What kind of kuzushi and releasing from what?

A guy on the Tomiki Branch of the tree has to realize that he has more in common with a Judo player than he does with an Aikikai practioner or a Yoshinkan practioner.  Obviously this is because Tomiki was a Judo guy, and he filtered everything through a Judo filter.  Everything was either similar to Judo or different.  And everything thing he learned from Morty Youshiba was classified as degrees of similarity and difference to what he already knew, which was straight from Kano, Classical Judo.

The Kito Ryu influence is absolutly everywhere.  It's the tick tock sound that tomiki aikido makes.  Especially Tomiki Aikido that got settled into itself before the Tanto Randori hit the scene.  Akikai flavored Aikido doesnt operate on rise and fall/footfall ideas, but resistance on the horizontal plane. Everything spirals around how a guy responds to ikkyo. That's why its techniques are classified as omote and ura.   One of the central lessons of Koryu Dai ichi is Horizontal resistance.   You put oshi taoshi on a guy and he doesn't like it so you just let go and turn.   I have a feeling that there are some aikido schools that do not understand this.  They see omote and ura as two different techniques.  These are the Air Yoga schools.  They have great posture, can flip and fall all day, and don't have a problem with constipation. 

Daito ryu is there too, but you have to look a little deeper.  And it exists in a what is there, yet not said manner.   If you look at the Tomiki bigfoot video from the late fifties, you are going to see sotai-dosa.  12 movements that appear to be forerunners of the eight releases.  you may notice that they are very sharp and to the point.  That they go right up the gut, almost like suwari waza.   Its taken that these were original rough drafts, that were scrapped for some later refinement.  But by my ignorant Okie estimation,  these ideas are the daito ryu things that are not said in the 8 releases.  Take the #1 and #3 release set up in the film.  Looks a whole lot like shomenate and aigamae ate to me.   They are educated pushes/strikes that jack with a guys posture.   Okay, what if a guy resists or pushes back?  If you look at how the first four releases are taught nowadays they make perfect sense when seen as countering resistance from sotai-dosa ideas.    


I alway's thought that the cross stepping on release #1 and # 2 was pretty stupid, because anybody could shove your ass over when you cross your legs.  Okay, buddy I'm going to turn in a big wide circle right in front of you so you can see me do everything. 

I never really understood why these were forms of kuzushi or why in the hell they were called releases when we really weren't trying to get our hand away.  Sure if a guy took a step for you then you could do something,   But they had to take the step, and what in the hell was released?

Well, do #1 release and push in like tomiki does almost like you are trying to shomenate the guy.  If they other guy interupts the action, then do it exactly like you've been taught cross-step, and turn.  You should see a guy released into some sort of kuzushi.

Here is a judo video about kuzushi.(note: the opening illustration looks like the #3 release as presented in sotai dosa)  I could have wrote half of it because I have heard a lot of the same ideas and I don't even do judo.  But like I said pre tanto Tomiki schools have a lot in common with Judo. They are Judo.   What I like about this video is that it talks about 4 kinds of kuzushi.  Natural Kuzushi is where a guy just steps into a technique for you.  The light slow randori that we do is pretty much a study of natural kuzushi.  But for new folks its effing frustrating.

A lot of this blog is to do some archeology of my own school of  Aikido.  We come from a Judo background, we didnt go the Tanto randori route.  From what I can gather,  the folks that wanted to study aikido didn't want to rough and tumble it.   If  they wanted to rough and tumble, then Judo was the better option.  If they were tired of judo, then they did aikido.  It's pretty common.  But the thing about the formation of our aikido is the level of judo player involved in the initial formation of ideas.  My educated guess is that they were at the level of natural kuzushi.  They could tell where a guy was going, let him go there, and walk into a technique.   What our randori developed into was a soft form that looks a whole lot like tai chi push hands, except that both players move, and dont remain static.  

What the video describes as a bad habit of Judo instruction, that is only teaching direct kuzushi.  That is where you push and pull a guy into it.   Eventually a higher level player will eat up a guy who only understands the direct kuzushi.   I think the frustrating thing about thing about Aikido is that direct kuzushi isn't taught.  At least not intentionally.  What we do is a light touch sheer, or a no grip ikkyo.  Pretty high level stuff.  Pretty effing frustrating to a beginner.   off that sheer we try to catch a"natural" rise and footfall. Pretty high level, pretty damn frustrating.

