Category Archives: Articles_Blog

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Manon Soavi, Non classé

We Have to Lose our Heads so As to Inhabit our Bodies

2 June 2024 manon

In our everyday lives it is often difficult to take the time. Take the time to go to the dojo, to practice, to breathe. Take the time to let other types of relationships with the world and another inner power than the one given by money or domination develop. Sometimes we have read articles and books, we have listened to very interesting speeches on body practices as means of emancipation, on dojos as tools to discover relationships of mutual aid, a way of “commoning”, other ways of acting, possibilities of feeling “Non-doing” as a regime of action etc. But… But we lack time. One session per week, sometimes two. Although the dojo is open every day, the world grabs us as soon as we set foot outside the dojo. Problems and small worries monopolize us. Work, children, debts, the car, the ecological disaster, wars, taxes… we feel swallowed up.

Sometimes we are also in small groups, few in number, dojos that are still fragile and it is difficult to really feel other ways of doing things. The way of acting and thinking of our society constantly invites itself to the dojo, often due to the lack of experience of those who make the group. Or it is theoretical rigidity that reigns, controlling the slightest sweep and thus losing the basic idea of a rediscovery of freedom. The momentum runs out of steam. What’s the point, we don’t have time. We lack time.

Of course, we lack it because we do not take it. We do not “stop” time. It is precisely to “stop time” that a workshop like our school’s summer workshop was born. Stop the race, at least for a few moments and “lose our heads so as to inhabit our bodies” as Françoise d’Eaubonne wrote¹.

Mas-d’Azil, the meeting

The first summer workshop of our school was born in July 1985, when Régis Soavi created with a few students a first dojo in Toulouse. The walls were not even finished yet, the ceiling was not painted, and yet, they were already practicing. They were only a dozen on the tatami for this workshop, coming from Toulouse, Paris and Milan. Two other summer workshops will follow in Toulouse, in 86 and 87.

Le premier stage d'été 1986 — The first summer workshop, 1985, in Toulouse. Walls and ceilings are not finished.

Régis Soavi à Toulouse en 1985 lors du stage d'été — Régis Soavi in Toulouse in 1985.

Stage d'été 1987 Toulouse — 1987 summer workshop, Toulouse

However, being in the city, the lack of accommodation, the stifling heat, all of this did not make the situation ideal. Régis Soavi and his partner Tatiana are then about to go in search of a “place” in the countryside to organize a summer workshop there.

They take their car and set off on the roads of Ariège, acting as they were used to with the situationist drift, which they practiced in Paris for ten years. They also act according to the mode of action of Non-doing, where it is a question of orienting oneself in a direction and perceiving how “something” reacts. What some also call “situational action”, that is to say, in perfect alignment with the present moment. To do this, we must let go of our “reason”. Accept and act in a “flow” if we wish. This is illustrated by the famous story of the swimmer of Zhuangzi:

‘Confucius admired the Lü-leang Falls. The water fell from a height of three hundred feet and then rushed down foaming for forty leagues. Neither turtles nor crocodiles could stay there, but Confucius saw a man swimming there. He thought it was an unfortunate man seeking death and told his disciples to go along the bank to come to his aid.

But a few hundred paces further on, the man came out of the water and, his hair disheveled, began to walk along the bank singing.

Confucius caught up with him and questioned him: “I took you for a ghost, but up close, you look like a living person. Tell me: do you have a method for staying afloat like that?”

— “No,” replied the man, “I don’t. I started from the given, I developed a natural and I reached necessity. I let myself be caught up in the whirlpools and rise up in the ascending current, I follow the movements of the water without acting on my own account.

— What do you mean by: starting from the given, developing a natural, reaching necessity?” asked Confucius.

The man replied: “I was born in these hills and felt at home there: that is the given. I grew up in the water and gradually felt at ease there: that is the natural. I do not know why I act as I do: that is the necessity.” ’ ²

Sinologist Billeter comments on this passage (which speaks of acting in Non-doing, of course) by noting that ‘The art consists of drawing on these data, of developing through exercise a naturalness that allows one to respond to the currents and whirlpools of water, in other words, to act in a necessary way, and to be free by this very necessity. There is no doubt that these currents and whirlpools are not only those of water. They are all the forces that act within a reality in perpetual transformation, outside of us as well as within us.’ ³

Developing a naturalness that allows one to follow the currents and whirlpools while going in the direction one wants is something that needs to be practiced, as the swimmer says. By practicing with one’s body and also by agreeing to “follow” rather than “choose”.

After three weeks of searching the region, Régis and Tatiana realize that they cannot find the right place. They are staying at the campsite with their two little girls and things are starting to get long, so they decide to go back to Toulouse. On the morning of their departure, Régis has a coffee at the village bar and the owner tells him about Mas-d’Azil, advising him to go and see this village.

So they decide to make one last visit, on the day of their departure. When they arrive at Mas-d’Azil, they realize that this village, less than ten kilometres from where they have been camping for three weeks, they have already been there ten years earlier.

Mas-d’Azil, the cave is at the back on the left

Ten years ago, while returning from Spain, Régis and Tatiana had noticed the circular flight of a bird of prey in the sky, which had been “following” them for a while. As they continued on their way, they saw the raptor land on a signpost at the intersection of a road: “Le Mas-d’Azil”. They had then taken this road, intrigued, which had brought them to a village, enclosed in a rocky relief at the foot of the Pyrenees, crossed by a tumultuous river and dominated by a very beautiful prehistoric cave.

That day, ten years later, Régis and Tatania encounter the same village with astonishment! From there on things go very quickly, in two hours the municipal officials welcome the idea of a workshop with open arms. Although small in size, the village is a cantonal capital, it has a gymnasium, two hotels, a campsite, a post office, shops and at the time a furniture factory still in business.

It will also turn out that Mas-d’Azil has a long history of resistance, in addition to being a high place of prehistory (which gives its name to an era: the Azilian). After the Reformation, it served as a refuge for Protestants. Protestant resistance lasted there for more than a hundred years. The most famous event was the month-long siege and the fierce resistance that the city put up against the royal army of Louis XIII, a thousand against fifteen thousand. But nestled in the rocky relief and protected by solid battlements, the inhabitants, despite many deaths, defeated the army and its cannons.

Even today, although the number of inhabitants has fallen with the rural exodus of the twentieth century, it is a place where many of those called “neorurals” meet and settle. Kokopeli, an environmental association that distributes royalty-free and reproducible seeds, with the aim of preserving seed and vegetable biodiversity, is also established there.

Mas-d’Azil is not the perfect place, it does not meet a specification, but it is here.

A transformation

From 1988, the summer workshop took place in the municipal gymnasium. For the first workshop, there were only about fifteen participants. The facilities were fairly minimal.

The gymnasium was little equipped at the beginning

But as the years went by, the participants, including Régis Soavi, carried out work, developments and improvements. The number of participants increased, to around a hundred today.

The fifteen or so people who voluntarily arrive a week in advance to prepare for the workshop temporarily set a square of tatami in order to practice in the morning during the preparation week. However, for the moment it is “just” tatami in the middle of a gymnasium. The idea is to transform this place into a dojo for the first day of the workshop.

Régis Soavi describes this transformation as follows: ‘When we arrive, nothing is ready. Everything has to be done.

The gym is dirty, there are tags, broken windows. But since people are used to practicing in a dojo, they want to recreate dojo. Master Ueshiba said: “where I am, there is dojo”. For that, we need tatami, it has to be clean. That is why a certain number of people come a week in advance, erase the tags, repair, repaint. We go and get the tatami by truck. People do all this because they are interested, they want the workshop to be pleasant, for there to be a certain atmosphere. It is a whole bunch of little details, we put curtains, a coat rack here, we have to screw there. It takes a whole week to install everything.

And so, for the first session of the workshop. Now, it is ready.

Now we can devote ourselves, concentrate on the practices (Aikido and Katsugen undo), for 15 days. But all this agitation is needed before, this bubbling, this pressure too, and finally everything is ready.

We are ready.

This is how we recreate “dojo”, the sacralised space. The sacred is not the religious, it is something we feel with the body. It is very clear. When we arrive at the beginning of the week, it is a mere gym with wall bars, equipment, concrete on the ground. During a week, through our preparation activity, we bring ki, ki, yet more ki. Thus at some point it “becomes” a sacred space. But it is we ourselves who bring the sacred into the place.

Besides, it is not because we would have a magnificent wooden dojo, with a Japanese bridge and bamboo in front of the door, that it would necessarily be a sacred space. It could just be an artificial space.’ ⁴

Régis Soavi, demonstration during an Aikido session, summer workshop

The summer workshop: the irreversible ephemeral

The summer workshop is therefore a bit like an interlude. A moment when time stops and when time stretches at the same time. We live it and it changes something in us. This is why we can say that the summer workshop is not intended to make another world emerge, but rather to directly experience another relationship with the world. An experience which, even if ephemeral, is no less irreversible. Everyone remains free about what to do with this experience.

Régis Soavi : ‘During the workshop too, everything is organized by the practitioners themselves, breakfasts together, cleaning, we are close to what was done in Japan with the Uchideshi, the boarding students who took care of everything. It is a bit like this state of mind. There is no one paid, there is no staff. We are not in an administrative organization. Everyone gives the best of themselves. It allows, as in the dojos throughout the year, to deploy one’s abilities or, sometimes, to discover them. There are a good number of people who arrived at the dojo and did not know how to hammer a nail. As soon as something was asked, it was “whoa! We need to sweep, I don’t know how to sweep! Make coffee, I don’t know how to make coffee! How do you do it?”

Little by little, they discover the pleasure of doing things by themselves, of being capable. Some have discovered abilities that they did not suspect they had. We discover this because there is this collective daily life, as in the dojos, which is a little different from daily life at home, it is a “collective home”.’ ⁵

It is therefore through concrete experimentation, in the situation, that we experiment another way of being and interacting. Because subverting our way of making society means attacking a whole that makes a system. As Miguel Benasayag describes it, it is first of all ‘a social organization, an economic project, a myth, which configures a type of relationship to the world, to oneself, to one’s body, a certain way of desiring, loving, evaluating one’s life…’ It is also ‘attacking a very concrete system, which can be summarized by the image of the modern European city with its walls, its relationships to space and time, its modes of circulation, work, commerce, which again induce a certain way of feeling, thinking and acting, and whose influence goes beyond the strictly urban perimeter.’ ⁶

Creating another situation means very concretely allowing another way of being in the world to emerge. In our society we tend to think that a situation is determined by an external perimeter, in the case of the summer workshop we could say: the number of days, the number of sessions, the number of people, the geographical location etc. However, according to philosopher Miguel Benasayag, taking up Rodolpho Kush, a situation is characterized first as an intensity. Taking the example of the forest, he explains that what makes a forest is not the perimeter, the number of trees etc. What makes a forest is an intensity: the trees, the animals, the mosses, the drops of water, the mushrooms and he points out that intensity attracts what feeds it… To paraphrase this example I will also say that the summer workshop is an intensity. An intensity made of the place, of the people who meet, who organize themselves, who practice, of the bodies that move, of the practice of yuki etc.

Beginning of the Katsugen undo session (Regenerative Movement)

Françoise d’Eaubonne wrote in a letter: ‘We have to lose our heads so as to inhabit our bodies’. Itsuo Tsuda said: ‘empty your head’. The summer workshop is this intensity where at a certain point, fatigue helping, the work of the involuntary in the body is done more deeply, the “head” finally lets go a little. Leaving a little free rein to the needs of the body, to its involuntary movement. Inhabiting one’s body leads to another way of feeling, thinking and acting. The predominance is no longer in the external principles of modernity (rationality, progress, utilitarianism, abstract universalism), we return to the dimension of immediate and unreflective knowledge of ourselves.

Régis Soavi : ‘For people who are arriving for the first time, a workshop is a first step. We rediscover that our body moves and that it moves involuntarily. It has nothing to do with a workshop where we would go to recharge our batteries to better start again. No. It is a start. Then it is a regular practice. In the dojos we practice Katsugen undo (Regenerative Movement) two to three times a week, we can also practice alone at home. But we have to re-train this involuntary system that we have blocked a lot.’

‘The summer workshop is also a mix, there are people from all over Europe, we discover people through the practice of Aikido and Katsugen undo. Through sensation.

It moves a lot! Some meet people, they arrive alone and leave in two! Some arrive in two and leave alone! Because sometimes it highlights problems that were kept under wraps. We tried to hold on, to silence, but now with the workshop, with the practice of Katsugen undo which awakens our body, we clearly feel that it is no longer possible to hold. When the will to control finally lets go, it emerges, that is all. What is unbearable is finally felt as such. But somehow, it is a liberation. Katsugen undo is a liberation, nothing else.’ ⁷

Manon Soavi

Information on the next summer workshop is here:
https://www.ecole-itsuo-tsuda.org/stage_ete/

6.30 a.m., the sun rises over Mas-d’Azil, leaving for the morning session

Notes:

Françoise d’Eaubonne, private correspondence with her adopted son Alain Lezongar, 1976
Jean François Billeter, Leçons sur Tchouang-tseu [Lessons on Zhuangzi], 2002, pub. Allia (Paris), p. 28
Ibid., p. 33
Régis Soavi, remarks taken from the film A Transformation, directed by Bas van Buuren, 2009
Ibid.
Miguel Benasayag et Bastien Cani, Contre-offensive : Agir et résister dans la complexité [Counter-offensive: Acting and Resisting in Complexity], 2024, pub. Le Pommier, p. 43 & 44
Régis Soavi, op. cit.

