Aiki - what does it mean?

[jaime_g]

http://www.aikidojournal.com/?id=1932

" I was absolutely STUNNED by the film of his stave work (using a sharpened staff - the short spear or nuboko referred to in an earlier blog.) in the 1961 film from his trip to Hawaii. Ueshiba starts by repeating a number of movements, sometimes two or three times, and then a second and a third, etc. All are various various deflections. He was doing “fajin!” His whole body is relaxed and at the moment of the simulated deflection (which he does upwards, downwards and to the side), his whole body snaps into an “implosive” channeling of body power - I still don’t know what to call it — but you can see the power emerge from his root and center, and out through the staff - downwards, upwards, sideways and at angles. Were he using a long spear, it would flex like a tree in a high wind"

interestng

[C.J.W.]

Having experienced both Chinese internals and Japanese "aiki," I'd actually say that a main difference is while the Chinese methods tend to focus on joining center for a split second with the opponent before bouncing him away, the Japanese prefers to capture center for instant off-balancing and maintain the connection for subsequent grappling finishes.

Some Chinese methods also employ uniting with an opponent's energy to control his center and disrupt his balance and root, while maintaining the connection for subsequent strikes, kicks, and throws or projections to finish.

True, Doc. I've just noticed there's a higher tendency for a Chinese IMAist to employ the former approach while a Japanese IMAist the latter.

[C.J.W.]

Ouch.Interloper has touched it with a needle.

Not precisely. I don't see any point in interrupting the fun, if people are falling down and calling each other "sensei." For where's the harm?

In Taiji, we constantly see PH demos in which teachers send their students bouncing and hopping all over the place; in Aikido, we see students dropping like flies, sometimes even before any physical contact is made; in Aikijujitsu, we see students tippy-toe and groan in pain as soon as they grab onto their sensei.

The point is, the BS that plagues CIMA also exists in JIMA. You just need to weed out the phonies and find the very few who got the goods.

[gilbride100]

As I understand it, "aiki" in the few classical Japanese sword schools that use the term, refers to techniques of psychological manipulation used in sword combat. Since a sword can end the combat with a single touch, you only need a single opening to prevail. "Aiki" techniques are techniques for manipulating the opponent into leaving you such an opening. The application of the term to empty-hand fighting is a later development.

[Wuyizidi]

Ouch.Interloper has touched it with a needle.

Not precisely. I don't see any point in interrupting the fun, if people are falling down and calling each other "sensei." For where's the harm?

klonk,
I would not be so hasty to assume that the contemporary aikido you see today, with people voluntarily throwing themselves and "blending," is the Aikido created and practiced by Morihei Ueshiba.

Instead, I would hasten to find and get my hands on one of the people reputed to have genuine aiki/internal skills so you can get at least an inkling of the skill that Ueshiba had, and which was largely lost to his first-generation students, and completely lost to generations thereafter.

You may not believe that Ueshiba had anything, but that is based on what you have observed in today's aikido. That is a mistake. There are reasons why aikido ended up as it did, but you would have to be motivated to do a little research to better understand it. I recommend you read Ellis Amdur's book, "Hidden in Plain Sight" (order it here: http://www.edgework.info/buy.html ) for starters. No, I don't get any kickbacks from Mr. Amdur. It's just a good, thoughtful book that has some great historical info along with the author's opinions and conjectures, drawn from his decades of august martial knowledge and experience.

That's a very interesting book. As it turns out Mr. Amdur is from Pittsburgh originally, and when he visited 1-2 years ago, he met with my teacher (Zhang Yun). Later when the book came out, I told my teacher about one of its main points: Daito-ryu as Ueshiba's teacher practiced it, had similar internal skills found in Chinese internal martial arts, that it was passed down to Ueshbia and very few others, but it's mostly lost today in Aikido, that they need to recover it by learning it from Chinese martial arts. To which my teacher responded "that's great for Aikido people, but we're in danger of losing those ourselves, where can we go to recover it?!"

It's sad but true, take an average person to see a large random sample of Taiji schools, and they'll think it look just as 'fake' as modern Aikido.

One thing interesting about this fakeness though, it's actually a key indicator that this was originally a very good lineage. In Taiji Quan there's an old adage, "good Taiji Quan looks like magic (fake trick)". The bystanders, without touching the person executing the skill, couldn't even understand why the other guy cannot fight back. When my oldest brother Strider came home from China, he showed to his grandfather tape of himself sparring with Master Wang Peisheng. His grandfather was a real boxing insider: professional boxer and trainer. And his grandfather became frustrated and angry watching it "hey, right there, he's grabbing your front hand, and he's going through this winding motion to strike your neck with the other hand. Why didn't you just punch him with your free hand, you had all this time! And why did you fall before his striking hand reach you, and falling forward sideways instead of backwards, what is going on, is this some type of trick?! Are you trying to humor him?"

