Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Difficult Explantions

During a lull at work today, I was attempting to explain Aikido to Beleek and realized I have lost the ability to easily explain what's happening. I've been trying for a while to pinpoint a single, easy to teach movement that gets the FEELING of Aikido across to someone with no training in it. It's a lot harder than it sounds. I've noticed people move awkwardly when paying attention instead of how they naturally move. I thought maybe I could show Beleek the 2nd movement in Nijusan, Aigamae-ate. I noticed during the off balance no matter how slow we moved she was compensating the off balance and recovering her balance but wasn't aware of what she was doing. I used to think "move here, then there, and lastly here" during the movement...now I see all sorts of things I never saw before. I explained it to Beleek in terms she could understand. She did a large picture of her face and from a distance the lines making up her eye look horizontal, but up close each few inches are made up of tiny swirls. I used to see Aikido like that. I saw a large overall picture of a throw made up of 3 basic movements, now I see tiny nuances and can't explain things in the big picture anymore. I don't want to overload the poor girl with my ramblings of tiny circles (to continue the metaphor), but I can't seem to show the big lines anymore.
I tried uploading the image she did, but I've been having trouble, so please use he link.

3 comments:

Patrick Parker said...

Lately I've been talking about release #3 as REALLY having that aiki feeling. It seems to me to be the perfect example of the releasing feeling. The other day Kel and I were working on it in rapid succession and suddenly Kel had to stop. He got this confused look and said "That gives me this wierd feeling of..." and couldn't explain it. I finished his sentence, "...that wierd feeling of 'what the hell just happened to me'"

that is what you want in these releasing things is that "what the hell just happened to me" feeling. And release 3 exemplifies this for me the best right now.

John Wood said...

Release 3 is a great example. I was attempting Nijusan since that was where I found my first feeling of Aikido,but Honasu may be just what the doctor ordered.

Patrick Parker said...

You've been promoted. Check it out...

http://mokurendojo.blogspot.com/2007/11/promote-three-keepin-it-going.html