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Everything is In Everything, And Vice Versa

21 May 2024 name

by Régis Soavi

Understanding Riai means going beyond technical correspondences and leaving behind the world of separation. It means accepting to rediscover the unity of being so as to feel life manifesting throughout our bodies.

Yes, Riai exists, I’ve met it

To really understand it and feel it in our being, we need to take steps further. We have to go beyond technicality, and not simply reduce ourselves to imitation, while of course respecting those who guided us and brought us the fruits of their own research. When Noro Masamichi sensei created Kinomichi, he revealed more than forty years ago already what he had discovered. He was able to pass it on to his students, this without needing to speak about Riai, because much before already he used to demonstrate its capacities, vigour and finesse in his extraordinary demonstrations that I was lucky enough to see. Tamura Nobuyoshi sensei’s abilities in this field also need no further demonstration. So many others have demonstrated it to us.

Régis Soavi. Riai — Régis Soavi: Making visible the axes of the body that carry the action

Behind the scenes

Whatever our technique, however precise it may be, it depends on a great many elements. First, our mental state before and during the action, as well as our partner’s or opponent’s reactions, our physical condition on the day and, finally, the specific moment – always indefinable. Behind the scenes in our innermost being, so to speak, something is at work of which we are unaware, and even of which we cannot and must not become aware – except in the very moment when it is happening – because there is a great risk of preventing it from manifesting. Solely the people who have accepted to empty their minds of the disruptive noises that clutter it can achieve the unity that is necessary for right action.

When we are empty of all parasitic thought, of all superficial questioning, we are in the natural state of the human being where what can and must arise will be able to use both our potential – which itself will be able to rely on our training – and our everyday life behaviour.

Creating a comparison is dangerous

Seeing the axes of the body that carry the action seems to me the most important “act” for a practitioner, because the lines that define these axes depend on each person, each bodily tendency, and each has its own specificities. The danger of comparison is the risk of focusing on details to the detriment of the overall observation. On the other hand, knowing how to appreciate the true value of a movement, a gesture, whatever the art, enables us to broaden our field of knowledge and, at the same time, our abilities.

Yoseikan Budo is perhaps the art where the reality of Riai was most obvious to me from the start. Created in the late 1960s by Mochizuki Minoru, who was undoubtedly one of the highest-ranking practitioners of several of Japan’s martial arts (Aikido, Jujitsu, Iaido, Judo, Kendo, Karate), Yoseikan Budo is now led by his son Mochizuki Hiroo, who is its Soke. I was lucky enough to meet him in the 1970s, at a demonstration which Tsuda sensei, who had been invited himself, had brought us to. Having practised Judo for over six years, Hakko-ryu Ju-jitsu with Maroteaux sensei and Ju-jitsu from the Jigo ryu school with Tatsuzawa sensei, I immediately appreciated the performance that was given for me to see. The Iaido katas that closed the presentation clearly revealed an understanding of the reality of Riai and highlighted it.

Similarly, I remember seeing a documentary¹ in the early 1990s on Tai Chi Chuan, which presented the work of Master Gu Meisheng, and being extremely impressed by his body movements and the way he moved during his demonstrations. I could see very precisely the same body movements as my master Tsuda Itsuo, the techniques were fundamentally different, but both the spirit and that something which inhabited him gave an incredible result: I could see my master alive and yet it was not him. I purchased the video cassette and we watch it in the dojo whenever appropriate, like during our summer workshop.

Comparing the effectiveness of the technique without seeing what is essential in the movement would be a serious mistake. Sometimes, regardless of potential technical skill, it is the mere presence or the determination of the person – in other words, the concentration of Ki (Chi in the Chinese arts) – that will suffice to solve a problem.

KA MI breathing

What lies behind all movement, and what we often do not perceive well enough, is “breathing”. Just as blood circulates through every part of our body, even the smallest, breathing – particularly as oxygenation – also circulates without interruption through every cell. It is the vector of our ability to move, therefore to change your position, and so to react when needed. The visualisation of breathing is the emerging awareness of the reality of Ki. It is very difficult to conceive of Ki, which is in the realm of feeling, and that is why martial arts masters use different methods in their teaching to enable their students to approach this perception. It is especially through the pronunciation of the names Ka and Mi that Tsuda sensei taught us that we can understand the common identity existing between all the techniques and between all the arts. This does not take anything away from the specificity of each technique or art, but opens up a window of understanding.

Itsuo Tsuda, exercice de respiration Ka-Mi durant la pratique respiratoire. Riai — Tsuda Itsuo: *Ka-Mi* breathing exercise during breathing practice

Each time you breathe in, you say the word Ka (the Japanese radical for “fire”) mentally, or in a low voice to aid visualisation, and each time you breathe out the word Mi (the Japanese radical for “water”); little by little, you integrate this way of doing things and then visualisation becomes easier and easier. So much that you no longer have to worry about it, except for certain exercises that require greater concentration. It is important to know that visualisation has nothing to do with imagination, because it is an act produced by the concrete action of the koshi, which is in direct contact with reality. Imagination, on the other hand, is a product of the higher areas of the brain, whose aim is to take us into an abstract and therefore fundamentally unreal world.

Thanks to this teaching, it is possible to realise that our perception of time is dilated in this reality that is our everyday life. This is something everyone has experienced at least once, if not many times, in their lives. For example, when you are waiting for a bus that is two minutes late, time seems very long, while an evening with friends has passed before you realise it. But this visualisation technique, which is based on breathing, can reveal much more than these simple observations; it can reveal to us a universe we were previously unaware of. Tsuda sensei described some aspects of this when he wrote in his second book:

‘Time dilatation is the very foundation of Seitai technique. Between exhalation and inhalation, there is a ceasing of respiration, a pause during which a person cannot react in any way. This space, as we may realize, is almost imperceptible ; it seems that the inhale and exhale follow each other with no disruption. But for Noguchi,² it is like a wide open door.

[…]

Moreover, the break in respiration is the place where any technique really works, be it Judo, Kendo, or Sumo. Inhalation helps muscles to contract, exhalation helps them relax. But during retention, one can neither contract nor relax. If it is after the inhale and before the exhale, try as we might, we remain stiff. We get ourselves carried away over someone’s shoulder, for example.’ ³

It is up to each of us to use this discovery for the well-being of all.

Non-Doing

Why talk about Non-Doing in an article on Riai? Because I think it is one of the most important keys to martial arts practice, and one that is too little known or neglected today, because it escapes the current state of commonly accepted so-called scientific experimentation. This key is considered to be part of the mystical domain, whereas it used to be the basis of ancient teachings and, by the same token, of the knowledge of our masters in many martial arts. All techniques have grown on the basis of the involuntary and often unconscious experience of the human body, regardless of gender, latitude or age. All techniques have been developed and linked together in order to be more effective in the face of adversity. They are all born out of a response to an action, whether it has already begun or is just beginning. Precision comes later, and stems from the axes, the atmosphere, and the will that arises from the encounter, from the danger that is revealed or not, and therefore from necessity.

Aikido is an art of the Non-Doing (so renowned wu-wei in ancient China) and this is what O-sensei passed on during the last ten years of his life – advocating peace and promoting what we today call symbiosis, rather than parasitism and so-called “Struggle for Life” so misunderstood even in Darwin‘s time.

Tsuda sensei, by insisting on people’s capacity for fusion and coordinated breathing, gave us an orientation and made possible this research which some of us are continuing. O-sensei, who no longer had a technique that was really detectable or comprehensible, as the masters who knew him directly in their youth explained to us, guides us in the foreground to move in this direction. If we move away from the idea of efficiency and, by the same token, performance – so dear to our so-called modern or yet civilised society – we will have the possibility to encounter life, and to be able to deploy our capacities, which will then be able to draw on this ancestral knowledge that is all too often devalued.

Régis Soavi

‘Everything is in everything, and vice versa’, an article by Régis Soavi published in January 2024 in Self et Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 16.

Notes :

Yolande du Luart, Le Taiji quan : de Shanghai à Pékin à la recherche du qi [Taiji quan: from Shanghai to Beijing, in search of qi], 1991
[Noguchi Haruchika: creator of the Seitai technique and Katsugen undo (Translator’s note)]
Tsuda Itsuo,The Path of Less, Chap. XII, Yume Editions (Paris), 2014, pp. 124–6 (1^st ed. in French, 1975, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), pp. 117–8)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

To See

10 March 2024 name

by Régis Soavi

‘That is all the master asks, for his teaching to be stolen; for him, it is extremely simple, but for others, it seems mysterious, incomprehensible, implausible.’ ¹

Seeing, feeling

Even if we start Aikido with superficial ideas coming from the world around us, it is important that, little by little, they come closer to reality and become a tool for reclaiming the body – our authentic body.

At each session I conduct, after the first part – which each person does alone but in harmony with the others, and which is essentially based on exercises of Ki circulation –, I begin by demonstrating a technique that, a priori, a large number of practitioners already know. The whole point of the demonstration is to convey a message through the executed movement. A dialogue is being initiated, it is not just a technique, nor even a way of doing things, because each practitioner, depending on their level, attention span and ability at the time, should be able to find what they need to deepen their practice. It is more about transmission than anything else.

I insist on an element – precision, distance, or any other particularity – so that something I want to make concrete is clearly visible and becomes a form that is obvious by its simplicity and so that, through the work and training that follow, the body as a whole no longer has to think but acts naturally, rediscovering its spontaneity.

voir — Calligraphy by Tsuda Itsuo: Chiselling an insect, engraving a flower

Chiselling an insect, engraving a flower

In China there is a common expression, a proverb, which means “easy work” and whose first two ideograms are the same as Tsuda sensei’s calligraphy in small seal style (sigillary): 雕蟲小技 chiselling insect small technique.

This calligraphy (see photo) can therefore express: “Engraving a flower is very easy, as is carving an insect.”

The proverb means anyone can carve or draw a small flower because it is a simple and easy work to carry out, but that consequently points out only great masters can produce a remarkable work. It all depends on the kokyu. Tsuda sensei comments on the meaning of this word in his second book, The Path of Less. It is rare to have so simple and precise a definition that allows us Westerners – at first sight presumably unprepared – to grasp its content:

‘In learning a Japanese art, the question of “kokyu” always arises, strictly speaking, the equivalent of actual respiration. But the word also means to have a knack for doing something, to know the trick. When there is no “kokyu”, we cannot do a thing properly. A cook needs “kokyu” to use his knife well, and a worker his tools. “Kokyu” cannot be explained; it is acquired.

[…]

When we acquire “kokyu” it seems that tools, machines, materials, until then “indomitable”, suddenly become docile and obey our commands with no resistance.

Ki, kokyu, respiration, intuition are themes that are pivotal to the arts and crafts of Japan. It constitutes a professional secret, not because people want to keep it like a patent, or a recipe for earning their living, but because it cannot be passed on intellectually. Respiration is the final word, the ultimate secret of learning. Only the best disciples gain access to it, after years of sustained effort.’ ²

The role of the teacher

One of the roles of the teacher – by no means the only one – is to act, among other things, as some kind of conductor. They set the tempo, suggest different ways of interpreting a technique, taking it in a particular direction to bring out its full potential, in the same way that the maestro gives instructions on “how to interpret” a piece of music, by emphasising a note, a series of notes or a particular feature. The teacher, like the conductor, has a very important role to play, and the way they conduct an Aikido session can make it boring or captivating; too fast and without precision, for example, it can miss its objective, even though the intention was good; just as a conductor can derail a very sensitive piece of music if they conduct too harshly. Neither too rigid nor too soft, flexible while convincing, both conductor and teacher give their interpretation of what they have felt, what they have understood of their art, of the music as well as the session being conducted. Another conductor or another teacher will see different things, different accents to bring out, and each will insist on different aspects.

Relationships with musicians and students alike are also decisive. If the conductor is dictatorial, they will not win the support of the people who are supposed to follow them; at best they will obtain a submission that can only render the musical work commonplace or the Aikido class spiritless and joyless. Like the conductor, who should never forget that they are not the composer and that they must respect the work for what it is – or what they think or feel it to be –, the martial arts teacher is not the creator of the art they wish to develop and make known; they are its interpreter, however inspired they may be. Composer Beethoven himself, I believe, used to say that he was simply transcribing the music he heard, which already existed in the universe around him. We are, similarly, only interpreting what O-sensei did, what we know about him, what we were able to perceive from the videos of the time, what various masters were able to pass on to us – and, more specifically, what I personally was able to discover thanks to direct contact with Tsuda sensei over all these years. But O-sensei himself considered his art was given, transmitted to him by something greater than himself, something that he perceived and tried to communicate through his movements, person, words, posture, or quite simply his presence.

