Koichi Tohei Sensei's Four Basic Ki Principles

[GrahamB]

Thanks to Omar I was listening to the podcast here with David Shaner Sensei - Chief Instructor of the Eastern Ki Federation.

http://usaikido.com/

I thought that Koichi Tohei Sensei's Four Basic Ki Principles were quite interesting:

Koichi Tohei Sensei's Four Basic Ki Principles

1. Keep One Point
2. Relax Completely
3. Keep Weight Underside
4. Extend Ki

Further explanation:
http://houstonkiaikido.org/What_Ki_4prin.htm

I think they're like the Tai Chi classics or similar, in that they only mean anything if you already know what they mean. Get what I mean? But anyway - a lot of the Chinese arts seem to come with huge lists of principles or posture requirements - 16 that, 24 this, 13 whatevers... all too much to remember. I find this approach of keeping it simple and just 4 things quite attractive.

All those 4 can equally be applied to Tai Chi, for example, 'extend ki' being like the Peng feeling. 'Keep weight underside' being about sinking the weight, 'keep one point' about moving from the dan tien, 'Relax completely' being Sung.

Is that too simple? What do you think?

[WVMark]

Over at AikiWeb, there was a discussion about these and the original Japanese.
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1895

Relevant parts below:

You can get some of the basic Japanese at http://www.ki-aikido.jp/indx_J.htm

Or, here are the 4 basic principles (if the Japanese shows up):

１、臍下の一点に心をしずめ統一する。
２、全身の力を完全に抜く。
３、身体の総ての部分の重みを、その最下のおく。
４、氣を出す。

Best,
Chris

followed by

Thanks, Chris.

So, for the Japanese speakers out there, how would you translate Tohei sensei's four principles?

My take:

1. Put the one point of your tanden into your spirit/heart (kokoro) and unify them.
2. Completely take away the power/strength from your entire body.
3. Put the heaviness of your entire body into its lowest parts.
4. Put out/radiate ki.

It's the first time I've seen Tohei sensei's four principles of aikido in Japanese.

-- Jun

then

I'd say:

1) Calm your mind and unify it with the one point of your lower abdomen.
2) Completely remove the power from your entire body.
3) Put the weight of all parts of your body into their bottoms.
4) Send out Ki.

I tried hard not to look at Jun's translations before I did the above, so they may be a little bit different .

Best,
Chris

[yusuf]

see the thing is that these 4 still have multiple components... grasshopper must learn brushstrokes before masturbating, err i mean painting

[edededed]

Nice find, I have never seen the principles in Japanese before, but I would translate them differently:

１、臍下の一点に心をしずめ統一する。
２、全身の力を完全に抜く。
３、身体の総ての部分の重みを、その最下のおく。
４、氣を出す。

1. Sink and unify the heart (mind) to the single point below the navel. (No mention of "tanden" anywhere!)
2. Completely relax the whole body's strength.
3. Put the weight of all the parts of the body to the very bottom of the body.
4. Put/push/emit out ki (qi).

I do agree that there is much similar to Chinese IMA here, but the latter do go further with more principles to follow (liuhe is a prime example; others depend on the style (not all principles are the same)) as well as more details (i.e. xiaozhoutian/dazhoutian). However, sometimes "less" is better in that it is hard enough to master 4 things, anyway...