Principles of aikido
Following on from the link to the book I like below I thought I would spend some time thinking about what aikido principles are important to me.
After sitting on the panel for the black belt grading last week one thing struck me as vitally important in aikido. In order to perform aikido techniques effectively (in a aiki way - may be I'll come to that another time) you need to be relaxed and open to what is happening. Too often people become tense when under the pressure of attack and this blocks their ability to deal with the situation. A corollary of this is that people become fixated with "doing" a technique or worse on doing a particular technique that they have decided upon beforehand.
These two things are closely related. If you try and force a technique or are not open to changing what you are doing as the situation changes you will become tense. When you are tense you are less likely to be open to change or to deal with change.
Note that relaxation does not mean that you have to go all floppy. Contrary to some opinion it is not possible to do aikido without some use of muscle strength (the key being the optimum use of strength in a way that maximizes its effectiveness). Relaxation in aikido first starts in the mind (being open and aware) and then progresses through to the body (not wasting energy flexing muscles that are not needed).
In my experience the best way to achieve this level of relaxation is to concentrate on breathing. It is not enough to do this only in class but to try and integrate an awareness of your breath into you everyday life. In particular, though, when practicing techniques in class you should first stop and think about your breathing and how it matches the situation (your level of tiredness, the ferocity of the attack, the kind of technique you are doing) and then also check at the end to see if you maintained that awareness throughout.
Try it for a few weeks and see what happens.
5 comments:
It's like the old saying "Don't think, just do." We practise so that what we learn becomes instinct, and so we can react to an attack without thinking. In a way this is a way to appreciate the idea of being relaxed when applying a technique.
There's a lot of mental relaxation that is good to acheive as well as physical.
This is why I like the end where we do "mokso" or whatever when we think about what we've done. I try and not think in that moment, to try and cleanse away my thoughts and frustrations.
What do you reckon?
Yes, I try to clear my mind when doing mokuso. I find that helps me let everything in that we have done in the class. Especially if we have finished with a particularly active period of freeplay.
It can also be instructive to go over the techniques that have been taught in your mind to help remember them.
As I say in my post, relaxation starts in the mind. If you can't relax your mind then you will never be able to maintain a level of physical relaxation for more than only short periods of time.
it was interesting watching that systema dvd. i havn't finished it yet, but the systema bloke is talking about some disciplines being destructive on the body because they don't do much in the way of relaxation or preparing people for combat.
i found that after a karate session i couldn't sleep because i was so pumped. it was just impossible because even though my body was knackered, my mind was going a million miles an hour.
From the hips...
I was thinking about how arm-centric I am in aikido and you are always trying to teach us that the movements (and power of a technique) come from the hips. Instinctively I will always use my arms and I think a lot of this is to do with my job in a kitchen. For 10 yrs or so I have been using my arms a lot, stirring, chopping, carrying, lifting, opening oven doors etc. From the last session I have been trying to work from the hips, the centre Ki point. I am hoping a very small daily exercise like this will help to realign my instincts and improve my aikido.
when you talk about a small daily exercise, do you mean you will do something at work? that's a really cool thing to do, to try and think about how you move in every day life.
i play a little game with myself whenever i'm on the bus or the train, where i don't hold onto anything and try to stand in a semi aikido/karate stance.
little things like that help, i think.
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