The fact remains that each session is a challenge and depends on the atmosphere one has been able to create. The great conductor Sergiu Celibidache believed no matter how many rehearsals, how committed each musician was, how attentive the audience, everything could be put into question at the last moment. The concert, as an ultimate moment of truth, depends on elements that are sometimes unpredictable and which, whether favourable or not, change the course of the event, of the demonstration. The role of the teacher is to enable each student to develop their abilities even beyond what they can conceive or perceive thereof.

Working on the body

It is through sincere work on the body that we can open up our mental structure, alienated by deeply dualistic habits of reasoning and reacting. Demonstrations exist only to show that something is possible and can enable us to change what binds us if we move in a direction with sincerity. The body needs recover its natural base, what it really is deep down, and not be modelled to follow the desires of an era, a fashion, or a self-image pre-printed on a brain that is weakened by its environment. The demonstration of a technique depends on multiple factors that require an ad hoc response and not an unconditional riposte provided for in the nomenclature. It should make it possible for everyone to feel concerned with what is happening in front of them so that they know how to react accordingly, regardless of their environment, but rather by integrating what surrounds them to create a situation that will provide a calm – and, if possible, peaceful – solution to any act that might become unpleasant or even dangerous.

Which partner to use

I have often seen teachers regularly use their best student as their uke. When this choice seems wise for public demonstrations or “open days”, because they are about showing the beauty of the art or its effectiveness – without risk for the partner, who knows how to fall in all circumstances –, it loses its meaning in daily practice where the aim is, I think, quite different. Working with experienced students is often rewarding because of their availability, the quality of their movements or the responsiveness they provide, but the drawback is that they often try to show off their teacher. With a beginner, especially a very beginner for that matter, this is completely different, there is no room for error, you have to be particularly available to this body which is not used to moving, reacting in this situation and which risks hurting itself for nothing. You really need understand, feel the other person, and be able despite it all to pass on the message you want to convey, if you want to enable the learning process and development of the people who come to learn. I have always found it interesting to do my demonstrations with people who are far less advanced, or even complete beginners, for that allows me to show and even demonstrate that adapting to the other person’s body is one of the secrets of the Non-Doing.

The secret of the living

Demonstrations during a session should always be adapted to the type of people present so that they can perceive the circulation of Ki through impregnation, which is way more difficult to achieve when these demonstrations are mediatised. Books containing drawings or photos can only be used as a technical aid or complement that is sometimes essential, but they can be no substitute for in vivo demonstrations. Videos can also be useful to get to know the different schools or the “historical masters”, but also – and perhaps even more so – to give an image of our art and thereby arouse the desire to discover its beauty as well as its effectiveness. Yet, whether in music or in martial arts, the secret lies beyond form or training; in my opinion, it lies rather in the manifestation of the living, which we can only discover through what we have felt in contact with it. An amateur musician can animate a folk ball and enable a whole village to find unity in the pleasure of being together because she or he partakes in the atmosphere. In a dojo, the living – and therefore ki – manifests through what innerly animates the person conducting the session. It is their inner quality that expresses itself in demonstrations, whether fast or slow, powerful or subtle and penetrating. It is the Ki they give off that leads us to start practising Aikido, drives us to continue or sometimes flee the place. Nothing can replace living experience, neither speeches nor smiles nor false pretences. Demonstrations during sessions are for me the ultimate reference, “a moment of truth”.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article? Subscribe to the newsletter:

Article by Régis Soavi published in Self et Dragon (Spécial Aikido n° 15) in October 2023.

Notes:

Tsuda Itsuo, The Unstable Triangle, Chap. XVIII, Yume Editions (Paris), 2019, p. 136 (1^st ed. in French, 1980, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 132)
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. III, Yume Editions (Paris), 2014, pp. 33–34 (1^st ed. in French, 1975, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 31–32)

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, Noguchi

To Live Seitai

1 February 2024 name

by Régis Soavi

Seitai: philosophy or therapy?

‘Seitai deals, above all, with the individual in his or her individuality, and not with an average person created out of statistics.

Life itself is invisible, but in manifesting itself in individuals, it creates an infinite variety of different combinations.’¹ (Tsuda Itsuo)

Seitai Ky?kai, Tokyo. Session of Katsugen Undo in 1980. — Seitai Kyōkai in Tōkyō. Session of Katsugen Undō around 1980.

Seitai 整体, and its corollary Katsugen undō², are recognised in Japan since the sixties by the Ministry of Education (today Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) as a movement of education. They are not recognised as a therapy – which would rather be recognised by the Ministry of Health. The ambiguity between the two, however, is still being maintained by a great many of its disclosers.

Since the publication in the seventies of Tsuda Itsuo’s work, Seitai makes many dream among those interested in New Age, Orientalist techniques or else. At times one becomes a technician overnight, at times one adds ‘appealing ingredients’ as Tsuda sensei himself would write. It is time to put things into order, to try and clarify all this, and to that end we need only refer to Tsuda Itsuo’s teaching as well as the original texts from the creator of this teaching, this science of the human being, this philosophy.

Noguchi Haruchika 野口晴哉 sensei

Noguchi Haruchika sensei (1911–1976), founder of Seitai.

This Japanese man, founder of the Seitai Institute³, is the author of about thirty books, three of which have been translated into English. He is also the discoverer of the techniques that enable the triggering of the Regenerating Movement as an exercise of the “involuntary system”⁴. As a young boy, he discovers he has a capacity which he believes unique and “extra-ordinary”: that of “healing people”. He discovers this capacity during the big 1923 earthquake which devastates Tōkyō city, by relieving a female neighbour who suffers from dysentery, simply by putting his hand on her back. Rumour spreads very fast, and people hurry to his parents’ address in order to receive care. All he does is to lay his hands on the people, who go home relieved of their aches. He then starts a career as a healer – he is only twelve years old – and his reputation increases so much that, at the age of fifteen, he opens his first dōjō right in Tōkyō.

But Noguchi sensei wonders: what is the force acting when he lays his hands and why does he alone have this power? Instead of taking advantage of what he thinks to be a gift and collecting the related profits, he searches, asks himself questions, starts studying on his own.

For years, he will look for solutions to problems raised by his clients through the techniques coming from acupuncture of ancient traditional Chinese medicine which he studies with his uncle, from Japanese medicines (kanpō 漢方), various shiatsu, kuatsu, and even Western style anatomy, etc. His reputation is so wide that he is known and recognised internationally. For that matter, he will meet later many therapists including some who are already – or will become – well-known, like Oki Masahiro, creator of Oki-dō Yoga, or Kishi Akinobu sensei, creator of Sei-ki Shiatsu, or even, better known in France, Moshé Feldenkrais, with whom he will exchange many times. Yet, he has already understood that this force he feels in himself does not belong to him as an individual, but that it exists in all human beings – that is what he will call later the cohesive force of life.

Seitai: a global view

In the fifties, Noguchi sensei changes his orientation completely. Through his practical experience and personal studies, he comes to the conclusion that no healing method can save the human being. He drops therapeutics, conceives the idea of Seitai as well as Katsugen Undō. Back then, he already declares: ‘Health is a natural thing which requires no artificial intervention. Therapeutics reinforces links of dependence. Diseases are not things to be cured, but opportunities to be used in order to activate the organism and restore its equilibrium’ – as many themes he will take up again later in his books⁵. So he decides to stop healing people and spread Katsugen Undō, as well as Yuki⁶, which is not the prerogative of a minority but a human and instinctive act.

The findings of Noguchi Haruchika sensei lead to see Seitai as a philosophy – and thus not as a therapy – and he himself would define it as such in his books⁷. This does not mean that what he was doing and teaching did not have consequences on health, quite the opposite since his field of competence was in the service of persons and consisted in enabling individuals to live fully. Despite this, a certain number of people, in his time as much as today, were disturbed by such a drastic opinion and this brought about a confusion between fields for those who would see and understand only according to their own opinion. As a result, they favoured the support to people at the cost of the awakening of the being.

The technicity of this very great master was unanimously recognised in Japan, he even had been president of the Manual Therapists Association during the prewar period. But his work, that he would consider an accompaniment, a guide, a Seitai orientation, would go much further than healing people who came to see him; it was rather a matter of enabling each person to retrieve their inner life force – and in this he was incredibly efficient.

He explains that very often it is the Kokoro⁸ that is affected, disturbed, and that driving this Kokoro in the right direction is enough for the person to retrieve the health that had been lost. Making Ki flow in the right direction was his favourite technique; this may seem rather easy, but reality is quite different. One does not become a Seitai guide overnight, it is not about trying to stimulate an area or another using conjuring tricks but about understanding, feeling where the problem comes from in order to allow Ki to flow in the right direction and make life work. Noguchi sensei had an extraordinary intuition and the quality of his sensations, the sharpness of his observation made him a really remarkable person – and even one whom some of his contemporaries would consider formidable in some respects because of his extreme perspicacity.

Tsuda Itsuo (19141984). He introduced Seitai in Europe in the 70s after having been studying with Noguchi sensei for twenty years.

A dream

Health has become a technological dream. From the 19^th century concept, summarized so well by Jules Romain in his play Knock, according to which every healthy person is considered as a person unaware that they are sick, we have shifted into the 20^th century concept which claimed it would eradicate diseases thanks to pharmaceutical chemistry and rays. As for the 21^st century, it proposes to solve all problems with genetics or transhumanism.

The analysis claims to become more and more thorough, we have shifted from dissection to sequencing. By cutting up the human being into increasingly smaller pieces, down to cells and now genes and even smaller, we are losing sight of the whole, we are moving away from the notion of the individual (from the Latin individuum: what is indivisible) and, as a curious consequence, we are compelled to treat the human being in general and no longer in particular. The human being appears like a collection of parts. Each part of the body has its own specialist, including the psyche of course, and all these specialists take care of their clients’ symptoms. For ideological or even religious reasons, when the expected result is lacking with classical medicine, we turn to what are called alternative medicines. These can be ancestral methods of great value as well as small fiddles. We can find around us lots of recipes promulgated on the internet, and forwarded by our friends and acquaintances, each thinking they have the solution to all our problems of health, energy, or simply to an ordinary disorder.

The symptom

We persist in removing the symptom, because it is the symptom that disturbs us. Of course, we cannot deny its importance, it is the sign, often the indicator, of a problem that had not yet been perceived. But it is also and above all the expression of the work done by our organism to solve this difficulty. Often, body problems are misunderstood and we want to solve them as fast as possible without really seeking the root cause. We need only make the symptom disappear to satisfy everyone, to think we are cured, even though most of the time we have simply put the problem aside and, even sometimes, prevented the body from reacting.

The body has its reasons that reason does not know

Noguchi Hirochika, Seitai founder’s elder son, with Régis Soavi, during his visit in Paris in November 1981

There is no perfect nor immutable body, the body moves continuously from the outside as well as from the inside, life itself wants it so. But we really must take into account that this movement or rather these movements come also as a result of our corporal tendencies, themselves resulting from our birth, genes, as well as from the way we use our body through work, sports, martial arts, thus in general through every activity, whatever. For instance, a recurring phenomenon in martial arts and more generally in sports is to feel pain in one or both knees. The most common answer to it would be to treat pain where it occurs, anaesthetize it, prevent swelling, etc. Actually, in such a case as in so many others, one is just forgetting or even denying that this is a natural response of the body to a much broader issue, a posture problem or a misuse of the body.

Noguchi Haruchika left us a most precious tool which enables better understanding of human beings according to the polarization of energy (Ki) in the different regions of the body. This tool, the Taiheki⁹ concept, makes possible for us to perceive the individual through their unconscious movement according to their corporal habits and what results from them. Noguchi sensei used an animal-type comparison system designed in his early researches as a careful observation of human movement, which he reduced for purpose of teaching to six groups comprising as a whole twelve main tendencies. Each of the five first groups is in relation to a lumbar vertebra and a corporal system (urinary, pelvic, pulmonary, etc.) while the last one rather describes a general state of the body.These tendencies, resulting from ki coagulation and stagnation, are caused by the stiffening or flabbiness of the body when it can no longer regenerate, recover from the fatigues imposed on it.

Let us take an example so as to make things concrete: many persons tend to lean more on one leg rather than on the other. This tendency may result, among other things, either from what is known in Seitai as lateralism, or from torsion, which like other corporal deformations are absolutely involuntary, just being the result, the response of the body trying to maintain its equilibrium.

