{"id":17,"date":"2007-11-04T22:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-04T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wpdude.com\/test\/?p=17"},"modified":"2007-11-04T22:32:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-04T22:32:00","slug":"feeling-aikido","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/11\/feeling-aikido\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Aikido"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feeling Aikido<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I\u2019ll start by being a little controversial: Most Aikido instructors in the world today don\u2019t teach Aikido.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The reason I say that is they focus on doing technique to their partners. Aikido on the other hand by definition, is about doing technique with your partner and this involve feeling \u2013 harmony (ai) with energy (ki) way (do). Aikido is where you feel your partners movement, structure and intention, and then respond appropriately \u2013 i.e. it involves listening and blending. Anything other than feeling aikido doesn\u2019t work practically, unless you are stronger or faster than your attacker. As a live-in student at a dojo where I was regularly the smallest (and tiredest) on the mat, I\u2018ve experienced this fact repeatedly. To be fair perhaps many Sensei do feeling Aikido, they just don\u2019t teach it, and set forms are one valid method for learning the basic vocabulary of aikido. As well as Being In Movement I\u2019ve been studying Aikido with Paul Linden Sensei for the last month, who wrote a book with the same title of this article is. I\u2019ve also been lucky enough to attend two seminars with other teachers of the sensitive (I.e. not clashing) kind of Aikido: Bertram Wohak Sensei <\/a>and Kevin Choate Sensei<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bertram Wohak is a senior German member of Aiki Extensions<\/a>, bodyworkers, and 4th an student of Watanabe Shihan\u2019s from Aikikai Hombu Dojo. Watanabe is a controversial figure for his seemingly magic no touch throws<\/a>. In Aikido, ukes \u2013 partners who attack and then receive an Aikido technique \u2013 are more or less programmed and\/or compliant. In some schools they are instructed to lock out and make life hard for the thrower, in others to go with the flow an maintain contact. If you are used to the former the latter seems fake and if you train the latter the former seems belligerent. Both can be useful training methods.<\/p>\n

What I liked about Bertram\u2019s Aikido is his emphasis on health and balance, though much of it was technically unfamiliar. Bertram used some wonderful draws\/lures and made fascinating wiggling movements which he described as \u201ctuning in to ukes body\u201d before contact. The subtle and powerful nature of Bertram\u2019s technique was at times some of the best Aikido I\u2018ve experienced. At other times it simply didn\u2019t work and seemed to slip into the world of wishful thinking. Talk is cheap but a smack in the face from an honest shomen uchi (front strike) is not. Despite this, I would encourage any Aikidoka to experience a class with a teacher in this lineage as there\u2019s definitely something to be learnt, especially if they Sensei is as vital and generous as Wohak Sensei. Thank you Bertram.<\/p>\n

A few days later I traveled to Oberlin, Ohio to train with Kevin Choate Sensei, one of Saotome Shihan\u2019s senior students. I\u2019ve trained with Choate Sensei a number of times in his beautiful home dojo in Chicago. In recent years he has been influenced by the fluid Russian martial art of Systema<\/a> and Ushiro Sensei <\/a>who practices a subtle form of karate.<\/p>\n

Again, Kevin\u2019s emphasis was on reading uke and acting in a appropriate non-resistant way \u2013 \u201cWhich doors are open, which are closed?\u201d. He started with a exercise where one wrist was grabbed but the potential of the seemingly inactive hand to strike was the crucial piece. Throughout the day he showed how the ability to strike showed the appropriate positioning for Aikido techniques. He also described grabs as \u201cin the past\u201d whereas potential strikes as \u201cpresent\u201d. I particularly enjoyed it when he said something like, \u201cAccept the grab, it\u2019s historical, deal with what\u2019s going on now!\u201d<\/p>\n

The really interested part of the seminar for me was the crossover with Paul Linden\u2019s bodywork. Kevin was mirroring the body of his ukes, tensing the part of the body that corresponded to tension in his partner, then relaxing them both. Similarly both Paul Linden and advanced NVC teachers feel and replicate what is going on in other people\u2019s bodies. I suspect this is an extension of a natural mimicry skill we have as social coordinating animals, biologically based in mirror neurons.<\/p>\n

