I would like you to think about the following question: What is a technique? In each technique you have a Sanshin. You begin with a Kamae, you do what you are asked to do and you finish the attacker to the ground. In fact, a technique is exponential and should look like Gauss curve (bell curve) following the equation: y=e-x2 Except that in a technique, the start does not belong to the technique itself; it only gives Tori the opportunity to apply the technique. The end does not belong to the technique either as it is often done by using another technique. Now why is that many practitioners only focus in doing the beginning and the end of it? The reason for this strange behavior is linked to the understanding of the San Jigen o Sekai or better said the lack of understanding. In the San Jigen no Sekai -the world of the third dimension- we learnt that any action we do had to be done in accordance to space and time. Doing the start and the end negates the time part. There is no technique possible. We know that we have to adapt our movements to the Sanshin of the Ten Chi Jin. Our body reactions are adapted to our environment: weather, ground, and opponent. We also know that all our expectations are leading to our failure. If we think beforehand of the outcome and of how we are going to do a movement we are caught at the ego level. Willing to do it, we get tensed. Being tensed we speed up our moves. Speeding up our moves we fail. We have to move according to the way our opponent is attacking. Uke when attacking is asking a question: “can you get me?”; and he is asking this with his body attitude and his intention. If you agree with the above points then you agree also to say that whatever the starting Kamae is and the way you end the movement, this movement will be alive only in the middle part of it. I.e. the normal distribution. So please forget the tadpole attitude! A tadpole is a baby frog. André Barjavel, a French writer once wrote that a tadpole was: “a head, a tail, with nothing in between”. This is the same with the majority of the techniques you are doing. The start is the head and the end is the tail, but there is nothing in between. Practitioners copy what the teacher is showing but cannot do the technique itself. They start with the proper Kamae and rush directly to the end of the technique so that the final result would eventually look like the movement demonstrated by the teacher. But it is not. This is wrong because whatever start you have, the same technique, in its essence, can be applied. By rushing to the end you are forgetting the Waza itself. If you start your Omote Gyaku Waza with Ichimonji, Dokko, Hira Ichimonji and end it with a Torite, a throw or a Shime, the Omote Gyaku action is still the same. If you focus too much on the form, you forget that our techniques have always to be adapted to the Ten Chi Jin, they are never twice the same. The student rushing to the end is only willing to do the Omote aspect of a Waza. Appearance is an illusion. The real movement is Ura and has to be done slowly and step by step to be understood. Speed in the making will only bring a bad technique. This is why in Japan, when you train at the Hombu Dôjô, all the techniques are done in a rather slow motion. Students often do the start and the end of the technique. But as the technique is mainly what lies in the middle part of it, we can say that the students are not doing the technique. What the student calls “technique” is therefore everything you want except the “technique” demonstrated. A technique is threefold with a beginning, a middle and an end. Stop focusing on the beginning and the end. The Essence of a technique always lies in the middle part of it. There is no beginning nor end, Waza and feeling are everything. Arnaud "Toad" Cousergue
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:49:09 +0000
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