In the case of a torsion, the support leg is used to prepare to spring, to attack or to defend oneself – in any case to win. If lateralism is involved, we are rather dealing with a condition resulting from digestive or sentimental tendencies with a deformation occurring at the second lumbar level, a condition inclining to concert, to diplomacy. In both examples, the same leg will be used as a supporting point, thus constantly bearing most of the weight and so getting tired and tending to wear out more and become rigid. This dissymmetry affects the whole body and, obviously in the first place, particularly the spinal column. Through swelling resulting from a liquid supply, or through pain, even often through both reactions, the body tries to relieve the knee that bears the heaviest tribute, preventing us from using it until healing is completed, that is, the whole body equilibrium is restored. If this development is impeded through bringing down the swelling and removing the pain, the body, which has become insensitive, will go on leaning on the same side and the situation will get worse. The body will try by all means to retrieve its equilibrium, first by renewing the knee problems as soon as sensitivity has been recovered there, then gradually the hips will start compensating the lack of flexibility and finally it will be the back, that is the spinal column, with all the resulting consequences one may imagine.

Is back pain not considered the most common problem in our civilization, maybe even as “the evil of the century”? Is bearing pain silently to be taken as the solution to it? This is not the point of view of Seitai but, on the other hand, preserving balance from the beginning, from birth, consists in accepting little disturbances and guiding in daily life the body in the right direction, day after day. If one has ignored the manifestations of one’s own body, it becomes necessary to go through a corporal relearning, a slow but deep equilibrium restoration. If, on the other hand, one does not accept one’s own body’s work, one will then have to accept progressive desensitization, progressive stiffening and its consequences: some sort of Robotization or weakening and inability to react.

To live Seitai

According to Noguchi sensei, beginning to take care of children at birth was already late. The months of pregnancy, the delivery, the first cares given to the baby were fully part of his concern about the child’s future life as well. In his books, Tsuda Itsuo sensei provides us with many indications about pregnancy, delivery, breastfeeding, nutrition, weaning, first steps, etc., particularly in volume four entitled One. Seitai does not set rules to be followed in every occurrence, it is not about figuring out the right solution to the problems of early childhood, childhood, or adolescence, as in childcare or pedagogy books. Seitai deals with the manifestations of life with no preconception, it here again makes it possible to guide parents while, at the same time, enabling them to develop their intuition thanks to a dialogue in silence with the baby and later with the small child. For those who have not had the chance – or sometimes the possibility – to let their body work according to their own needs, are there still possibilities to retrieve a healthy state? This is where the practice of Katsugen Undō comes in.

It is a most simple practice beginning with an indispensable condition: not to think. Tsuda sensei used to refer to this condition as ‘clearing the head’. In The Science of the Particular, he explains what he means by using this expression:

‘Clear the head! We understand the need for it today, when the head has become a trash bin in which fermentation continues twenty-four hours a day to produce worry about the present and fear of the future.

What do we mean by “clearing the head”? Of course not a comatose state in which consciousness is lost. It is a state in which the consciousness ceases to be disrupted by a stream of ideas. Instead of excessive cerebralisation, life begins to stir in parts of the body that were previously dormant.’¹⁰

The notion of individual in Seitai

For Noguchi H. sensei, there is no human being divided into parts but always a single body.

In the light of the most recent discoveries, one becomes aware, for instance through the fascias theory, of the interaction between the various parts of the body, even when sometimes extremely far from one another. Some of these theories made possible to rehabilitate ancestral techniques from distant countries, which had not so far been understood in their depth and had very often got little respect from Western medical science. Other discoveries, mentioned particularly by M.-A. Selosse in his book Never Alone¹¹, have emphasized the symbiotic dimension of the individual, the interaction that takes place between bacteria and the body: the human being is no longer considered separate, modern biology gets obvious insight on his nature as a symbiont. Once more – once again should I say –, one is compelled to consider the whole of the individual.

However, in spite of experiencing a time when technologico-scientific discoveries have considerably increased knowledge about human beings, there is little change from the Seitai perspective, they remain the same as sixty or seventy years ago; the causes disturbing them, disturbing their Kokoro are different but human beings themselves have remained the same. Unfortunately, it can be seen that many bodies and minds are more fragile today, when ideologies about health have designed individuals deeply dependent on all kinds of specialists, thus generating a certain type of alienation which might be difficult to understand or analyze by anyone lacking an overview of society. The abyss to the bottom of which we are heading calls for a recovery of everyone at the individual level and this is perhaps where the Seitai orientation may enlighten us: by providing the individual with a unique tool in order to recover their autonomy, to re-appropriate their own life and live it fully. That is why the practice of Katsugen Undō and Yuki are the two activities proposed by the Itsuo Tsuda School – for they are the Alpha and Omega of the practice of Seitai.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article? Subscribe to the newsletter:

Article by Régis Soavi published in Yashima #7 in July 2020.

Notes

1
Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, 2013, Yume Editions, Chap. VII, p. 73. (1^st ed. in French, 1973, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), pp. 68-9.)
2
Katsugen Undō 活元運動: translated as Regenerating Movement by Tsuda Itsuo.
3
Seitai Kyōkai 整体協会.
4
More precisely, it is an exercise of the extrapyramidal motor system.
5
Noguchi Haruchika, Colds and their benefits, Zensei Publishing Company, 1986. (Compiled and translated from edited transcripts of lectures delivered in the 1960s.).
6
Yuki 愉氣: action of concentrating the attention which activates the individual’s life force.
7
Noguchi Haruchika, Order, Spontaneity and the Body, Zensei Publishing Company, 1984. (1^st ed. in Japanese, 1976.)
8
Kokoro 心: heart and mind, ability of the man for reasoning, understanding and willing, not opposite to his bodily side, but as what animates it.
9
Taiheki 体癖: corporal habits.
10
Tsuda Itsuo, The Science of the Particular, 2015, Yume Editions, p. 159. (1^st ed. in French, 1976, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 143.)
11
Marc-André Selosse, Jamais seul [Never Alone], pub. Actes Sud (Arles, France), June 2017.

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Humble, Yes, But Proud of Yourself

1 November 2023 name

by Régis Soavi

Nowadays it seems that the meaning of the word “pride” has become misleadingly loaded, and pride has almost become a major flaw in certain classes of society. The word “proud” is wrongly used to define “someone who believes themselves to be superior to others and shows it by their behaviour”, when in my opinion it is often simply a conceited and unconscious person.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem, which is eminently respectable, is too often confused with vanity which is a form of self-satisfaction that can only harm us. However, someone “who is supposedly aware of his or her limitations and weaknesses, and who shows this through a deliberately modest and self-effacing attitude” can be said to be humble, even if this humility is false and serves only to deceive people around them. The political world has always been full of this kind of usurpation of the terms “humble” or “proud”. Humility implies a societal relationship, it is necessary in relation to others to maintain an external as well as an internal balance, but it must not harm our state of awareness and the force that guides us in our lives.

Self-love

This begins at birth in its natural form called egocentrism and should not be feared despite the recommendations of certain schools of paediatrics or pedagogy, because it is essential to the survival of the little child. Very quickly, the child becomes aware of being and is proud of what they are and of what they can do or say. They participate in the world not as a dependent creature but already as a creator of what surrounds him; for him, the world “belongs to him and they want to enjoy it”. The life force that struggles to be contained in this small body drives them to exercise their abilities in all the opportunities it finds within its reach, and even beyond. If it is not broken by its upbringing, it will retain a sense of what we call self-love, which in my humble opinion is pride. Self-love pushes us to go beyond our abilities, to seek further and deeper, to discover, in order to be proud of ourselves, what fills us with satisfaction and at the same time stimulates the desire to surpass ourselves, a desire that is inherent to all living beings.

To be proud of one’s talents is the opposite of conceit and to be aware of what one is capable of doing is not vanity. Too often I have seen and welcomed people in the dojo who were no longer aware of their real abilities and so invented fictitious ones in order to survive in a world where only the strongest seem to have the upper hand. Broken down, they wait for orders or at least examples to imitate and become what they will never be in reality, but will pretend to be in front of those weaker than themselves.

A humble dojo

It is in one of those old districts of Paris, which has retained a quiet yet popular atmosphere, that, as an old-fashioned Parisian, I am lucky enough to teach every morning.

Tucked away on the first floor of a former industrial building, the Tenshin Dojo is located in the twentieth arrondissement of Paris. You enter through a door that opens onto a small cul-de-sac on one side and a small garden on the other, which you have to cross before climbing the stairs. There are no flashy illuminated signs, no large photos extolling the virtues of the place and offering fitness and/or physical culture and martial arts. Located next to the old petite ceinture (a disused railway that used to encircle Paris), very close to one of those railway bridges that almost no longer exist, it has the charm of those hidden places you like to discover when you go for a walk in the city on a strike day or on a holiday when the city is deserted. When you enter the dojo, everything changes; although the windows in the cafe area look out onto the garden, and the birdsong can be heard as soon as you open them, the tatami area is like a cocoon of over 200 square metres, lit both by the sky and by the luminous fans on the ceiling.

The dojo is the fruit of the hard work of the practitioners who have renovated it and maintained it on a daily basis, and for us it cuts a proud figure. In this place where the body works and where one works on the body, where there is gentleness and concentration as well as resistance and tenacity, everyone who takes part in the Aikido or Katsugen Undo¹ sessions feels proud to be there, without any pretention, but with the pleasure of experiencing what the everyday world has made difficult or even impossible for some. Everything has to be regained, and if the desire is there, the place lends itself to it. If the dojo presents itself so humbly (that is its Ura side), it is also to allow the encounter with simple and courageous people who will discover its interest (its Omote side) beyond appearances.

humble mais fiere — O-sensei Ueshiba: what a magnificient posture!

Humility and posture

Preserving humility so that we can rediscover the pride of being who we really are is not without interest, and is often a necessity in the face of inflated egos of recent origin, often due to the upbringing of children from a privileged section of society. Humble people are usually depicted bent over, folded in two, head down, which is really nothing more than a sign of submission or renunciation. The breathing in this case is blocked or wheezing and the whole body will tend to resort to deceit if it is not already the case. Humility and humiliation are two different things, you do not become humble through humiliation, the healthiest reaction is rebellion, then you stand up straight to show your abilities, even in adversity. When the body is upright, the skeleton is in balance and no longer crushed by the weight of the flesh, its surroundings keep it in that posture, animated by that vital energy which is difficult to define but which we know and recognise.

To this day I remember Tsuda sensei’s posture as he left the dojo after the morning session, carrying his bag to do some shopping before going home. To those who did not know him, he looked like an ordinary man, an Asian choosing fruit in the rue Saint-Denis or buying a newspaper, but to those who could “see”, he exuded a presence, a way of moving that was different from all those around him. With his back straight and his head aligned, you could say that he cut a fine figure; and even without knowing anything about posture you could feel his inner strength, his “aura”.

Tsuda Itsuo sensei. The body straightens up and stands out in a crowd

One

All the masters who had been students of Ueshiba Morihei and under whose guidance I had the opportunity to learn and train, such as Noro sensei, Nocquet sensei and Tamura sensei, had a very high regard for what had been transmitted to them and felt that they had a mission that they could not betray. As well as others like Sugano sensei, Hikitsuchi sensei, Kobayashi sensei and Shirata sensei, whom I met during training courses, they all had great simplicity and rigour, and were proud to pass on our art with the humility that befitted each of them, clearly knowing how to be both “proud and humble” at the same time.

Obviously Tsuda sensei, who was my master for ten years, was part of this tradition and he knew very well how to put us in our place when necessary, often with humour or mockery because he had the art of guiding us without demeaning us, but rather by enhancing our own qualities and never letting us take pride out of them.

Here is a text by Noguchi Haruchika² translated by Tsuda sensei, which at first glance and for those who do not know the author may seem extremely pretentious, but which can also give us a small idea of the vision of a master recognised as the most prestigious in his art.

‘THOUGHTS ON THE FULL LIFE

I am.

I am the Centre of the Universe.

Life lies in me.

Life has no beginning or end.

Through me, it extends to infinity, through me, it binds itself to eternity.

As Life is absolute and infinite, I too am absolute and infinite. If I move, the Universe moves. If the Universe moves, I move. “I” and the Universe are One, indivisible, a body and a mind.

I am free and without barriers. I am detached from life and death. The same goes, of course, for old age and disease. Now I realise Life and remain in infinite and eternal peace.

My conduct in daily life remains undeterred and unalterable. This conviction is incorruptible and eternally unassailable.

Oum! All is well.’ ³

Tsuda sensei adds a few remarks in his book: ‘Perhaps this thought needs no comment for those who feel its impact directly. Yet I am aware of the enormous distance that separates this thought from Western thinking, which underlies the mental structure of the civilised. […]

[…]

I am.

This statement is simple, profound and sublime.

Unlike Descartes, Noguchi does not need to prove his assertion. His position is not removed from his statement, but “inside” it.

This can embarrass us with its very simplicity[…]. But no one dares to say: I simply am.

[…]

I am the Centre of the Universe.

From the Western point of view, these can only be the words of a madman. Is Noguchi a megalomaniac, a fanatic who thinks he is God? […]

Yet what he says is simply a very banal observation: I am alone in feeling the direct value of my experience. As such, anyone can recognise that they are themselves the Centre of the Universe. To each his Universe.

