Lesson Contents
- Posture, “Shisei” in Japanese
- Standing Posture
- Standing on tiptoes to flow Ki through your body to your toes
- Move from One Point, “Seika no Itten” in Japanese
- Move to front and back, right and left
- Passing two people coming to grab you
- Backward roll, “Koho Tento Undo” in Japanese
- Yokomen Uchi Kokyunage, Hachi no Ji
Key Points of Lesson
Today we practiced the basics of Aikido repeatedly.
First, we checked the “posture,” which is the base of everything.
We practiced the following two postures to see the difference in stability.
- The posture learned in Japanese school, that is chest out, back straight and chin tucked.
- The posture when you stand on your toes and slowly place your heels on the floor, once you move your shoulders up and down and relax your extra strength.
Pressing lightly on the chest area from the front, you will find that 2 is more stable.
By standing on your toes, you can become aware of your toes. This is the purpose of standing on tiptoes. In other words, by bringing your awareness to every corner of your body including your toes, you can use whole your body. The purpose is not to put strength on the toes or to put weight on the toes.
Also, some people may feel that they are leaning forward more than expected when they do 2. This may happen if you have a habit of putting your weight on your hips or heels in your daily life (for example, when you are waiting for a train or a traffic light and so on).
Move your shoulders up and down and relax excessively. Stand on your toes and fluff your heels down. This process re-sets the posture.
By experiencing the difference between 1 and 2 over and over again, we confirm the feeling of a stable posture as well as the feeling of an unstable posture. In this way, we can quickly become aware of any postural imbalances.
Miscellaneous
- When I first started practicing, I too considered a stable posture to be a forward leaning posture and tried to lean forward, but this was a wrong interpretation. By doing the work described in step 2 above, you will be in stable posture. Now we will repeat this process to deepen our understanding.
- In posture practice, one person (performer) performs the standing posture and the other (checker) checks for stability. The checker places one hand on top of the performer’s shoulder as if wrapping it (hand A) and touches the front of the pelvis with the other hand (hand B). When touched relaxed, hand A will tell you if the force is being released from the top to the bottom, from the top to One Point below the navel, or in another direction. If the performer’s posture is unstable, the sensation of hand A should be that the force is deflected in a different direction than One Point (e.g., toward the back).
- The checker adjusts the performer’s posture as follows.While the performer stands on tiptoes, the checker place hands A and B on the performer. When the performer puts hit/her heels on the floor, it is best to support him/her lightly with hand B so that hips and abdomen do not move forward, and so that hand A keeps the force flowing toward One Point (i.e., the force is released toward One Point).
Let’s walk together.
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