Strider has to explain to him "the hand that's grabbing mine, I felt like his entire weight is on it, I was losing balance. It may be a long time in real time, by when you're losing balance, you get really tense, you're not aware of time, you're only thinking of recovering. And the reason I fall is not he has some invisible force coming out of his striking hand, but because his two hands are perfectly connected, the downward force of the striking hand is transmitted completely to the hand holding mine. So before that striking hand reached me, that force (unseen in the other hand) already threw me down..."

You can see how anyone who had felt good Tongbei or Taiji can easily understand what is going on here, but if you haven't, how could you know? This is why you never seen external martial art people faking Ling Kong Jin (the above example is not Ling Kong Jin). Only when someone in a group, someone who is a real internal arts master and done this regularly, do his students even know this kind of thing is even possible. So that they would try to replicate it in their own practice. Of course if you don't have the skill, it's just mutual deception. What you have left is empty external movement which, without the necessary internal force (in example above), couldn't possibly produce the strange effects that baffles non-practitioners. Obviously if that's all Ueshiba had, Aikido wouldn't be famous in the first place. That kind of fake skill even an untrained person can defeat.

[BruceP]

Precisely what Wuyizidi said.

[BruceP]

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[northern_mantis]

Cool, loads of posts. I'll have a proper read when time alllows later. Thanks all.

Almost as good as my applications of ba duan jin thread. I'll keep them coming out of left field like that

[klonk]

Obviously if that's all Ueshiba had, Aikido wouldn't be famous in the first place.

Perhaps, but it's not all that obvious to me. Content-free arts like Yellow Bamboo arise without any original grounding in facts. I could also point to some taiji empty force emporiums in which the only force anyone has is the force of imagination. Shall we say these derive their popularity because they have some connection to martial taiji? I would say they are popular precisely because they don't.

Anyhow I don't want to mash Aikido too badly. It fulfills desires some people have for a bit of vigorous exercise and a bit of esoteric stuff on the side. If it isn't IMA, who says everyone has to do IMA? Moreover the universal harmony part is appealing as a philosophy. I do not propose to settle, today, whether it is realistic and practical as philosophy.

[Interloper]

Wuyizidi wrote:
Obviously if that's all Ueshiba had, Aikido wouldn't be famous in the first place.
klonk wrote:
[i]Perhaps, but it's not all that obvious to me.

klonk,
It's not "obvious" to you because you steadfastly refuse to actually get off your ass and do some genuine research instead of repeating your uninformed opinions. No one here is saying that contemporary aikido has IP/IT methods. We're agreeing that it doesn't. The point is, some people in aikido recognize this and are now seeking to restore internal method to it.

Aikido is famous because people felt and saw what Ueshiba could do, and they wanted that for themselves. Unfortunately, they largely did not get it. But now, to reiterate, some are out there getting it from individuals who do have the skills. It will be interesting to see what happens in the aikido universe over the next decade or so.

[junglist]

his decades of august martial knowledge and experience.

Yes. Well, I only started in September, myself.

[junglist]

Interloper, why do you bother replying to this Klonk noobie troll star? Time spent replying to trolls like that is better spent on practising Aiki that Ueshiba had.

[AllanF]

In regard to Ueshiba not having IP, he was challenged many times by people already highly ranked in Judo ( Kenji Tomiki), Sumo (Tenryu), Kendo and other martial arts. Jigoro Kano was suitablly impressed to send two of his top students. If he didn't have anything then he must have been a very convincing conman!

[Edited cause i said Tohei was the Judo guy it should have been Tomiki. Doh!]

[cdobe]

I think Klonk has a very good point. Reading a book by a proponent of the "internal strength theory of Aikido" can hardly be called "research". There seems to be anecdotical evidence at best and a lot of conjecture. Besides, the burden of proof lies on the proponents of this theory, you can't just counter by saying 'do research'. All arguments that have been made, have been countered quite aptly by Klonk...

[klonk]

In regard to Ueshiba not having IP, he was challenged many times by people already highly ranked in Judo ( Koichi Tohei), Sumo (Tenryu), Kendo and other martial arts. Jigoro Kano was suitablly impressed to send two of his top students. If he didn't have anything then he must have been a very convincing conman!

There are more ways than one to win a fight. Not all of them call for internal practices. But, for the sake of argument, let us say U.M. was an IMA genius. He did not pass it on.

Where in the Aikido curriculum do we find things like standing until you sweat and shake, or frame exercises like Akuzawa Minoru's, or something like taiji's jibengong exercises? Had such things been taught by U.M., somebody or other would have gotten "it," no matter how garbled the philosophical explanations.

IMA, I would say, cannot be transmitted by talk about universal harmony. It is developed through training like the above-mentioned exercises.

See, it really doesn't matter whether U.M. had "it" or not, for "it" wasn't present in Aikido going forward. The least discourteous thing I can suppose is that this was by design. The second least is he didn't know much about "it."

Some curious-looking Daito ryu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4qXVdGKn9k