We did our walking kata twice. I tried moving from the center like I re-read recently in Nick’s Aikido book. Pat reminded me of the “keel” idea to help accomplish that. Without trying to sound too spooky new-age here, it’s crazy how different visualizations can make a difference in your movement. The second time through, we tried to imagine our “off” hand being the “doing” hand. That makes a big difference. We noted how that made the “hip switch” part of the kata feel like honasu #2 and #4 at the same time.
Next we worked on releases, focusing on #3 and being in inferior positions. This led to an introduction to “Ichi kata”, a more rarely practiced kata among our Tomiki brethren. Within the techniques in ichi kata, we explored a few concepts, like tori moving his body rather than trying to force uke to move his. This was mind blowing for me, and reeked of the essence of aiki. It was one of those huge revelations that I must have been told 50 times, but I’m just now seeing it. We also looked at the “90 degree principle”, and Pat reminded me that 90 degrees from any direction exists on multiple planes. In other words, if uke resists along the Y axis, he’s weak along the X axis…BUT he’s also weak along the Z axis! Wow.
We ended the lesson with a few minutes of Hubud drilling, and a discussion of the hammer fist (wrist release) bunkai from karate’s heian shodan kata, and bunkai from the punches in sanchin. The latter led to some verrrrrrrrry cool wrist locks and striking opportunities. The withdrawal of the punch uses the “off” hand to either scrape off a grab or lock up uke’s wrist from a wrist grab. I love this stuff.
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