Mental universe? Subjective universe? How many Universes are there in the Universe?’ ⁴

Calligraphy by Tsuda Itsuo. I am. I am the Centre of the Universe. In me lies Life

A proud bearing

Let us look at O-sensei’s posture when he walks or when he waters his flowers: what a magnificent posture! In the same way, I am speechless when I see how Jikishin-kage-ryū expert Shimada Teruko sensei moves.

Men and women, without distinction, show haughtiness in their presence in front of others, as well as simplicity and modesty in their private lives. Not so long ago, poise was valued, and if it was not used to hide flaws, weakness, mediocrity or even falsehood, it was supposed to reflect the inner self, the “soul” of the person. Today, many values are considered negative or absurd: one sees arrogance, pride, stupidity, childishness, etc., whereas my way of understanding the world saw boldness, courtesy, intelligence or panache, as in the “No, grammercy!” tirade from Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac⁵.

Martial arts, and more particularly Aikido, bring us back to ourselves, regardless of the education we have received. It is a chance to refocus and at the same time to measure our independence and our dependence on everything around us. It is an opportunity, through contact with others, to rediscover our living roots, invisible though they may be, but not immaterial, or rather made of a materiality not yet recognised as measurable. With regular practice, the body straightens up, and without being remarkable, it will stand out in a crowd as a charged element worthy of interest.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article? Subscribe to the newsletter:

Article by Régis Soavi published in Self et Dragon (Spécial Aikido n° 14) in July 2023.

Notes:

Katsugen Undō (in English, Regenerating Movement): a practice which normalises the body by activating the extra-pyramidal motor system (involuntary system)
Noguchi Haruchika (1911–1976) founder of Seitai, whose teachings Tsuda I. followed for over twenty years
Tsuda Itsuo, One, 2017, Yume Editions, Chap. I, pp. 11–12 (1^st ed. in French, 1983, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 7)
ibid., pp. 12–13 (pp. 8–9)
Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act II, Scene VIII, trans. by Gladys Thomas and Mary Frances Guillemard available online (1^st ed. in French, 1898, Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle (Paris))

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Transmission

6 August 2022 name

by Régis Soavi

Teaching in a dojo is a matter of transmission. It is also about bringing people together and serving them. It is not about reinforcing your ego, or being an animator at the service of what people attending the sessions see fit, but about allowing what is in bud and waiting in each of us to blossom.

A vocation?

I do not really believe in vocation, because the term vocation is too easily associated with religion, a semantic location from which we need to distance ourselves as much as possible, because our society has long since muddied the waters. If there is a vocation, it must be primary, materialistic and pragmatic; it will rather be an aptitude, a talent. Atmospheres such as “saving people who have not understood anything, bringing them to the light” etc., are absolutely unsuitable for teaching an art like Aikido, although this does not mean that we should turn it into a commonplace or even prosaic art, a kind of “self-defence”. The act of teaching should flow naturally from the research you have been able to do during your own practice, and in that way it is a transmission. It often starts with the desire to share what you have discovered, what you have understood, or thought you understood, and even if it is not a vocation, there are people who have a talent for explaining, for showing. People who in addition have a taste for looking after others, helping them to progress in an art or a profession, who “know” how to do it because they understand others, because they have a sensitivity that is oriented in that direction, and an affinity with that path.

Pedagogy

Pedagogy in school education most often consists of sweetening the pill, because both pupil and teacher are expected to achieve results. In Aikido, I would say that there are no good or bad teaching methods, there are good, less good and even bad teachers, and what is more, among these, what is perfect for one student can be deplorable for another and vice versa, even, and perhaps especially, when it comes to transmission. People who start practising often arrive with ideas or images about martial arts. Either because they have seen videos, or action films, and have been enthralled by the spectacle. Or because of their personal lives, in which they have experienced difficulties, constraints and harassment, and they want to get out of the state of fear that these situations have produced. Some discover Aikido through philosophical texts, sometimes ancient ones such as those on Taoism or Bushido. No one starts out by chance; there is almost always a reason, conscious or unconscious, always a common thread. We therefore need to adapt our answers, shape our words without betraying their deeper meaning, show and demonstrate, using a refined technical approach, how to circulate our energy, which will allow the discovery of the tool “Respiration” in the sense used by Tsuda sensei, i. e. the use of ki through technique, movement, position shifts, instinct, etc.

The path I have been following

The Aikido that my master Tsuda Itsuo taught me is something like a martial dance, with the difference that, unlike Capoeira, it does not have a form that stems from the need to hide its origins or its effectiveness. Of dance, it has the beauty, finesse and flexibility of reaction. Of music, it has the ability to improvise on the basis and the solidity of the themes played. Of martial arts, it has the strength, intuition and research into the physical lines drawn by the human body. The richness of the teaching I received cannot be measured. Guided by Tsuda sensei, through his words and his gestures, I was able to grow, thirsty as I was to live fully, to go beyond the ideologies proposed by the “spectacular and commercial” world in which we live. Being a post-war child, I discovered myself full of hope during the events of that historical period that were the years 68 and 69. It was like an awakening to life.

This rebirth had ripened the fruit of my understanding of the world. In such a short time I had grown so much that all that was missing was the blossoming of what I really was. My meeting with my master was no accident. Attracted by the ki he emanated, I could not but meet him. “When the pupil is ready, the master comes” they say in Japan; I was not ready for what was going to happen to me, but I was ready to receive it. Though upset and turned upside down by what I saw, what I felt and what emanated from him, I was nonetheless approaching new shores, where a jungle stretched out that seemed inextricable to me, so great was my fragility in relation to this new world. Ten years with him were not enough, the work of clearing the way continues, even if today, nearly forty years later, I have been able to trace paths thanks to his indications, these “signposts” as he often said, that he left us.

transmettre aikido regis soavi — The position of Uke makes it possible to show various aspects of the technique and the way to keep one’s center

Continuity

Every morning a new day begins. Teaching for an hour or an hour and a half twice a week does not correspond to my inner mission statement, nor indeed to my credo. I need more, much more, which is why the dojo is open every day, not for financial reasons (although the association that runs it would need it) but to allow continuity for everyone who can come regularly. Like everyone else, I began by giving lessons in various dojos, both public (gyms) and private. Before I really got to know my master, I even gave Aikido lessons in the back room of an oriental rug expert’s shop, and trained a young private detective in self-defence. I was twenty at the time, and a bit like in the Pink Panther films with Inspector Clouseau, I played the role of Kato, trying to surprise him in his home to test his fighting techniques and reflexes. Going further at every level, never stagnating, always moving forward. To discover and help others to discover, and through this to understand both physically and intellectually, in short to be alive.

It has always been important to me not to depend on my art to provide for my daily life. Financially, this has led me to struggle for many years, to be attentive to the smallest penny in everyday life, not to lead the life of a “self-satisfied” consumer, but perhaps that is why I have been able to go deeper into my research, and therefore to teach.

Freedom

Without freedom, no quality teaching is possible! The teacher is responsible for what she or he brings to their pupils, for the quality as well as the basis and the essence of their lessons. Nowadays, all disciplines are framed by rules defined by state structures, and this corrupts the value of an art, because an aikido session’s richness cannot come from trivialised, watered-down, “pedagogical” content, but rather from the commitment of the person leading it. If our masters have been our masters, it was thanks to their personalities rather than to the techniques they taught. That is why they recognised one another for the value that each of them brought, whatever their art, charisma or personality. Pupils had their own preferences, based on their own abilities, their taste for this or that trend they thought they would find here or there.

TAO Calligraphie sur toile de Tsuda Senseï. — _Tao_, sigillary style: small seal. Calligraphy on canvas by Tsuda sensei

A reciprocal and asymmetric relationship

All learning must be based on trust between the one who provides knowledge and the one who receives it, but as Dante Alighieri already suggested in the 13^th century, the relationship as well as the esteem between the “master” and the “pupil” must be “reciprocal and asymmetrical”.¹ The important thing is that there is acceptance on both sides, there is no initial right or duty, no obligation to learn, no obligation to teach. The pursuit of one and the goodwill of the other create this asymmetry. At the same time, there is mutual recognition of one towards the other in connection with the value of each of them. Teaching is not a finished product that can be bought and consumed without moderation. It involves both the giver and the receiver. It is important that the giver is not in the rigidity of the one who “knows”, but in the fluidity of the one who understands and adapts, without of course losing the sense of what he or she is supposed to communicate and enhance. The recipient is never a blank page on which to print the teaching and its values; depending on the era or even simply the generation, distortions may arise and adjustments may be necessary. It is mutual trust that allows to go deeper into an art. If it is only the techniques we need to refine, a few months or a few years will suffice, and then you can move on to something else. But could we achieve real satisfaction with such a programme?

The mnemonic that consists of forgetting²

In Aikido, as in many other forms of learning, beginners are asked to remember, if possible precisely, the technique, its name and the form to adopt in a given circumstance. There is, of course, a certain logic in this educational process, but it has become an indispensable requirement in federations for passing grades, Dan and even Kyu. This cluttering up of the conscious mind is deeply detrimental to the awakening of spontaneity. After a while, learning becomes not only boring, but sometimes counterproductive, and you no longer feel like learning. If we address the conscious mind, it is because it is easier to manipulate, especially when it has been used to responding “present” through years of schooling and manipulation. But if we are content to guide the subconscious instead, we will be astonished to see the individual develop in harmony with himself and consequently with those around him, without the need to conceal his nature with social masks that are so disruptive for both organism and psyche. This passage from Tsuda sensei’s book Even if I do not think, I AM sheds light on the work of the subconscious:

‘Our mental activity does not only begin with the development of the gray matter, the conscious part that allows us to perceive, reason and retain. The conscious mind develops from the accumulation of experiences we have had since birth. We learn to speak and handle tools; for example, a spoon to begin with. Consciousness is not the totality of our mental activity. There are roads because there is land. Without the land, there would be no roads. The part of the mind that preexists consciousness is called “the subconscious”. The subconscious not only works from birth to death, but also during gestation, feeling and reacting in the womb, seeking what is pleasing, and repelling what is not. So the child kicks when he feels uncomfortable. Once a sensation or feeling enters the subconscious, it controls all involuntary behaviour in the individual, which he or she is unable to effectively combat through voluntary means.’ ³

Regis Soavi aikido ma ai — The “MA-AI”, a timeless and impregnable space

The role of the sensei

The master, the sensei, is not perfect, nor does he have the vocation to be so or to pretend to be so. It is useless and even harmful, for him and for certain students, that the latter, despite their good faith and against the sensei’s will, project such an image of perfection, which can only be false, on his person and his work. Imperfect but solid, he is the link in a long chain of teaching and life accomplishment which, if broken, will be lost forever. His role is not to lock students into a school, to force them, sometimes insidiously, into a doctrine, but to enable each one to free themselves from routines so that they can feel the vital flow that runs through this immense chain, just as an irrigation canal is capable of watering large areas as well as small gardens. But the soil must have been worked, made permeable and ready to eventually grow what has been sown in the course of life. Since it cannot be reproduced or industrialised, teaching can never be used to grow what it was designed for if it is not understood in its essence and assimilated in depth by the successor(s), at the heart of their own lives.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article? Subscribe to the newsletter:

Article by Régis Soavi published in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 9 in April 2022.

Notes:

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Hell, Chapter XV
Tsuda Itsuo, Even if I do not think, I AM, 2020, Yume Editions, Chap. VII, p. 51 (1^st ed. in French: 1981, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 59)
ibid.

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Non classé

Fear: An Acquired Congenital Origin?

3 May 2022 name

by Régis Soavi

Fear has a twofold origin: firstly, it is a primitive, atavistic response, already perfectly well known, but it also has an acquired congenital origin, and is therefore a consequence of civilisation.

Although it can be one of the means of self-preservation, it has all too often become a handicap in our industrialised societies.

In today’s world, fear tends to precede almost every action taken by a large number of people, and it doesn’t just randomly appear, it takes the form – I have found thirty-two synonyms for this emotion – of fear, apprehension, worry, anxiety, etc., all of which multiply and intertwine. Each time, it cancels out the act, the gesture, the approach, or diverts them from the intended objective, presenting itself as if, at the very least, it were already “the” indispensable response to every problem that arises.

Breathing, its mechanism

The blocked respiration and breathing difficulties experienced by many of our contemporaries in the face of aggression or, even more so, the threat of conflict, can be explained by a wild, i. e. a primitive, involuntary mechanism, which has become rigid. It’s less a question of a lack of training in fighting or overcoming fear, than of a habit born of that very fear. We block the air, we compress it, to respond in the most appropriate way to what is likely to happen. We hold our breath to be ready to act, we store air by breathing in quickly, because to act, to defend ourselves, to flee, or even just to shout, we need to breathe out. It is the expiration that enables an aggressive or defensive action to be taken and it is therefore the inspiration that precedes it, reassuring us because it positions us favourably in relation to the actions that seem inexorably bound to follow. We instinctively act in this way every time we think we need to defend ourselves, and have done so since childhood.