Another comparison between Paul Linden and Kevin Choate\u2019s work, is that the latter\u2019s emphasis on striking and feeling into\/through uker\u2019s body, is very close to Paul\u2019s BIM bodywork. On the mat, Paul can move various parts of your body through a lock on one wrist, by \u201cpushing links\u201d. Similarly Paul, Kevin and Bertram all demonstrate an expansive quality. Paul talks about reaching intentionally in 6 directions, Bertram discussing opening the body and Kevin just does it. Getting out of a friend\u2019s Mini Cooper after three hours driving to the seminar I felt the opposite \u2013 compressed. My understanding now is that we need more space than the dimensions of our physical bodies encompass in order to avoid negative psychological effects. Similarly I notice when I\u2019m happy I subjectively feel like I\u2019m taking up more space and others notice me as bigger.<\/p>\n

One off the more enjoyable parts of a very fun course was practicing making contact with the lower body. Normally in Aikido power is derived from the hips and knees, but the hands make contact. Instead we learnt to enter deeply behind or between our partners legs, and make use of aiki trips, sweeps, knee collapses and body-checks.<\/p>\n

Kevin\u2019s made some comments that stuck in my mind re. Training time. To paraphrase: \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t take years to learn. When we say we need 30 years under a guru we wont learn quickly. Sports people don\u2019t need that long, the war\u2019s next year.\u201d On the other hand, \u201cAikido is a process that requires a long-term student-teacher relationship, and not just a set of techniques.\u201d Interesting.<\/p>\n

Kevin had a playful creative demeanor throughout the day, smiling and joking frequently. In this way, he would change a standard Aikido practice to take us out of our habits. For example, normally in three person randori we try and keep one uke between us and the other, and even delight in colliding them. He taught 2 person attacks where we tried to protect both ukes, keeping them away form each other. Then practice application being, \u201clooking after your jerk friend in the bar who wants to start a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the day as a the setting sun was dressing the seminar in orange light, I started getting the hang of \u201ccoating\u201d my awareness around people\u2019s bodies. Paul talks about this explicitly and I suspect Bertram and Kevin both do it. This cloaking of others in my own bodymind felt weird and I fluctuated between joyful welling and nausea at one point. I think we experience the self (esp. unconscious) of another person when we mirror them, and that our boundaries are very porous. After a month at Paul\u2019s, it feels like I\u2019m a colour mixing into all the other tones around me these days. Now where did I leave my pills….\u263a<\/p>\n

Later over a meal I had my third class with Choate Sensei. He said, \u201cI hear a lot of talk about Aikido principles being used off the mat, but what exactly are these principles?\u201d As he\u2019d been demonstrating them all day, teaching very little formal technique I was a little taken aback. In the end I said, \u201cNon-resistance, non-violence and embodied practice.\u201d We agreed that you couldn\u2019t learn Aikido from a book and that many other paths had these core features. It was also useful for me to make the distinction between skills I have learnt in aikido and now teach \u201coff the mat\u201d and \u201caiki-principles\u201d whatever they are\u2026<\/p>\n

Kevin also talked about who the shape of Aikido was an ellipse and how Aikido was \u201cquantum\u201d in the sense you could not know both the strength and direction of an attack \u2013 but I didn\u2019t get either of those points too well. In conclusion, I highly recommend a seminar with Choate Sensei who is easily one of the most capable and unique students of O\u2019Sensei\u2019s students. Warm thanks also to Jim and the other friendly, well-organised hosts of Oberlin<\/a>.<\/p>\n


Disclaimer- I may have completely misinterpreted much of what these two teachers were doing based on limited experience. Please accept my apologies if this is the case.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feeling Aikido I\u2019ll start by being a little controversial: Most Aikido instructors in the world today don\u2019t teach Aikido. The reason I say that is they focus on doing technique to their partners. Aikido on the other hand by definition, is about doing technique with your partner and this involve feeling \u2013 harmony (ai) with energy (ki) way (do). Aikido is where you feel your partners movement, structure and intention, and then respond appropriately \u2013 i.e. it involves listening and blending. Anything other than feeling aikido doesn\u2019t work practically, unless you are stronger or faster than your attacker. As a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9xvDN-h","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}