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Unknown
Soft. Aikido looks effortless, but it's actually one of the hardest skills to develop. Let's take a look at these three main points. First of all, softness requires structure. So if you truly want soft aikido that is still powerful, still legit, you require structure. Your posture must be stable. Your balance must be centered, and on your movement must be coordinated.
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Unknown
So we try, oftentimes so early to be soft that we miss the lessons of training with our partner. And working on our posture, the balance, the movement. So this is the first thing that we need structure within our body and alignment. The second point is that tension interrupts movement. So if you think of somebody walking down the street, even if they're walking very fluidly, then they're going to be much more efficient.
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Unknown
Once you put some tension into their stride, then everything, they seem to have this jerky motion. Right.
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Unknown
any physical activity, dance, various sports. We're going to get more efficiency and economy in our movement. If we can get rid of the tension. So our timing is off. If we're tense, I can't tell you how many times, even, for example, in kids class, even when we have our swords and we're in line and I encourage the kids to draw their swords in unison, you know, Kamae and see this sword come out, that sword come out, that sword, that sword, that sword, these two together.
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Unknown
And then I say to them, well, you guys, we can do better than that, right? And I tell them, pay attention, pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. Kamae. And it's beautiful. One of the things that happens in that and sometimes I say this, I tell them to do this, but other times it just happens naturally, is that they go from standing like this with their knees kind of locked out like that, to just having a little bit of spring in their knees.
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Unknown
They're ready to move. So the knees are loose, right? We always talk about the shoulders being loose, but really there's so many different points in the body that will make a big difference in your aikido. If you get rid of the tension in the knees or one of them. Especially for us Westerners and dare I say, especially for perhaps especially Americans, we're really a car society.
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Unknown
We don't do public transportation much, with the exception of a few
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Unknown
city dwellers,
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Unknown
we use cars a lot. So we don't exercise the knees as much as some other people.
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Unknown
the knees are one that often get overlooked.
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Unknown
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Unknown
the tension slows.
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Unknown
The timing and the tension blocks connection as well.
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Unknown
If you have tension in your shoulders, it's harder to read your partner.
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Unknown
it blocks the the connection and thereby it creates resistance within yourself, but especially with from your partner. So a lot of times your partner doesn't even mean to resist you, but they they find themselves resisting you, or you feel that they're resisting you.
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Unknown
And it's because of your own tension. Right?
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Unknown
That's a tough one to take in sometimes
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Unknown
we want to say that it's our partners fault. It's uke’s fault, right? But we have to take responsibility.
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Unknown
I'll never forget this time that,
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Unknown
I was honored to be invited to a Sanden and above training in Tokyo with Yamaguchi sensei. It was not home, but dojo. So I was very honored to to be included. And and, I was signed on at the time, so I like to just made it
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Unknown
My goal always was to train with the person who was taking the most ukemi from the teacher who was teaching. So by about the second or the third technique or, you know, round, I had made my way to Yamaguchi sensei's uke And I trained with him.
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Unknown
I thought, oh, seems kind of stiff to me. Oh, must be me. My perception must be off. Because, you know, I saw his beautiful ukemi from Yamaguchi sensei. And, so we train and train. And then later at lunch, I heard the same thing from many of my sempai. Like, wow, they they reframed it beautifully.
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Unknown
They said, wow. Yamaguchi senses Aikido is so incredible. Did you see how good he made that? Okay, look.
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Unknown
So this is what we want. This is my goal. Personally, I want my aikido to be good enough that whoever is taking look at me for me looks good no matter what threw me. Looks like getting thrown by other people. It's my goal to have good enough aikido that I make my looks look good, and a lot of times it's the other way around.
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Unknown
Let's face it, you've probably known some teachers who expect their okay to make them look good, but I want to be able to make my face look good. So anyway, shoulders, knees, lower back. That's what I would say are the starting points for where to loosen up, where to look for tension and try to release it.
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Unknown
And one way to do this,
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Unknown
if you're in your 20s or 30s, early 40s, maybe just get thrown like crazy, get thrown a lot. Okay, come to my dojo in Los Angeles, I'll throw you, and get thrown by people who are loose. Also get thrown by people who are good. So you have to seek them out. So. And by the way,
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Unknown
I've got seminars coming up in Los Angeles, but also you can join me remotely.
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Unknown
So I do have a monthly membership and also I've got
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Unknown
a weekly video newsletter. So anyway, check the links in the description so I can give you tips. So again, my tips today are shoulders knees lower back. These are three places where you can work really hard to release tension as you move. And you will see,
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Unknown
positive changes when you work on that.
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Unknown
Let's get to the third point. Time. So it takes time. You can't just go to the dojo tonight and go like, okay, I listen to that list zuki video and she said to try it like this. And then at the end of class, like, oh, I couldn't throw anybody doing it this loose way. And, so it doesn't work.
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Unknown
Maybe. Maybe not. You got to try and try and try and work on it more and more and more.