In reality, regardless of the fact that we might have intended to do so, we cannot always defend ourselves, society doesn’t allow it, there are rules. In many cases, we are forced to stay with an anxiety, stage fright, shortness of breath, without being able to liberate ourselves. All we have to do is to recall our childhood or teenage years, our physical reactions during exams or simply when one of our teachers gave us a surprise interrogation or asked us a question on a subject that we hadn’t worked hard enough on or had skipped over. There are too many people for whom schooling has been a tragic journey during which anxiety, even internalised anxiety, has been one of their most faithful companions in adversity. It is not so certain that, to paraphrase Nietzsche‘s aphorism, ‘that which does not kill us makes us stronger’. It depends far too much on the individual, the moment and the situation, among other things. Difficulties in childhood are not necessarily the origin of abilities for resistance or resilience, as some might think; they can lead to weaknesses or handicaps, and this often derives to a large extent from the starting point, birth, family environment, and so on. But since fear has become a habitual primary reaction, arising beforehand in every circumstance, the solution adopted by the body via its disturbed involuntary system remains systematically the same. Blocking your breath, which was the right response, becomes its very opposite. ‘The solution becomes the problem’ ¹. The body can no longer exhale or move, or even speak, let alone scream. If something unblocks, for whatever reason, then exhalation comes and with it action reveals itself, the need finds a response to the situation, fear takes a back seat and gives way to reactions that are sometimes even presented as courage or unconsciousness, cowardice or common sense, based on the moment or the idea we have of it.

Régis Soavi - La peur - être instinctif — Being instinctive

Prior to birth

It was particularly in the mid-twentieth century that the ideology of preserving the human species by protecting the manifestations of life was born. This concept of protection led Western society into a race towards the medicalisation of bodies that had never been thought of before. This preventive approach, which could be understood as a modern, life-saving response, was unfortunately carried out using warnings against simple risks that were previously considered normal, and which were part of the very fact of living. The fear it engendered gave rise to a negative side-effect on an unprecedented scale.

Over the years, prevention during pregnancy has become a form of hyper-medicalisation that is now a common practice and which has deprived women first and foremost, but also fathers though to a lesser extent, and consequently, of a simple relationship with the body, with their own body. The joy of carrying a child, and the strength that comes with it, has been transformed into anxiety about its future, and even its present in-utero, the life of the unborn child suffering the trauma of the contraction it feels due to the anxiety of its parents. Unfortunately, anxiety is communicated more than we think. In spite of desiring the contrary, the desire to bring serenity to the baby, this preoccupation quickly turns into fear, a fear of movement, of changes and more generally an apprehension in facing the unknown. The consequences are easy to foresee: the risk of emotional shocks and a vulnerability to difficulties that can last throughout the child’s future life. At birth, if tranquillity is lacking and if it is replaced by agitation or anxiety, tension and contraction are produced, blocking the respiration of the newborn who does not understand what is happening, but suffers viscerally without being able to do anything about it. As the baby grows up, little by little, the lack of response to this incomprehension will initially lead to crying and screaming, followed by a certain form of apathy, of giving up, by not fighting anymore when the need is met with no satisfactory solution.

Régis Soavi - La peur - Ne pas se laisser submerger — *Not letting yourself be overwhelmed*

Taiheki, a tool for understanding

I have already had the opportunity to explain in Dragon Magazine (n° 23, January 2019) how knowledge of taiheki can be a useful tool in particular circumstances for understanding people’s reactions. The classification of taiheki developed by Noguchi Haruchika sensei² is based on human involuntary movements. It is not a typology that fits individuals into small boxes, but rather identifies usual behavioural tendencies while taking account of their possible interpenetrations. Tsuda Itsuo sensei gives us a brief description in this extract from one of his books:

‘These are the 12 types of taiheki:

1. cerebral active 5. pulmonary active 9. closed pelvis

2. cerebral passive 6. pulmonary passive 10. open pelvis

3. digestive active 7. urinary active 11. hypersensitive

4. digestive passive 8. urinary passive 12. obtuse

From 1 to 10, we can see the five areas of polarisation which are: the brain, digestive organs, the lungs, the urinary organs, and the pelvis.

11 and 12 are a bit special because they refer to conditions rather than to parts of the body.

For each area, there is an odd and an even number. The odd numbers refer to the people who act out of an excess of energy, in the realm of their respective body aria. The even numbers refer to people who are subject to outside influence out of a lack of energy’ ³

Faced with danger when fear arises, our responses will be multifarious, but they will be so not only as a result of our training or our abilities, but also, and even above all, because of the circulation of ki in our body, that energy which can be coagulated at one point or another, leading to specific stagnations and therefore to different results and responses.

The vertical group

For the action to be triggered, ki has to go to the koshi, but when the coagulation occurs in the first lumbar vertebra, the energy goes to the brain and has difficulty descending. This is why type one people, cerebral active, tend to sublimate their fear, objectify it, turn it into an object they can contemplate and analyse to find a solution that satisfies their intellect because action, especially immediate action, is not their main ambition. We often misunderstand this kind of stance which may seem stupid. We wonder why the person did not react in such or such circumstances, and we may find, thanks to the taiheki, an answer to the questions we may ask ourselves about the mystery of certain human behaviours.

Type two people, cerebral passive, are fully aware of what’s going on, but their body does not react the way their brain intended, although there is nothing unpredictable here. They cannot control their energy, which in this case goes down but causes uncontrollable physical reactions such as stomach aches or trembling that make it difficult to respond adequately.

Régis Soavi - La posture est essentielle — Posture is key

The lateral group

In this group, coagulation occurs in the second lumbar vertebra and affects the digestive system. This is why type three, digestive active, panics while trying to ease their fear, quickly crunches a little something, what they always have on hand in case of need. If there’s a bit more time, they eat something more substantial, a sandwich or a pastry. The important thing is to have a full stomach, so their solar plexus softens and their fear diminishes or even disappears. So they become diplomatic and try to work things out, but if they can’t, they get angry and rush ahead in a haphazard manner, without thinking about the consequences.

Type four, digestive passive, remains inert in the face of fear, unable to react. This is a friendly person, and you almost get the impression that he or she is not concerned. From the outside, we see very little of their nature because they have difficulty expressing their sensations or feelings. From the point of view for action, these persons will appear to be considerate and courteous, seeking to smooth things over and play things down.

The forwards-backwards group

Type five, pulmonary active, has a tendency to lean forward, which facilitates forceful action, regulation or coagulation, or even blocking of their energy which is located in the fifth lumbar vertebra. When faced with danger and therefore with fear, they see it as a face-to-face confrontation. They often act in an outgoing way, but they are also reasoning and calculating individuals, if the fear they feel is logical, they will confront it methodically and will only back down if it is in their own interest, i. e. if they risk losing their feathers. They take action in cold blood because they have prepared for it. For them, training always has a reason to exist, apart from any feelings.

Type six, pulmonary passive, on the contrary, is introverted, inhibited, has a feeling of frustration, but on the other hand is quickly set ablaze, especially with words; in the face of fear they stiffen even more than usual but can either explode as during a hysterical crisis or close up like an oyster, to sulk and wait.

The twisted group

Here the vertebra concerned is the third lumbar vertebra, which is the furthest forward in relation to the axis of the spine and is also the pivot from which the body moves from the point of view of rotation. Without lumbar rotation and curvature there is little koshi action possible.

Type seven, urinary active, twists themselves in such a way as to protect their weak points, both physical and psychological, they want nothing to do with fear, they want to ignore it, and that works. They know they can’t fight it or it will grow stronger and block them in their actions, so they believe it’s best not to think, but to go straight ahead, whatever it takes. They are often seen as heroes or as unconscious people, but they don’t care, they simply can’t resist to what pushes them forward, action is their reason for living and their modus operandi.

Type eight, urinary passive, gets a hard koshi and his fighting spirit tightens up inside. On the contrary, they have a tendency to boast and to get offended by anything. They face their fear if there is an audience, or if they enter a competition, if an opponent challenges them. Even if they can’t win, they will persist so as not to lose, whereas type seven is absolutely determined to triumph. They exaggerate the conditions that have caused them to be afraid, and because they have a loud voice, they can sometimes impose themselves by their screams alone.

The pelvic group

In the case of type nine or type ten people, polarisation occurs throughout the body. We could say that there is a tendency towards tension and concentration for some, or conversely towards relaxation, or even permanent slackening for others.

With type nine, closed pelvis, tension is predominant. They are not easily frightened because their intuition enables them to sense danger before it arises. In any case, fear, even if it is present at a given moment, never stops them in their endeavours. These are persons for whom intuition is more important than reflection. They are vigorous but extremely repetitive, tenacious and rather introverted. Their energy is internalised in their pelvis. They are an example for those who want to observe continuity in human beings.

Type ten, open pelvis, is most capable of dispersing energy. In the face of fear, they find more strength in protecting others than in protecting themselves. We think they act out of kindness, but in fact, by doing so, they forget their fear and their own difficulties. In the case of danger, if they’re on their own, far from trying to fight they may try to flee, because what matters is staying alive and they can therefore easily be considered as cowards, whereas if other lives are at stake, it’s their primitive survival instinct that involuntarily springs into action “to ensure the future of the human race”. They risk suffering from the opinion of others who obviously don’t understand them in such cases and therefore react according to morality or instilled ideas of bravery.

Type eleven, known as “hypersensitive”

They react very quickly to fear because it’s familiar to them, but this reaction doesn’t lead to action; it’s more of an emotional response and they have a strong tendency to exaggerate it. Even if almost nothing happens, they dramatise the situation because their heart rate increases as soon as their Kokoro is disturbed and they can easily faint or have an asthma attack. Because of his heightened sensitivity, they are the ideal candidate for all kinds of mockery, even if they do escape, they know that they can become the scapegoat and suffer harassment to which they would not know how to respond.

Type twelve, known as “apathetic”

For them to react to fear, they need to be given clear orders. Although they may look robust and square, it’s only an appearance, because they don’t know how to react, sometimes by overreacting and sometimes by giving up. They tend to follow the crowd, to act if others act, to do as everyone else does or to wait while enduring.

As society tends to over-protect its citizens, even denying them the right to defend themselves on their own, except in certain circumstances that are strictly regulated by law, individuals become numb, which is likely encouraging a direction that shapes bodies of type twelve, regardless of the original taiheki.

Senza incidenti, così va l'uomo dabbene, calligrafia di Itsuo Tsuda — Without incident, so goes the good man (calligraphy by *Tsuda Itsuo*)

Aikido, a prospect

Normalising the terrain does not mean fighting fear. If this “something” continues to live in us, yearning for greater freedom, but does not awaken, then the fight is likely to be only superficial. The teaching of aikido aims to make individuals independent and autonomous, not to train warriors, which in no way detracts from the fact that it is the learning of a martial art. It’s perfectly possible to learn carpentry or music without wanting to become a professional, but instead aim to be an educated amateur, capable of making a table or a cupboard, capable of appreciating a symphony as well as a quartet or a lied. If you are well primed, you will be able to react correctly in all circumstances, you will be able to gauge the situation, you will be able to sense when to intervene and how, or whether to refrain from intervening at all. The practice of aikido transforms people regardless of their past or their tendencies, but only on condition that they agree to stop in their mad rush to acquire psychological or physical techniques that are supposed to provide the solution to all problems and all fears. If deliverance is needed, it sometimes comes in the act of going “full reverse”, to rediscover the balance and strength that each of us possesses and that is just waiting to emerge and unfold.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article? Subscribe to the newsletter:

Article by Régis Soavi published in Self et Dragon Spécial n° 8 in January 2022.

Notes:

Watzlawick Paul, Palo Alto theory (cf. title of Chapter 3 of Change; principles of problem formation and problem resolution, 1974, Norton (New York))
Noguchi Haruchika (1911–1976), founder of Seitai
Tsuda I., Le Non-faire [The Non-Doing], 1973

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

A Liberating Immobilisation

4 August 2021 name

by Régis Soavi

Is it not a paradox, or even a contradiction, to immobilise in order to unblock, soften and decongest a joint? Yet that’s the way we see it in the Itsuo Tsuda School, because it is not a matter of forcing our partner with coercion or through a technique that has become fearsome by training with a view to future effectiveness, but rather of taking advantage of this moment to refine our sensitivity.

Regaining flexibility

The Itsuo Tsuda School has followed a particular path as regards immobilisations. Instead of seeing them as a complete blocking to which you have to respond with submission as quickly as possible, or risk pain that can sometimes be intense, I see them as an opportunity to make the joints more supple, to bring back their lost mobility. There is a way of working on immobilisations with the breathing that’s much more an accompaniment than a blockage. When practitioners get used to it, they are no longer afraid of being mistreated; on the contrary, Uke participates with Tori in the immobilisation, avoiding stiffening by breathing more deeply, to improve his abilities.