I noticed that the best light touch Toshu randori players seem to have a judo background.  They have a masters degree in kito and feet.  At 42, its hard to subject myself to judo except where it applies to Aikido.  I'm pretty hard headed, but I had an epiphany when I let a guy do a double footsweep on me a few times,  allowed myself to turn horizontal and slap the mat.  I realized that this kind of education was essential to the importance of kuzushi.  That feeling someone throw you like you weighed nothing, based on foot movement and body rise was important.

We emphasize a lot of natural kuzushi and very subtle indirect kuzushi.  That's why we do the slow randori, not because we are a bunch of pussies.  But I will be perfectly honest that throwing people into light touch without a study of direct kuzushi will cause problems.  Judo doesn't do this.  The fundamentals are: if you get a guy like this, then you can do this.  Later, you can teach the ifs, ands or buts. 

So why not teach direct kuzushi?  I think Tomiki did.   You have sotai dosa which can be seen as direct kuzushi forms( that work well with a person stepping into a natural posture instead of stepping from.)  Then you have the indirect kuzushi forms shown in the 8 releases.  Tomiki wasn't an idiot, he was a judo guy.  His system was teach the failure first, but he let you figure out what the failure was, or he assumed that you already knew it.  If the releases seem stupid its because they all represent some sort of failure situation. They aren't the initial solution to the problem.  My idea is the first solution is to run it right up the gut. The releases are counter plays.  They release from one idea to the next.    

How to Learn( The real principle of Aikido)

“That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”

-- Albert Einstein   


  When you hang out with a lot of guys who know what the hell they are doing you tend to learn a lot of good stuff.  That may be a yogi berraism.  But people tend to forget  that.   I'm a poster boy for anti-intellectualism.  Writing shit down is just another practice. It's mind jogging. I don't like talking about Aikido in a sense that I don't want to attack, defend, justify what I'm doing or what anybody else is doing.  I don't want to judge or evaluate anybody.  I like seeing what other people do, more than what they say.   I just want to do it, see it, and feel it.   I think we set people back when we don't work from a large pool of movements(koryu kata).  Large pools of movements that exist side by side with the basics only serve to strengthen the basics.  Basically, you should always suck at something.  You should always have something to  mildly frustrate you and to make you think.  You need problems.  

They did a study once on what makes people practice.  They did an experiment with free throw shooting.  They found that people who could get to 80% are the ones who practice the most.  They can get 8 shots out of 10.  They see thier goal as just two away, instead of 10 away.   They see goals as two weeks away rather than two years.    A teacher has to set the enviroment to get to 8 out of 10.    

I read a book by this Tai chi/aikido dude(Ralston) where he writes down five principles. 

• being calm
• relaxing 
• centering
• grounding
• being whole and total  

The man lays down the notion that these aren't so much principles as things that happen when you have aligned yourself with a principle and that principle may be labeled a thousand ways by a thousand folks.  When you say that same hand same foot is a principle, you are saying that opposite hand and foot isnt.  I'd say that just as much Aikido triggers from opposite hand and foot as it does same and same.  It's bound to effing happen in a mat transaction.  If I were to use the tai chi dudes alignment frame work, that we are talking about grounding and centering.  Getting a guy in a hipswitch is just as gnarly as a perfect shomenate power delivery.  But you can't teach from the general.  So same hand/foot is a lot easier to teach than centering and grounding.  Whole helluva a lot easier to demonstrate, too.  

Principles are there to help people learn.  Not to allow us to kick someones ass.

We give folks principles that help them learn.   Principles should also do what Einstein said.  Allow folks to have more fun/engagement, and lose track of time.

It's taken me four years to realize what I'm missing, what I'm effing up on.  My personal overriding principle right now is, "its all about the feet you ignorant dumbass."   I'm going to spend the next few weeks/months investing in loss so i can figure out feet: the other guys and mine.  I don't know if I'm 2 a way or 10 away.  but I need to find techniques that I can get to 80% on, no matter how simple.  Then I hope I'l have the opportunity to lose track of time.
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Fear is the big thing that keeps us out of the learning zone.  Fear of falling, fear of hurting the other guy(sometimes folks get hurt because someone trys to not hurt the other guy. usually they underpower a throw and don't allow a good fall)   Its also the desire for an imagined state that keeps us from learning. That everybody should be able to do it like a 30 year veteran. New people need to feel a little force, need to see bigger motions.  You can't learn the light and small very easy because they can't see it or are too frozen to feel it.  

The best lesson I've learned lately is that I need to quit seeing folks as objects that need to be moved, and seeing them as humans with a nervous system.  But sometimes folks need to relax into being a human with a nervous system.  Not an object frozen with fear or desire( desire being:  fixation on how things should be, instead of how things are).  Realistically, we all go through being an object and a human.  

folks rattle out into five types of Uke, by my limited estimation:  and learning is really a matter of being an uke.  

1. A two legged Object that doesn't want to move. He doesn't want to hit the mat. This can be a guy who resists the entry to the technique so you have to wobble him somewhere else, where he's resists but later, so you wobble him again, where he resists only later still.  What you have is a ratcheting transaction to the mat, that has no resemblance to the technique you are supposed to be working on.  Its fear based.  I become this way with judo players.  shime waza is a bitch, and so are those two legged sweeps.   
2.  A  two legged object that doesnt want to move and squeaks.  It's the same as the first, but wants to critique your ratcheting as wrong.   so they lecture you, or at least try to save face by talking physics or some shit.  its still fear based, but they have to talk and explain things to save face.  
3.  A  two legged object that will only move if it feels right.  They'll fall if you can get the first touch right.  It's like programming a VCR.  I resisted the curling function of the hand in the releases because I thought it was a subjective thing that people were looking for.  They'd move if I did my wrist right, and not move if I didn't.  The curl helps with concrete stuff, but this type of uke couldn't tell you what for to save his life.   this guy makes aikido seem fake. 
4. A two legged object that will only move if it feels right and squeaks.  If you are told to do 8 releases with this guy you'll never get past #3.  makes you want to join a tae kwon do mcdojo. 
5.  a human with a nervous system.  This guy knows how to fall, gives you a strong attack. and allows himself to be bounced like a ball.  he understands the system enough to know that you may eff up and have to go another direction.  He/she can help you learn.  He give's you reps and good advice about how to move Him/her around.  not how to theoretically move a two legged object around, but how to move a person of his or her size and shape.   He likes to get "got."  he wont give it to you, but wont fight it either.  He makes you lose track of time and enjoy doing aikido.  
         

painting a dragons eyes

I have practiced three martial arts.  Karate in my teens, Aikido in my late thirties and early forties, and writing.  They say the pen is mightier than the sword, so that means writing is a martial art.  If you are familiar with that dead lady Ayn Rand, a novelist, you may have an understanding of how her dipshit ideas are influencing american politics.  I'm not  trying to  go into politics here.  The bail out of rich companies who deserved to fall on thier ass and disappear, while allowing an American City like Detroit to go down the tubes is all Ayn Rand.  The power of words from a really shitty novelist.  If the people of Detroit had the choice between getting punched in the face and living in a bankrupt city,  They'd probably take a punch in the face.  No telling how many folks suffer because of other peoples dumb ideas.  striking arts are much more gentle than writing arts.    

Enough of that horseshit.  

Anyway,  There are two books that influence my Aikido thinking.  One is called Zen Mind, Beginners mind, and the other is an interpretation of the same book applied to writing called Writing Down the Bones.  I got an Audio version of the zen book and listened to it on cassette tape till it wore out. I absorbed it.  I took the writing book and did what it told me to do.  I bought a fast fountain pen and wrote and wrote, I think I filled up two coffee cans full of ink cartridges.  I still have a milk crate of old writings in a closet somewhere making a perfect place for a rats nest.  my old ideas aren't going to hurt anyone. They are kind to the rats.  

The principles of Aikido and writing are the same. The martial arts carry a saying, I think it comes from Musashi : fast is slow and slow is fast.  A good speedy pen is like slow randori practice.  It allows you to get your ideas out on the page quicker.  Fast, English Style Randori,  is like writing with a dull golf pencil.  It will strengthen your hand and build endurance, but you will lose ideas, and therefore express fewer ideas.  Both are good for something.

