What it is, and What it aint.

The majority of my blog posts are trying to figure out what it is, that I'm studying, trying to figure out if there are any dead ends, and exploring ideas that either lead to a dead end or help with my learning and understanding.  Its a matter of what it is, and what it aint.

Tomiki got a lot of flack for labeling what he was doing as Aikido, because it was different in both philosophy and practice.  The kind of" Aikido" I study comes from the Tomiki line, but I would say that other Tomiki/Shodokan folks would say, "that aint Tomiki Aikido."

If you look at Aikikai schools, Iwama schools, Yoshinkan schools,  you will think that we have some similarity to these schools based on the label Aikido.  You'll see shihonage, kote gaeshi, and other shit, and assume that we have a great deal in common.  But trust me we don't.  The problem is the label of Aikido.

My initial crankiness and criticism in this blog dealt with comparing what I study, (which I have to label Texhomiki Aikido for the lack of anything else to call it), to the films of Tomiki and Ohba, to Loi, the Shodokan folks, and to Youshiba line folks, usually got me thinking two things.

1.  Did some one eff up somewhere. ( did they learn half, make up the rest.)
2.  Am I learning bullshit?


The fact that nobody can effectively say what the movements of the walking really mean and what they really teach.  The fact that Koryu Kata(ichi, ni) that contained a lot of Aikido DNA were not taught, and that the randori seemed at the time just a form of bullshit dojo hypnosis. ( I assumed that the slow down, and relax part was just a way for the other more "experienced"guy to beat me. Hold still while I hit you with light touch parlor trick bull shit you dont understand yet. (While I was getting the cotton ball treatment, I was mentally picturing kicking knee caps and nuts. )  These were all good reasons to assume this is bullshit.  But I was getting healthier doing it, and it made my life better so I kept showing up.

I almost started going to an Akikai dojo because they sweated more and a lot of thier techniques showed up in Koryu Kata that we don't formally teach.  But I couldn't handle the bowing to morty,  the hakamas, and the notion that I was paying a hundred bucks a month to do another guys  dojo housework, especially  a guy in a hakama.

But then I figured out what was going on, at least as far as I'm concerned.  Folks may disagree with me, but what we do is more kito-ryu than anything else.  If you take the old daito ryu+ Kito-ryu= Tomiki Aikido equation and try to figure out what that means and look for it.  You'll find the Kito. I'm pretty stubborn and I found the kito.

The Daito ryu is there as well, but more in the spirit in which a  function is applied type of thing.  Get smaller,see everything through the filter of the first four releases in which you only move if you have to, adopt an straight up the gut mentality(everything is either shomenate, gyaku gamae ate, or ushiro ate) everything else is not a throw or a lock so much a "drill down."  and you've essentially squeezed the daito ryu out of the orange. That is if the orange is the 17 and four releases.  This is a simplification, because daito-ryu is a big animal.

The one big thing that people don't look at when they try to define what it is, and what it aint is the impact of Judo on what we do.  Now what I'm going to say is more of an observation crossed with an inference.  And I also want to add that I may be full of shit on this one.

What our branch of the tomiki tree is, and aint, is due to the fortunate lack of compartmentalization.  We try to compartmentalize two things.  That's judo, and that's Aikido.  you maybe at a dojo where there is a judo class now, and an aikido class later. But I don't give a crap if you are in aikido class you are still doing something that can only be described as the bastard child of really damn good judo mixed with Tomiki Aikido.

I'm not driving at this from the obvious angle of well, Tomiki was a judo man, so there is that influence that he had from Kano, blah, blah, blah.    I'm saying that this thing that we call Our Aikido was developed by very experienced Judo players who had been there and done that.  They may not have been the "empty jacket " judo player that Pat Parker describes, but their Jacket was, is extremely light.

I used to think that the light touch, go slow, randori that we do was a bunch of flaky bullshit.  But the more I observe judo, and what folks call light touch judo, the more I understand what is going on.  It's said somewhere else that the reason that we don't do the competitive hard randori is that the students over here were older students that didnt want to go there.  A person could misread that as people were wussing out.  But really it was folks who did the competitive Judo and wanted to learn other things.

What I've seen with judo guys is that they get lighter and better the longer they do it. Bob Rea calls his judo geriatric judo. Hell, there aint nothing geriatric about it. If aikido, our aikido, was developed from folks who understood the lighter and better, or learned judo concurrently with aikido from lighter and better senior instructors, then that  explains just about everything.  Especially, our Randori.  Our randori is about good fits(tsukuri), and kuzushi.  Its about releasing from "grips"  and finding  counter fits.  It aint about the throw.  

But....

I was listening to Nick Lowry talk a few weeks back.  If I recollect, he was telling about a time most people come to tell their instructor, "look you are holding back, there is something that you do, that you aint teaching!"   Well, I think everybody in our line gets there.  I'm there.   But I tend to blame an identity crisis.  We want to use the Tomiki name, and the Aikido name, but we are a whole hell more about Judo than anything else.  I also recall Nick talking about going to an Aikido clinic over yonder and saying how the other aikido folks, many who have seen a whole lot of this and that, had trouble putting a label on what we are doing.  He said that they see us as some sort of "judo."

I have opened up my understanding of what we are doing through observing Judo.   We really do a separated Judo.  I'm beginning to see 17/ big 10 and other Koryu as "grips" that may lead to some sort of foot action,  some sort of shoudler/ hip misalignment that lands a guy in some sort of trouble.  A #6 oshi taoshi is a light grip,  he may release out of it, or walk into it or something else.   The end result may be able to be labeled with a technique name, or it could be labeled: He fell down.

That gets us back to what it is, and what it aint.   And we get in trouble when we teach what it aint, like that's what it is.   I've been to a "real" aikido dojo, and I make them nervous, or  at least scratch their head, or both.  When folks stop making eye contact with you in a martial arts dojo or clinic that means you represent things they'd rather not think about. (Or you may smell)

 So if we aint aikido, and we are real, and have our own substance, then what are we?   I practice separated judo, who is going to teach me about those damned foot sweeps?