It is the art of visualising the breath (the ki) through the partner’s arm that enables you to get in touch with the other person’s breathing. If the starting point is the coordination of the breath (we breathe in and out at the same rhythm as our partner), this is a first step that should not be neglected, because everything that follows depends on it. At first, and unfortunately for many years afterwards, all you can do is twist the arm to control the other person, at the risk of damaging the joint. But little by little, if we are attentive and do not force, we can begin to feel a very real and at the same time very special energy flowing through the limb we are controlling and throughout our body. Some people are so surprised by this that they refuse to give it the importance it deserves, and risk missing out on a major event, the opportunity to deepen what I call their breathing and thus discover a primordial aspects of our art: harmony. It is precisely at these moments that I can intervene to make people feel that their sensation is real, that it is not an imagination, by touching them in their own sensibility through a direct demonstration, without theoretical discourses. Sometimes, with infinite care and the greatest gentleness, I also show how it is possible, with a well advanced partner, to go much further, not only in visualisation but also in the concrete sensation that can be communicated by making them feel the path taken by this energy that reveals sensations.

When we are attentive and without preconceived ideas, quite empty in a way, and well concentrated at the same time, we can have the sensation of covering, as if on a path, a large part of the body. We start from the end of the hand, we follow up to the shoulder, we reach, always with sensation, the spinal column and we slide very gently towards the third lumbar, which is the source of the movement, of activity, and is related to the hara, the cinnabar rice field as the Chinese call it or the third point of the belly in Seitai. This is possible thanks to a perception that may seem completely new to us, while it is simply a body’s capacity that we make little or no use of, forgotten as it is because of physical and mental stiffening, this being a poor or even tragic result of so many years of conscious, voluntary, and rational control over our involuntary nature, our intuitive understanding, over the very roots of our life.

régis soavi immobilisation katame waza — We reach the spinal column and slide gently towards the third lumbar vertebra, which is the source of movement in relation to the hara.

Circulate the ki

Discovering deep within ourselves how to make the ki circulate and how to pacify it is a quest that has always been encouraged by the greatest masters. It is certainly not an approach that aims to thrill those in search of the wondrous, but rather one that is oriented towards a verifiable reality that we can reach as long as we are interested without preconceived ideas. It is visualisation, attention, flexibility in the execution of techniques, as well as sensitivity that enable us to work in this direction. A large number of arts in the East, sometimes using a different name to refer to this quest, are able to demonstrate its value: Tai Chi, Qi Gong and among others in China, as well as Kyūdō, Shiatsu and Seitai in Japan. If you also seek information, you will find a number of civilisations around the world that, under different names, have preserved and promoted this highly valuable dimension which is the ki.

Everything depends on the direction we take from the start in the practice of Aikido. Tsuda sensei reminded us of this with a certain irony when he quoted his master: ‘Mr Ueshiba kept repeating that Aikido is neither a sport, nor an art of combat. But today it is considered a combat sport everywhere. What is the source of such glaringly different conceptions?’ ¹. While allowing us to reflect on this antinomy, this paradox, he was careful not to deny the effectiveness of Aikido when it was practised by O-sensei himself. ‘Mr Ueshiba immobilised young Aikido practitioners on the ground by merely placing a finger on their backs. At first that seems implausible. Several years of practice have enabled me to understand that it is quite possible. It is not simply a matter of pressing with the strength of a finger, but passing kokyu through it, directing the respiration through the finger.’ ²

Mindset

If immobilisation is to be in the spirit that O sensei was talking about, that of cleaning the joints of the dross that hinders them, of the tensions that diminish their capacities, then the posture is of the utmost importance. O sensei considered that the practice of Aikido was a Misogi, that is to say, it was about getting rid of accumulated impurities: ‘The Earth has already been perfected. […] Only humanity has not yet completed itself. This is because sins and impurities have penetrated into us. The forms of aikido techniques are preparation to unlock and soften all joints of our body.’ ³ To control movements and suppress an opponent so that he is unable to react, all you need is to be solid, stable, to have a good technical knowledge and, of course, to be determined. On the other hand, if you want to act in such a way as to free up a joint, for example, you need sensitivity, gentleness and a good knowledge of the lines that link the body. Nothing can be done without the agreement and understanding of Uke, with whom of course it is not a question of playing the healer, the guru who knows everything, or of subtly imposing “for his own good” this or that way of doing things. There is knowledge other than that provided by anatomy, which can certainly serve as a basis for a minimal understanding, but as amateurs, in the best sense of the term, i. e. passionate about our art, it is of the utmost importance not to limit ourselves to the strictly physical aspect of the technique.

Posture

The posture of the person who performs a Nikyō or Sankyō type of immobilisation, even if it is in essence very concentrated, is even more demanding if you want to go further. The approach, the attitude and the research change our physicality and allow it to acquire a different dimension, one that is more supple, finer and more sensitive. It is essential to merge with your partner, to initially adapt to the other’s posture to enable him to find his place, to position his body in such a way that he can best receive the gesture, the act that will allow relaxation, even maybe the expected liberation. But the immobilisation does not begin on the ground; already in the wrist hold there must be an impossibility of aggressive movement on Uke’s part. In this case, as in most techniques, posture and “Ma” (the distance) are decisive, as is the firm softness of the grip.

Feel the other

The reason I talk about gentleness is that many beginners look to strength to achieve what is the result of long practice and research. Quite often they reinforce their technique, in pursuit of power, by perfecting precision, to the detriment of the feeling you can get from the whole body if, on the one hand, you have physically understood, at Hara level, the circulation of Yin and Yang, and if, on the other hand, instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to satisfy your ego, you have positioned yourself in an attitude, I would say, of benevolence towards your partner. To say that Aikido develops a better understanding of the human being is a banality, to say that we perceive the human soul better takes us into the realm of the mystical, to claim to feel what is happening “in the body, in the mind of the other” seems quite simply delusional and beyond all reason. Yet it’s not so different from what attentive parents do when looking after their newborn baby. Tsuda Itsuo gives an insight into this in Chapter 3 ‘The baby, educator of his parents’, of his latest book Facing Science. Here is a passage:

‘Knowing how to treat babies well is for me the height of martial arts.

A Frenchman was startled by my reflection. “How is it possible to accept such a preposterous, bizarre and incomprehensible idea as associating babies with martial arts? […].”

Obviously, for a Western mind, these are two totally different, unrelated things.

Martial arts are, essentially, only arts of combat. They are about crushing adversaries, defending oneself from attack.

If your opponent is there, you do a Karate kick. If he is closer, you will apply a certain Aikido technique. If he grabs you by your garment, you’ll throw him with a Judo technique. Otherwise, you pull out your knife and thrust it in his stomach. If you can take out your 6.35mm pistol, that’s even better. […]

In short, the point is to accumulate various complicated means and techniques of attack and fill the arsenal.

[…]

However, beyond ai-uchi, there is ai-nuke, a state of mind that allows adversaries to undergo through the danger of death without destroying each other. There are very few masters who have achieved this state of mind in history.

Master Ueshiba’s Aikido, from what I sensed, was completely filled with that spirit of ai-nuke, which he called “non-resistance.” After his death, this spirit disappeared, only the technique remained.

Aikido originally meant the path of coordination for ki. Understood in this sense, it is not an art of combat. When coordination is established, the opponent ceases to be the opponent. He becomes like a planet that revolves around the Sun in its natural orbit. There is no fight between the Sun and the planet. Both emerge unscathed after the meeting. Fusion is beneficial and enriching for them both.

[…]

[…]If the baby uttered very distinct cries, […] it would be easier. But this is not the case. It is only the parents’ intuition that can distinguish these subtle nuances. It is the full commitment of parents that saves the day. If they don’t attach as much importance to the situation as if they were at the point of a bladed weapon, if they are so distracted that they only think of taking out their “doll” to show him to others, “our child is the most beautiful baby in the region”, no one else can force them to do so.

These are conditions that associate the baby with martial arts. It’s not worth listing many other conditions. Nothing beats lived experience. […]

[…]

One of the few remaining areas that requires this total abandonment of the “intellectual self” is caring for a baby.

Maintaining the purity of this kind of care, in the sense of coordinating ki, is a colossal job whereas so many easy and commonplace solutions exist.’ ⁴

Seitai

Without my encounter with Seitai and especially without the practice of Katsugen Undo (Regenerative Movement) I would have never discovered possibilities such as those I have mentioned. Regular practice of the Regenerative Movement over many years is one of the keys to deepening what Tsuda sensei called breathing, the art of feeling the circulation of vital energy, which is nothing other than one of the forms that Ki takes when it manifests itself in a concrete and sensitive way. One of the exercises we practise during Katsugen Undo sessions is called Yuki, and it is one of the Non-Doing practices which, when properly carried out, allows us to achieve a fusion of sensitivity with a partner. It is up to each and every one of us to use it in everyday life, and even more so in Aikido or any other martial art. Although not every situation seems favorable to that when you are just starting out, it is certainly a possibility, a path to follow, which seems appropriate to me and which you can discover, particularly in quieter moments such as during an immobilisation or the zanshin that follows it.

This was the path Tsuda sensei was pointing out to us, the path he himself had followed in the footsteps of his masters Ueshiba Morihei for Aikido, Noguchi Haruchika for Seitai or, in another way, his Western masters Marcel Granet and Marcel Mauss – for Sinology and Anthropology respectively – who he also had the opportunity to know personally.

This path, the “Non-Doing” or “Wu wei” in Chinese, has no definable limits or depths, and each practitioner must make his or her own experience, check where they have got to and accept their limits to continuously deepen instead of accumulating.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article? Subscribe to the newsletter:

Article by Régis Soavi published in Self et Dragon Spécial n° 5 in April 2021.

Photo credits: Paul Bernas, Bas van Buuren

Notes:

Tsuda Itsuo, The Way of the Gods, 2021, Yume Editions, Chap. VIII, p. 61 (1^st ed. in French, 1982, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 58)
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, 2014, Yume Editions, Chap. XI, pp. 115–116 (1^st ed. in French, 1975, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 106)
Ellis Amdur, Hidden in Plain Sight: Tracing the Roots of Ueshiba Morihei’s Power, Freelance Academy Press (2018), p. 292
Tsuda Itsuo, Facing Science, 2023, Yume Editions, Chap. III, pp. 23–26 (1^st ed. in French, 1983, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), pp. 24–27)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, Articles_Blog > entretiens, EN, FR, IT

Aikido, A Way of the Normalisation of the Terrain

5 January 2021 name

by Régis Soavi

Aikido Journal: Does aikidō still have a chance of survival after more than three months of interruption?¹

Régis Soavi: Who speaks of more than three months of interruption of the practice? According to our sources, in fact firsthand with the exception of three or four people who had just started less than a month or two ago, none of the members of our dojo have stopped practising (at home). And even, for some, the lockdown allowed them to do what we call the Respiratory Practice (commonly called Taisō in other schools) every morning, while usually because of their work they only can have three or four sessions per week.

The place, the dōjō, has indeed remained closed. Although being confined to Paris by order of the State, but living within twenty meters of the dojo, I was able to continue to go there and preserve Life there. Each morning with my partner (in lockdown with me) we were able to do the respiratory practice after the Norito Misogi no Harae that I recite before the sessions. The resonance, created by the “Hei-Hohs” during Funakogi undō and the clapping of the hands that accentuate the exercises at the beginning, permitted I think to maintain the space “full”, in the sense of the fullness of ki. The dojo has never been empty.

A. J.: Will resumption of practice in its usual form be possible at the beginning of the school year or will it have to wait for the development and implementation of an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2?

R. S.: Aikido: Is the way a highway?²

It is more than ever necessary to normalise our terrain in order to allow a response of the body that is both healthy and fast. If Katsugen Undō (Regenerating Movement) is a specific response to make the body react, Aikidō for its part – if practised regularly with the necessary attention and concentration – is a practice that goes in the same direction. Provided of course that we forget the aspect “I want immediate and easy efficiency”. In the statutes of our dōjō about the essence of the practice is always stated the following recommendation from Tsuda Sensei: ‘without knowledge, without technique, without goal.’ These indications – in a very Zen spirit one might say – make our school a very special school, it is certainly not the only one, but this type of school has become rare and is now beginning to be sought after again for its specificities.

It is through mobilising of the unity of Being that the physical body regains capacities that are too often forgotten, undervalued, overestimated or even despised, but in any case too often underused. Why have Tai-chi-chuan and Qi Gong, whatever the school, been able to continue, progress and flourish, while many Aikidō clubs have been regressing and sometimes slowly dying? Would it not be because they were able to present the health and personal development side as well as the relaxation side of their practice, facing the stress caused by modern lifestyles, rather than the martial side which nevertheless exists in many schools and – I would even dare to say – exists in an underlying way in all schools? They were not afraid to put forward values that are or should be ours, such as the circulation of Ki (Chi or Qi) and the importance of the unity of the body to maintain mental as well as physical health.

Cross Immunity

After locking us up, in lockdown in towns and villages, after instilling fear in the majority of the world’s population, today we are told about cross immunity as if it were a discovery. But have we not been asking ourselves the question of the capacity for resistance, for resilience of human beings for thousands of years? If the human being still exists, is it not because he is fundamentally anchored in Nature, with a capital N and not nature in the sense of “his environment” – which, for that matter, he treats so badly? We are an indivisible part of “Nature”, we lead a life in symbiosis with what surrounds us, we are fundamentally Symbionts. Bacteria, so much feared, do not only play a pathogenic role, they are, for example, also at the origin of our ability to breathe, thanks to their mutations which turned them into mitochondria³. Without their work, we would be unable to digest food and thus nourish ourselves, just as they participate in our defence system by forming a barrier against dangerous elements.

