tai chi shoving matches vs tomiki shoving matches

A few weeks back,  I did some hand randori with guy who had a tai chi background.  He was fun to work with and made me want to learn some tai chi moves.  So I bought a tai chi dvd and started doing some homemade tai chi in the kitchen along with the walking kata moves.  After watching  an excellent dvd by Yang Jwing Ming, I came to the non scientific conclusion that Tai Chi and Tomiki Aikido are basically the same damn thing.  Especially when you look at Hand Randori/push hands concept. Also, all the techniques are the same, both try to maintain a "bubble" in front of them.  The difference i think is how they choose to maintain the bubble. 

First of all, hand randori is called toshu randori and tai chi push hands is called tui shou.  I'm not an Oxford educated lingowist, but those two words look pretty much the same. 

Heres Yang jwing Ming the tai chi man ive been watching .   Just You tube search the guy.  He's a Tomiki gold mine of ideas.  


where have I seen this before ?: 

  

Here's a chinese Tomiki school.  some judo moves, working on # 6 from the 17, and a little slow randori looking for kuzushi.( the music is stupid, though.)  

 

A lot of times I get tripped up worrying about maintaining tanto/knife maai, and stepping off line.  You can get an off balance apparently by establishing a flow and standing your ground.  

 

 when tai chi and tomiki gets competitive it looks pretty much the same.  Shoving match randori. I dont have a problem with shoving match randori, its the same as judo randori without the chicken legging.

  

Push hands competition( looks the same)

 

and judo looks the same except they are allowed to chicken leg each other and do the old playground "fall and pull" trick

   

This mini hand sumo match looks interesting, these situations happen sometimes in Toshu randori.

Koryu kata, the drunk uncle of texas flavored tomiki

            
                                               UNCLE ICHI WHERE ART THOU

 Most wisdom is hidden in the form of drunk uncles that we only see occasionally.   We have 6 drunk uncles in texas flavored Tommy Key aikido.  The ones that come around the most are old uncle san, and old uncle yon.  Ichi, Ni, Go, and roku must have died in the war or something.   

My aikido wet dream is that I can go into class and do the releases three times through and the 17 three times( or maybe the big ten) through and then do koryu kata for the rest of the class as a cool down. It may take a year to get in shape enough to do the entire 17, 3 times, but I think thats the point.  Martial arts is physical, and you dont get efficient until your ass is wore out and you drop your illusions about things.   

 Texas flavored Tommy key aikido only does San Kata/ Yon Kata.  I've been told that old Judo guys with bad knees have trouble doing the rest so they didnt learn it or teach it.  I can also say that Ive noticed that most Tommy key aikido guys that I know either do judo concurrently with aikido or start doing judo around the time that Koryu kata become interesting. Or, they may start picking up a sword or stick around about this time.  It boils down to not enough time during the week to do everything.

 

Uncle NI died in the War

   

Uncle GO

 

That RAT bastard ROKU, grandma dont talk about him no more.

 

   

to bee or not to bee, the eternal question.

I hate baseball.  The highschool I went to was a baseball mecca.  I wasn't good at it.  I was afraid of the ball.  If you ever have gotten hit in the head with a baseball, it hurts like hell.  If you have ever struck out at the bottom of the last inning that hurts a lot worse.  Being judged by your peers by fourth grade hurts a whole hell of a lot worse than that.

    

Here's an Okie word puzzle/mandala

iSHitODontAkNow.   

Its a cosmic yinyang mixture of "I dont know shit." and shodan.   Not to sound like Morty Youshiba, but Aikido exists in there as well.  

I've labeled our super 8, and super 17, and Grande 10 as shit work.  The material definition of shitwork:  trivial, unrewarding, tedious, dirty, and disagreeable chores.  If I label our basic Katas as shitwork, I'm really meaning "I don't know shitwork."   Not knowing shit is often unrewarding, trivial, and tedious, until you are cool with not knowing shit.  Then you enter a higher state of take it or leave it.  or "I'm ok and you are ok." of 1970s speak. 

When I explain Maai to someone, I bring up baseball.  The distance between a pitcher and his catcher.  The distance where baseball tends to work.

   

This is the distance where you can either strikeout, get hit, or knock a home run.  here is another OKIE KOAN for you.  " there are no base hits in Aikido. 

 some branches of Tomiki aikido are known for tanto randori. 

 

  

The super 17 with a tanto. a lot of home runs because its coach pitch.

 

heres another version of the 17.  machine pitch. some basehits

 

 

this is bee tanto randori. the bees dont give a shit about homeruns, or  whether its a soccer match. rules get in the way for the bees. they just like flowers.   a lot of our aikido "rules" are based on what someone is supposed to do. and this may sound a little bit like Morty Youshiba but maybe we should ask, " what is a bee supposed to do?"  Then maybe we should go back to our I dont know shitwork and try to figure it out for ourselves.  

iSHitODontAkNow.

 

 

 

zanshin traps/ or Attention traps

                                                                 

I gotta go into the desert and get Han Solo out of carbonite.  Also, known as going to Oklahoma for a Holiday.


Anyway, this is for you zanshin buffs.  I aint a japanese lingo tech, but someone told me that zanshin means "remaining mind."   or in in OKIE, "pay attention dipshit, this place is plain eat up with copperheads"    

   

  

   

Eventually I think that a guy needs to define the aiki in aikido.

Feeling like #2 doing #2.

Sometimes you learn best when  you stand around with your hands in your pockets and look at the world with a friendly take it or leave it attitude.

aigamae ate ( i got an arm in the way- strike)

Mr. Clean does a damn good job at showing the variations of this thing.  The kid in the stripes couldnt give a shit.  evidently, hes in take or leave it mode with a strong preference for leave it. You won't ever see this forty two year old uke taking that kind of  falls.   If I want that kind of experience I'll lay over a motor scooter.  But like I said, this guy covers it with ranch dressing  while dazzling the children. 

the first couple of moves in this picture show some variations in non-testosterone mode. 

Lets look at the windsong dojo version. 

Here's an Irimi nage

                                                    

Lot of big falls in that, but somehow it seemed non testosterone mode to me.  The soothing background music helps. 

Back to what Nick Lowry said about the elbow control being the central feature.  Watch what Iain Abernathy does with arm in the way striking mainly from the inside.  

                                                                                                 

Here is a daito ryu dude.  I think its somewhere around 3:30 range.  but you'll see a hand on the elbow and a hand on the face.  I got an arm in the way style.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZA8e--Yb-4

OKIE-DO #1

I do Aikido.  A branch of  Tommy Key Aikido.  What I want to do with this blog