We learn the rules of writing in school.  Capitalize this. Put a a period here, commas and shit.  We learn to keep in the margins.  We learn how to spell.  We learn to not write bad words or we go to the principles office.   We learn how to write, but we also learn limitation.   Tegatana no kata, 8 releases, 17 kata.  Of the three, Tegatana is the most expansive, but you have to learn to write outside of the margins and read between the lines of your own writing/kata practice.  Use the basics, but don't be limited.  

Tomiki has a quote,  something about how his way of aikido was adding eyes to a painted dragon.  Other styles just teach you how to write. periods, margins, don't write bad words.  good legibility.  that sorta shit.  Tomiki taught folks how to read. A guy can look at any other aiki art and tell whats going on.  And with the idea of koryu kata he gave us literature.

In writing all you need is a writing tool and something to write on, and a good place to write.   In aikido you need Two guys on the same level, and place for two guys to stand.   You can write on a pile of sticky notes with small compressed, yet powerful ideas.  That's daito ryu suwari waza.  or you could do Koryu dai go kata on the whole damned mat.  You can write your own shit in randori.

Garage aikido will be a different aikido than a Big Mat aikido.  Don't be limited by your space.  Let the space do what it wants.  You may be defined more by your practice space and mat, than your techniques.   We discount enviroment.   You are your space and your first 10 good training partners.  I have a space and I have had maybe 2 or 3 good training partners.  So I aint quite fully formed yet. I'm a rough draft.  hopefully, I aint a rough draft of a phone book.  Maybe I'll be Green Eggs and Ham. Maybe I'll be a good rats nest in a milk crate.  

This week I got to do Koryu dai go, most of it.   When you do a kata, write down a few impressions.  Bubble map what you can remember.  Then try what you recall.  That's your kata.  Don't criticize or edit.  Do it for a few weeks.  Then go back and review.  Then bubble map it, and make another personal kata.  Then go back and review.  Eff order, eff left hand right hand. Do this for as long as feel like it.  Don't try to memorize Moby Dick.  Read it and talk about it to someone who likes Moby Dick.  They'll bring up parts that you missed.   A blind dude learns how to see.  A dragon gets its eyes painted.     

territory vs the map ( pretty koshiki sis)

 If you really want to be like Morty start to use analogies derived from stupid 1970 and 80's commercials. Confuse the hell out of your students to make like you've touched wisdom from some sort of edge of reality place.  It's all comes from you had to be there type knowledge.  And a whole lot of stuff that teachers can't transmit to students.  Like how everything used to be closed on sundays, or the world before 300 channel TV, or video games.  The past year I have been struck by the lack of children playing outside, even in mild weather.   Go outside an play and curing your own boredom is like all the fire and stones, holding down a pillow, type shit musashi wrote about.  It can't be transmitted in words.

You can only have those certain suspicions.  Like how a first release action may not have anything to do with a ikkyo/#6 but a head dunking iriminage action, with that big 10 choke and drop in there. and how #6 may just be a "nicer" idea or the the third girl that says yes, after the 1st and 2nd girl said no.  # 6 may be like taking your cousin to the prom.  It's just a stupid guess.  But its more consistent with the kito/koshikiness of what was percieved as the reality of effed up medieval japanese interactions. 

Modern Mortyism #1
 do you understand the kata as someone who is so bored they are playing connect four with their sister  or are you merely saying pretty sneaky sis over and over.   Try this on an 18 year old kid and then make em do suwari waza for a month.  they'll either think you are a  yoda like genius or go back to playing grand theft auto. 

 

Modern Mortyism #2
This was in my akijournal junk mail this morning.  A guy who understands the so bored I'm playing connect four with the sisters.  no pretty sneak sis.  if you are like me it looks like a 17 kata air show.  It also underpins the koshiki/kito nature of the  8 releases.  cross hands, mirror hands.  dump and pull, dump and drop, raise and drop, dump and rise.   you see the side to side and up and down but you forget the diagonal.  thats the sneaky sister.  this cannot be transmitted in writing.  you must practice.

modern mortyism #3

If you think we don't do this in Tomiki aikido, with our everyday dishwashing of the releases and 17 then I'd say that you are soaking in it.  What the morty-ryu folks call advanced teaching we call dishwash hands.  When one  man is paying attention to the lamp from the rummage sale the other is thinking about the hands.    you've been soaking in it.  this cannot be transmitted in words.  you must practice. 

