Cross Pollination, Tegatana, the releases, and Koryu Dai Yon

You can know that you are talking to a true Okie when he has to tell a few stories before he gets to the point.  --not Will Rogers. 



Miyamoto Musashi said something like, " If you understand and do one thing well, you can understand a lot of things well."   I think that every martial art has the invitation to understand a do one thing well.  To me, that one thing is Tegatana no Kata.  I practice two forms, our walking kata form, and tomiki's final form.  Ours is an older form that contains ideas that Tomiki later extracted to form two man exercises.  When practiced together I feel that they give you a toolkit for Mitori Geiko, or "stealing with the eyes."  Mitori Geiko is observational learning.  You just hang around and watch, and you connect it to what you already know.  In our case its, the walking kata.

I've been known to cross pollinate.  That is, I visit other Aikido dojos and try to pick things up and round things off.  I noticed that all good martial artists cross pollinate.  My teacher Jack Bieler holds high rankings in Aikido, Jodo, Iaido, and Judo.   Morty Youshiba cross pollinated, as did Jigoro Kano.  Tommy cross pollinated.  Gichin Funakoshi and number of other Karate teachers cross pollinated different schools of Karate.  Most Tomiki-ryu teachers in my branch cross pollinate aikido and judo.  It's all cool, man.  We ain't supposed to be married to this shit.    

Anyway,   by visiting other schools we can fully appreciate what Tomiki has done.  He provides us with a toolkit to figure things out.   The interesting thing about Akikai Aikido is their way of stringing things together.  They do it the way Morty did it.  The teacher throws a guy around with good ukemi and then he turns to the class and says now you do it.  They tend to start small and build up and by the end of the practice you are stringing together a dozen or so things.  The teacher, he stands back and watches and gives a tip or two here and there.   Its an interesting way to learn, but so is Tommy's spoon fed approach.  Add em both together it paints a picture like a damned Farrah Fawcett poster.   


From what I understand Morty just threw people around and did crazy shit to them and then said okay you figure it out.  Tommy came up with a way to look at what Morty was doing and make some kinda damn sense of it.   The mark of a good student I suppose, is one that goes away and comes back  for more.  When I go to an Aikikai class it gives me an almost insatiable desire to go back to our 8 releases and 17 kata, and Koryu.   Watching  Aikikai folks string together the techniques we study all by their lonesome makes me absolutely giddy.  Like findin' pearls and wearing pearls, if you get my drift. 

This may be a weird thing to say, but visiting
another Aikido school makes me feel like I've earned my keep and paying my proper respects to Tommy.  The genius of Tommy is that he supplied us with the doing and the seeing.  When you understand the doing and the seeing you can string together all the tenkan, irimi, omote, ura you want.   You can string any number of pearls together. 

Anyway,  Here's some insight I'd like share with you. It's the result of cross pollination, Mitori Geiko, a good Tomiki tool kit, and some old fashioned head scratchin.  If you dig it fine, if you don't just tell me I'm full of shit and buy me a beer sometime.

All releases seem to come from what this ol'boys doing.  Something as simple as shit:





This is the first hand notion of Tegatana no Kata and in tegatana no kata dosa.  It also figures into the first Two moves of Koryu dai Yon.  The odd ducks of the whole set.  

Here's Nick Lowry showing the old Yon one, two.

Here's a snippett that has been floating around the webosphere:

Aikido: A dialogue of movement. 

The walking in the little book an older form of walking much like our own Tegatana no kata.  This book was published in 1966.  It  seems to connect some dots.

Anyway,  the other night we did the releases part of koryu dai yon 1-14.  The first two movements seemed to stick out and I left with my usual thinking of:  Why in the hell is this sandan material?  It's counting to ten with out one.   It ties the room together like the Dude's rug, man. 

Then I went to get a little cross pollination at the other Aikido place in town, for a ten buck mat fee i get to see alot..  They did their string of pearls but the first pearl was this yon kata release action # 2 except they didnt toss the guy.  They used it to put in, so they can take out, using two release actions in combination.

This is what they were essentially doing putting in the Yon #2 release and taking it back into this:

 

Instead of Nikyo, they put # 6 ikkyo movement on.   

Anyway,   Koryu Dai Yon has the release actions but they also do counters and like the Dude's Rug they really tie the room together.  

Heres two ways to do it. click it to see it.

click here to see the other.

 

Now watch this gal do Tegatana Dosa.  First step she "yons" in:  .  Saying she gets some kuzushi and takes it out and turns then she gets in the territory of the Akikai clip, if she Yons in and stays in and turns she's thats the same story as  with the kata.  If she takes it out from a mirror hand grip, she is in #3 release kote mawashi country, if she takes it out in cross hand she gets a mae otoshi grip/keeping up with the kata.    Also, check out  the kesa uchi/hipswitching.

Now look at our older walking, refer to the book link and take a look at these two.

 

pay close attention to the swinging chop, standing on the toes, throw the banana over the shoulder part.

Now look at YON #10 here  

It shows you in the book, but that  weird walking movement is the iriminage from #10 Yon.

Anyway,  in my last post my general assertion that the principes of the walking were seen in the practice of the 19 set.  I guess, my assertion here is that the walking kata and the first 14 of Yon kata are so related it aint even funny.  

Also makes you want to try this stuff in your Yon kata/ releases. 

one other thing when you do the walking put a little more into it or its going to come out like this: