite.
Many guys who can’t gain weight complain that they’re just never hungry. But heavy squatting sessions will fix that in a heartbeat. Eight hours after a brutal squatting session I sometimes find myself unable to get full no matter how much I eat.
It’s like my body is sending a never-ending signal to shovel down the food and provide the energy to repair the damage from the heavy squats.
Reason #5: Squats build mental toughness.
This part might get a little weird, but I firmly believe that America (or any country for that matter) would be a better place if every male could squat at LEAST 225lbs. 315lbs would be better.
Because squatting builds mental toughness. Ask anyone who’s ever done a true session of the infamous 20-rep breathing squats. That’s when you take your 10 rep squat max and grind out 20 reps by taking as many breathes as you need between reps.
Posted 8th July 2012 by Bernard Kwan
Labels: fitness health taichi yiquan
3 View comments
RickJuly 10, 2012 at 10:42 AM
I've often said that I think we should let our practice shape us.
I mentioned several posts ago that I was giving up my body weight exercises, etc.; to see how practicing the Five Elements would shape my body.
Over the last couple of months, a comment I hear invariably from someone I've either met for the first time, or a person I've known whom I haven't seen in a while is that I look like I'm in very good shape.
I used to lift weights and with body weight exercises, I would tend to get the same results - big upper arms, but for the life of me my forearms with not get much mass or definition. A big chest. A strong abdomen but no real definition and big blocky legs (both thighs and calfs).
Since I've been practicing the Five Elements, my chest is flatter like a boxer. My upper arms are still strong but longer (if you get my meaning). My forearms are getting meaty and with definition. My legs are very strong, but again longer and less blocky. The area of my lower back (the area that would be covered with a weight belt) is also building up muscle.
At this rate, I don't think I'll ever do another push up or lift another dumbbell again.
Reply
PaulJuly 11, 2012 at 12:07 PM
Yes, squatting is indeed powerful. Zhan Zhuang is actually a light weight squat. Tai-chi nei gung's Golden Turtle is a full squat. Yogis squat too! It has been claimed that squatting toilet of the Asian type is a healthier choice....so much so nowadays there are devices to change a sitting toilet into a squatting one, wanna try? (http://www.toilet-related-ailments.com/order.html)
Reply
waltJuly 13, 2012 at 11:25 AM
Around where I live, a lot of folks could squat 315 pounds just by bending their knees. But I digress ...
Interesting post, Bernard!
Reply