You may know the territory, but all the kid wants to do is study the map.   Morty may have never been a samurai, but he saw all the essential commercials about the samurai.  He understands what dishwashing can do to your hands, he played connect four with his sister. 



 

Kito, Yon kata, tegatana no kata and the big picture.

This was floating around the friendly webosphere the other day.  It was labeled as something from a kito-ryu dojo, and it has a lot of things that look pretty damn familiar.  I got watching a lot of this guys work and he seems to have a knack for pointing out the obvious basics of movement.   He does some things judo, some things aikido, and some things that ive seen daito ryu guys do on the webosphere.  This guy is definately my type of guy.  

I don't know if this is some sort of kito kata/ exercise but I'd definately like to learn it as part of my tomiki tool box..  I don't do judo and I get it exposed to it here and there.  This kind of thing seems to teach a lot of things that  a tomiki guy should know.  It fills in some blanks in a simple kata that would maybe take you several months to piece together in a judo class.    

Everything that I see goes through the filter of analysis called the tegatana no kata, especially the old school yamada version.  You can see a lot of  similar ideas between what the "kito" fellow is playing with and yamada's walking. Especially when you think of walking movements with the first 14 moves of Yon kata.   In the other "kito" vid you see the guy playing with an offbalance idea.  He looks like he  goes deep and shallow with ukes arm, and then he starts messing with ukes head in a way that seems familiar yet out of place because it goes against some the "principle" that we've drank up in our branch.  If you think of it in a kito frame the dunk the head in the toilet idea is probably catching your hand on the back side lip of a samurai helmet. The kaiten nage is  between a guys shoulder and the side lip of his samurai helmet.  Puts a whole new/old frame on the iriminage counters in the first 14 of yon kata.  

  If you watch the first 7 of Yon Kata look for the dunk the head in the toilet ideas in the chudan kuzushi pair iriminage dunk/kaiten nage dunk.  The other  kuzushi ideas show up in the "kito" kata as well as big as Dallas.   I alway's had a problem figuring out our releases as ways to offbalances.  It seemed like the second and fourth release were the real articles and 1st and third seemed like bounce back ideas off of the other two.  

It's been said that Tomiki aikido is really part daito ryu and kito ryu.   Even though I'm a newbie dipshit i'd say its more kito ryu than daito ryu.  When I went to an akikai seminar in town I got a lot of no eye contact, turd in the punch bowl type interactions from the hakama dans because I moved much differently than them.  I guess I see the aikido as this won't work but it will load up potential for the next thing to work interaction .  Things have to rise to fall, and fall to rise.   Aikikai and related schools see it as the technique is the technique. you do it and the guy falls for you. end of story. There isnt a cloud of potential surrounding each technique.

                     


Anyway,  when you fall trap to that evil comparison game of us and them.   You have to realize that Tomiki Aikido may have similar labels, but its a whole other animal than morty-ryu.  At least post war morty-ryu.  I think the daito/kito is a good label.  Morty -ryu aikido can be called softened daito ryu.  

Koryu dai ichi randori ideas --splitting

Splitting

The first three techniques on ichi kata are outside techniques, the last two are from an inside position. Inside techniques come with the feeling of splitting. Two handed techniques are a tactile reminder that you are dealing with a two handed person.   The feeling is to split a forceful movement, or provideing two simultaneous problems that split the balance resources of  the other guy. 

                                                            

Shomenate is a splitting movement.   You deflect one hand and deal with the other.    Shomenate deals with this in the form of suppression.  The other hand doesn't take concrete form.          

                                                                                         

This morty ryu representation is a kata and not an application.  Although it is sometimes passed off as the application.  The offbalance and throw is not initiated as a splitting idea.  Uke can feel the stimulus of the back corner offbalance, he isnt split into offbalance.   It is a shomenate in principle but couldn't pass the randori test. 



I enjoy watching this lady, but her self defense application is a kata not an application.  It ignores the other hand. No splitting.    click to see it.

 Kata have peices that connect.  Every movement in a kata can't be seen as application.  Kata movements and concepts connect in application.  Its a mix and match.  Here is the splitting inside a different kata.  The hand movements look very similar to the bottle grab only no hand in the face.