God, things like that happen all the time don't worry about it. As I said it was my fault. The net is a hard place to communicate what we are saying. I agree with you about 'bowling for ukes', although I myself am terrible at randori. Randori is much harder in some ways than real life merely because you need 360 degree awareness (but with a much smaller diameter). In real life a table or lamp-post or bystander can remove 60 or more degrees from necessary awareness, and of course could be utilised in other ways; not just for 'bowling' uke but also for move around and other distractions. In theory anway...my outside friends refuse to let me try
Another big thing is periphial awareness. To be able to not focus on one thing and see and hear every thing as a whole. You can use meditative type practices to tune into this. Sitting down and starring off into space and taking note of things in your periphial vision with out moving your eyes helps. Also sitting down and closing your eyes and listening, not to one particular thing but everything and take notice of different sounds and their location.
don't get hit, have fun with it, remember that breathing is a major part of the techniques also that feeling with your ki will help, I myself can't do that but have seen examples of it being done, its craziness.
kind of like sensing when someone attacks, my sensei lets say when we practice boken techniques will walk around and sometimes try to strike you from behind when you are busy thinking in front. Feeling with your ki is what he sais, its hard to explain exactly by that, but basically sensing movements, when you are attacked, kinda like training with a blindfold, once you lose your sight, you feel you are screwed then you are, but if you open your heart, somehow you can get a feeling of when you are being attacked you can just feel it. I am sorry i am running around in circles, i myself haven't been able to do such an accomplishment yet, but have seen it done. Hope that explains a little better, also my sensei brought up the analogy of a clam if you come up behind it, it has no ears or eyes, if you try to poke it the clam will shut, another force is at work. Kinda like that i guess. Sorry yet again.
Tintin Im surprised you havent heard of that term berfore, I've heard it in many aiki schools. I thought it was a pretty common philosophy so to speak. Now I've done some ki feeling exercises. The one that I thought was most effective is you had a tori and an uke, and the tori wears a blindfold. Now for a minute and a half or so it is the tori's job to keep the uke on the ground. This isnt done with any great haste, it is suppose to be nice and slow a fluid. They key is you have to remain in contact with the uke and after a while you can get a good picture of what his body is doing and where his arms legs and head are just by touching them. With more and more training they start adding slow attacks and progressivly make them faster. I dont know if it is ki or what but you do begin to sense the orientation of an opponet and their movements, its really neat. I know the bujinkan have something like this, they can sense an attack just before it is about to happen. They have a guy blind folded sitting in saza infront of some one, some times the 2nd person is armed sometimes they arent. But they always manage to roll out of the way just as the attack was comming in.
Dexter, I am sorry i too find that your assumptions are ignorant, even though yes there are some people who do practice a randori that if you just touch them they fly, most people I have come across don't. I have seen some clips of some of that type of randori and myself wasn't really impressed, check out a semenar, go to different dojo's, buy some different movies to give you a real sense of randori, different angles are always needed before one formulates an opinion.
I see what you mean, and I understand what you mean by the ability to 'feel' an imminent attack. 'Understand' ,but not neccessarily 'do' yet! For me personally though, ki is interpreted as your current state of mind - your morale. I suppose you could use the analogy of when a football team is winning, their players seem to be that half yard quicker to every ball than the opposition. This is only my view on things though.
MUSHIN!!! or mushin no shin... which translates to no mind..... a GREAT GREAT GREAT example in a movie is in a scene in the Last Samurai.. Tom Cruise keeps getting whacked with the bokken.. and one of the students comes over and says you have too many minds... mind on the sword mind on the opponent mind on the people watching.. NO MIND This philosophy is absolutely important in randori or even a street fight... before you do your randori always remember the key points: relaxation, ki, breathing, knees slightly bent, feet slidding, etc. etc.... as soon as you start don't think about it... just let it come and it will happen now no one is bruce lee when they first start so it takes many years of practicing your techniques to the point that they become second nature... after that happens and you start to make some of these techniques your own.. enter your randori match and as soon as it starts DON'T THINK (easier said then done but that takes many years of practice as well) let aikido come about on its own
good suggestions, i like that quote, my sensei brought that up yesterday in training actually, we were all thinking to hard on the technique instead of training our body to do it naturally.
randori .... hmmm ... what's that again? Alot of Ki Aikido clubs in the UK stopped using the Japanese terminology long before I started Aikido so i don't have scooby about half the things you people are talking about (so annoying but such is life lol). Is randori like a 4 man attack kohyunage where 4 ukes encircle and attack nage? If so I'd say don't get hit LOL.
oh yeah and just a lil bit for titin on feeling with ki ... I'm not sure if it was O Sensei or Tohei Sensei that said it but any think of it as something like this ... Your ki reaches out like the roots of a tree in the ground. If someone steps on your ki they are stepping on your roots. A similar analogy is .. your ki is like a pudle. If someone steps into your puddle of ki, they make ripples. Your totaly right to say ki is a state of mind. If your mind is confused or clouded with too many things you're gonna have more ripples than you can deal with. But if your mind is calm the ripples a person creates are all to abviouse. lol well i think that made sense.
Uh, randori is free-practice. Not 4 on one, sometime you do Ninan Dori with 2 on one and its a game of zanshin, trying to keep one opponent between yourself and the other. 4 on one, you need a reality check. 4 similtaneous attackers, you going down! Col
Oh so randori is a free practice ... ok I've done that in the past but not often. As for the reality check .... none required. A 4 man attack is a requirement for 1st Dan examination in both the Aikido UK federation (which I belogn to) and The Ki Federation Of Great Britain. It's not as simple as four people surrounding nage and just piling in (although it used to be like that). Each uke is given a number and only attacks when their number is called. However the numbers are called out in rapid succession and in random order. Uke can also use any attack he or she likes. If that wasn't hard enough nage is not allowed to strike and is not allowed to use nikkyos, sankyos or yonkyos etc. Nage is only allowed to use kokyunage throws and projections. And there are no imobalisations allowed. All the ukes are Dan grades and fortunatly they are not allowed weapons. The whole point of the excorcise is not to prove nages skill at Aikido. But rather to test nages spirit. Will nage give in or will nage continue? If 4 sounds impossible, 5 attackers are used for 2nd Dan and please say a prayer for me. My 3rd Dan grading requires me to deal with 8 attackers. People keep telling me Ki Aikido is too soft?