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Unknown
And as you, as you continue to work on whatever,
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Unknown
improvement you're chasing.
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Unknown
The number of neurons required for that movement become fewer and fewer and fewer.
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Unknown
This is what is happening when movement is becoming more and more smooth.
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Unknown
So you have to have the repetition,
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Unknown
the conscious repetition. Here's another interesting thing. My sensei Takara Qihan once, said to my friend, actually I heard it third hand.
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Unknown
He said, you get good at what you do.
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Unknown
So when you're training with someone who's difficult to throw, you have two choices. You can try to force it. And that's what we usually do. It's that reptilian brain I have to fight this.
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Unknown
Or we can take some time
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Unknown
to reorganize ourselves, realign ourselves, and try to do it in a soft way.
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Unknown
So this requires more maturity,
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Unknown
emotionally and physical maturity in your aikido.
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Unknown
strong people especially have a challenge because.
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Unknown
When they get stuck and they can't throw somebody with the aikido technique the way they're hoping to, it's really tempting for them to just force it because that will get the person to fall down. Oftentimes
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Unknown
if Nagi, if Tori is really strong.
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Unknown
So they have a real temptation. I don't have as much of a temptation as they have.
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Unknown
So but let's use the example of this very strong person.
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Unknown
They're doing
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it and
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Unknown
They get stuck partway through the technique,
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Unknown
then
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Unknown
they have a choice.
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Unknown
They could force it
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Unknown
and forget about beautiful aikido or Aikido at all for that matter. Perhaps force them down. And if they choose that path at the fork in the road, then they just got a little bit better at forcing things.
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Unknown
The other choice at that fork in the road, the other choice is they can realign, rethink, maybe move their feet, whatever, to see if there's a way to do it successfully in a soft way. And they might have success and they might not, but they just got better at that style. They just got that much better at doing it softly.
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Unknown
If they force it, they got that much better
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Unknown
at forcing things. So you get good at what you do. The more times you force things, the more you lose an opportunity to try to get better at this other thing. Right? We had we had a guy come in one time to the dojo, oh, ten, 15 years ago,
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Unknown
and, he said to one of my students
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Unknown
I'm here because I want to get good at surfing. I can't do the I think he called it a pop up. I don't surf, so I don't know.
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Unknown
you pull your feet up and pop up onto the board and, and I thought, great, here's this new student. And he's motivated. He has incentive to learn. Ichido. And, and when he said this to my student, I signed up for Aikido because I want to get good at surfing.
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Unknown
My students said, go surfing.
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Unknown
I think he elaborated a little bit. Whenever I want to get good at something, I do that thing. So but anyway, there's truth to it, isn't there? You get good at what you do. So yeah, I was excited to have a student, but he was right. My my student was right. This guy should have been on the surfboard, not on the tatami.
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Unknown
So. But you never know what brings people to your dojo. And sometimes they come
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Unknown
for something like that. Who's to say he wouldn't have fallen in love with Aikido more than surfing? So I think we only saw him for a couple more classes. Maybe he got great at surfing and loved it. So anyway, repetition and then awareness. Like I said, you get good at what you do.
00;11;30;10 - 00;11;54;08
Unknown
Do you want to get good at forcing it? Then do lots of that. If you want to get good at being doing soft aikido, which is more difficult, then do lots of that, even if it's unsuccessful sometimes. Just keep trying and keep adjusting. Don't keep trying the wrong thing. The the the thing that doesn't work. And so you need to be aware and it comes from experience.
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Unknown
So that sort of ties in with repetition in a way.
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Unknown
But experience
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Unknown
gives you some wisdom about reading situations.
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Unknown
In conclusion, true softness in Aikido is efficient power, and the three ways to get closer and closer to success with softer aikido work on structure, release, tension and put in the time. Put in the hours. If you'd like to work more on these concepts, you can either join me remotely or join me in person. I'll be in Ireland in the UK next month.
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Unknown
In Wexford, Ireland and Marple, UK, and I'll be in Boston one night only, July 1st and July 15th through 19th. We are having a summer camp and celebration of 30 years of Archi USA. The organization that I started when I came back from Japan.
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Unknown
they'll be in Shanghai at the end of August, San Diego at the beginning of September, Germany for cities for about two weeks, September 14th through 27th.
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Unknown
I'll be taking some people with me and a group. It'll be a small group so that people will have access to me on the mat and off the mat, inside the dojo and outside the dojo will be having some some off the mat sessions as well.
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Unknown
So again, link in the description. Get in touch with me. Also, October I'll be in Montana and in November I'll be in Redlands, California. So again, keep working. Don't give up. Keep up the repetitions, keep the awareness and you get good at what you do. Don't miss an opportunity to practice this just because you panic and try that.
00;13;56;17 - 00;14;02;22
Unknown
All right. Thanks so much for joining me today. And I look forward to training together with you soon. Bye bye.