As for viruses and retroviruses, they play a role in our ability to live and overcome difficulties and obstacles: some are bacteriophages, others, often very old, stuck as they are in parts of DNA that are still misunderstood (parts so misunderstood that they were even called “rubbish” or “garbage”), serve as a information database – much like a huge library – for the immune system, as long as we let it work whenever it is needed. What about balance in these days of panic? Society offers us, imposes on us more and more protection and we are increasingly helpless when faced with difficulties. We are talking in Aikidō about training, we want a strong body, maybe we should also think about training our immune system, and not hinder it in doing its job.

Fear, a Banality

Fear is the big responsible and is instilled from our earliest childhood, with kindness, with good will and for our own good. All of this almost without anyone realising it. Everyone around us participates: parents, family, educators, teachers, media. Fear of pain, fear of illness, fear of death. One must be careful, beware of everything, the slightest cold, the slightest fever, a tiny pimple, everything must be treated, analysed, listed, there is danger everywhere, the individual ends up claiming to be locked up in a bunker, whether physically or mental, supposed to contain a soft cocoon of protection as reassuring as can be. All this all seems normal, why deprive ourselves of this cocoon, deprive others, our friends, our family members of it?

Modern society has altered the meaning of life and replaced it with its passive consumption, the propagators of this new ideology have made it an object of desire, sometimes an object of worship as during the lockdown, but always an object. Can we turn the tide? Go back? Would it make sense? One would quickly be called madman, a dangerous sectarian group, to be eliminated quickly because of the “risk of ideological contagion”. If there is a solution, it is individual, reasonable and responsible, regarding oneself as well as those around us.

A. J.: In the context of the decreasing number of practitioners and their ageing, does Aikidō still have a chance of survival after more than three months of interruption?

R. S.: “The myth of old age.”

I am told: ‘There are no more young practitioners in the Aikidō dōjōs! They all will practice Budō that are deemed to be more effective, more voluntary!’ Why such defeatism?

Instead of doing “a little bit more of the same” as the theory of the Palo Alto researchers puts it, what if we reflect on what made us come to an Aikidō dōjō instead of choosing another art? And what if our strength was elsewhere, what if the value of Aikidō was precisely not in learning to fight, but in the art of the fusion of breathing, the development of sensitivity, in favour of the research on the sensation of the sphere, intuition, the liberation of the real human being who still sleeps deep within each of us? This does not form weak people – quite the contrary – but rather people who are able to look for what they need at the right time, even in a difficult, indeed dangerous environment. And what if our strength was the involuntary, and its outcome the “Non-Doing”?

But how do you manage to reawaken this strength? If we have not kept it since childhood, perhaps we simply need to find it again and for this, to mature, sometimes even eliminate false good solutions, illusions, stratagems.

O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei searched all his life in the practice of Budō as well as through the Sacred, and this search was the very realisation of his life. He did not retire at the age of sixty to become a club boss. He was an example for those who, like Tsuda Sensei, knew him personally. An example and certainly not “a person at risk” who must be protected, as we do today with our elderly in specialised institutions.

I cannot resist quoting a small passage from a text that Tsuda Itsuo published in notebook form in the early 1970s and that I have kept preciously until its official publication in a posthumous collection in 2014. This passage says a lot about the state of mind of this extraordinary master whom I had the chance to follow for more than ten years and who has imbued so strongly my approach in the practice of our art.

Tsuda Itsuo: ‘I started Aikido at the age of forty-five, at an age when we generally give up on any movement that is potentially violent. For more than ten years, every morning, I went to the session that began at 6:30 a.m., getting up at 4 a.m., relentlessly, even if I’d happened to go to bed at 2 a.m. or had a fever of forty degrees. I did it for the pleasure of seeing an octogenarian master walking on the tatami mats.

Comrades in the dojo used to say to me: you have an iron will. To which I replied, “No. I have such a weak will that I can’t even ‘stop continuing’.” Which made them laugh with joy, but I meant it.’⁴

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi (under the theme “practice and lockdown”) published in October 2020 in Aikido Journal N. 75.

Notes

1
The first lockdown [in France] due to Covid-19 started on 17 March and ended on 11 May 2020, but it was possible to resume Aikidō sessions on 12 July (2020)
2
Tsuda Itsuo, One, 2016, Yume Editions, Chap. IV, p. 29. (1^st ed. in French, 1978, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 27.)
3
Marc-André Selosse, Jamais seul [Never Alone], 2017, pub. Actes Sud (Arles, France).
4
Tsuda Itsuo, Heart of Pure Sky (posth.), ‘Booklet n°3 – Respiratory Practice in Aikido’, 2025, Yume Editions, p. 99 (1^st ed. in French, 2014)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Violence, a “Social Fact”

4 November 2020 name

By Régis Soavi.

Violence is so broad a topic, with such density, that it seems to me impossible to treat all its aspects properly in one article. Yet it is always an important topic when we approach the question of the human being.

Émile Durkheim: definition of ‘the social fact’

Before referring to violence, its consequences and adopting a position about it, I feel it useful to locate it sociologically, and I think that Durkheim’s definition of ‘social fact’ can be applied to it, because it does not only provide us with the frame that enables us to analyse it but also contains in itself, thanks to its accuracy and simplicity, the keys to the root of the problem.

‘A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given society, whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations.’ ¹ A relevant question may arise at this point: Is violence a phenomenon frequent enough to be considered regular and that is large enough to be qualified as collective? May we say that it stands above individual consciousness and constrains them by way of its predominance? Even without being an expert in sociology one cannot but answer this is obvious. To support this theory, I was able to pick up in a recent article about the Algerian War the following observation from a sociologist who offers a different look on these events which confirms – if needed – this position:

‘Violence is external to individuals, it imposes itself on them, but does exist through them. It is indeed spatial segregation, at the same time racial, social and gendered, […] that helps the move to violence.’ ²

Violence as an act, whether physical or psychical, spoken or gestural, symbolic or real, can never be justified. However, as a ‘social fact’ it is absurd to deny it. Are we able, just able, to react differently, or are we overwhelmed and carried away by events that ultimately lead us in a direction we would have in theory discarded in the first place – at least consciously?

The situation creates the conditions, the conditions create the situation

‘Hell is other people’ wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his play No Exit. Maybe, but we shall not forget the “situation” which allowed this hell to exist. Who is responsible and even guilty for this, if not the type of society that brought it into existence?

If we create in our dojos such conditions that the situation does not allow nor give rise to violence despite habits, education or so-called instinctive reactions, why would anything happen but cordially? Is Aikido a special case among martial arts? Well, of course it is not, because most martial arts, whether right or wrong, present themselves as non-violent. But are we not setting foot on the path of violence when justifying a violent reply to an act – or some acts – of violence?

Judges and jury members in courts often face cases in which they have to decide “in their soul and conscience” who was right to use violence, and whether it is justified. The law provides them with a frame they can refer to but which does not offer ready-made suitable answers for each case. However, they often have to make a difference between suffered and exerted violence. Similarly, “self-defence” is extremely regulated, and may evolve according to society issues, history, or politics.

To deny the violence exerted by society on individuals only consists in putting one’s head in the sand like an ostrich, or hiding one’s eyes like little children who play hide-and-seek. However we should not, at first sight, mistake struggle for violence, and not all replies to violence cause systematically other violent retaliations. The value of Aikido lies in the position it adopts, which is not to deny violence, but rather to re-educate and to guide destructive energy towards another direction more advantageous to all.

I

Being faced to all this matter, I find myself compelled to speak about me.

If I began to practice martial arts almost sixty years ago, and Aikido in particular about fifty years ago, it is precisely because of its spirit of justice, its beauty, its non-violent efficiency, its ideal – at the same time generous, peaceful and soft.

Everything began when I was twelve years old. Without being really lucid on what I was doing, I made a decision that took over my life: never be subjected again. This happened as I was lying under a boy taller than me who was striking my head against the pavement, saying to me: ‘You gonna die!’ This realization that another person could exert on me such violence did not trigger a desire for revenge, but on the contrary, an aversion to violence while were emerging a desire to be strong and a desire for justice that I shall qualify as immediate, instantaneous. To be strong was the solution, but not only. There was also and at the same time this refusal for violence as an answer – not only to my personal problems, but after thinking about it, this could extend to the world’s problems too, it seemed to me.

A desire for justice, for me as for all others who are subjected, had just manifested itself, but above all it had to be exerted without resorting to brutality or barbarity, without having to justify nor inciting to commit acts that I instinctively refused. I did not always succeed in holding this position at that time: social tensions, youth would often – too often – drive me to other directions, but always in order to defend a cause, to fight injustice. However, the internal desire for getting out of the violent schemes I would witness around me remained and the Aikido I met later with Tsuda Itsuo sensei was a revelation.

In Aikido, first there is Reishiki (etiquette) and a technical shaping of the body which, based on a strong resolution, gives us an opportunity to wake up our best instincts. It is by refusing to be ideologically contaminated by dominant powers that we can recover our integrity, our entirety. All the theories that justify violence try to push us onto a path that enables the exertion of a power on others and thus a violence against them, which backfires one day or another whatever role we have taken or believed we could take.

A preliminary, the normalization of the terrain

When Tsuda sensei arrives in France in the early seventies, he plans to disseminate the Regenerating Movement (this is the translation by Tsuda Itsuo for the Japanese word Katsugen Undo) and his ideas about ki. Having been closely related to these two great Japanese masters, Ueshiba Morihei for Aikido and Noguchi Haruchika for Seitai, he will tirelessly guide his students, through many Regenerating Movement initiation workshops as well as daily teachings in Aikido and the publication of nine books, towards the discovery of what still seems a mystery to a lot of people nowadays: the Non-Doing, Yuki, and Seitai, among other matters. This alliance of two practices (Aikido and the Regenerating Movement), which was inconceivable in Japan at that time, and even remains so today as it seems, will enable him to reveal in the West a conception of life and human activity which goes far beyond an Oriental or backward-looking model.

Tsuda sensei’s vision, previously faced with Noguchi sensei and seen approved by him, is that vital energy, when coagulated whatever the reason why, is one of the main origins of humanity’s wanderings and difficulties, that its normalization is the source for solving most of health problems as well as those of violence. In this respect he matches the work of researchers such as psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich who did an enormous amount of work on vital energy, which he called ‘Orgone’, or Carl Gustav Jung, also a psychoanalyst, and his research on symbols and his theory of archetypes, or ethnologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his studies on matriarchy in the Trobriand Islands.

Tsuda sensei’s Aikido was far from a self-defense or a sport, it respected the sacred aspect discovered by O-sensei in this art, and enabled us to get at least an insight about its effects through his approach to life, through his writings, his calligraphies. On the other hand he would not allow himself any religious or sectarian aspect, even referring to himself as an atheist and a libertarian, as Aikido was for him a way of normalizing body and mind in a non separated vision of the individual. As for the Regenerating Movement, it was also considered a slow process of terrain normalization.

The sake of practicing the Regenerating Movement and of its alliance with Aikido

Answering the question ‘What is the Regenerating Movement for you?’ which had asked me founder’s son Noguchi Hirochika when he was in Paris in 1980, I said spontaneously: ‘The Regenerating Movement is the minimum’. A firm and sane ground, a body capable of reacting in order to practice martial arts, this is something absolutely essential. Practicing Aikido can then allow the body to work through techniques which will indeed be formidable in case of aggression coming from anyone, but which also enable to rebalance the person. On the other hand, if aggressiveness is enhanced instead of being normalized, it is often violence that comes out and the damages on both partners can be immeasurable. To get involved in practicing Aikido with, as a result, deformation, overaging, accidents or even handicaps seems to me completely absurd.

The knightly art of archery

If the bow has been hunters – and warriors – weapon for centuries or even thousands of years on the whole planet, Kyūdō – which came out of it – succeeded in transforming it into a pacification instrument. It is noteworthy that this is an art practised by as many men as women. A very large number of Schools do not get involved in competition, nor do they attribute grades, as happens in the Itsuo Tsuda School. All these aspects make it a fundamentally non aggressive art in spite of its origins. An art without aggressiveness, but with aims that will help harmony, such as Kai – union between body and mind, between bow, arrow and target –, with an inner search for truth (真 shin), virtue (善 zen) and beauty (美 bi). With such a spirit, one will see that violence is far from being promoted, quite the contrary, conditions are created for developing a more serene humanity.

Aikido, as conceived by O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei, seems to me of the same nature, and that is why I carry on guiding practitioners everyday in this direction. If we cannot change “the world”, we can change “our world”. Then, in dojos following this kind of path, conditions will be created which – at least on a regional level – will plant seeds for a revolution of manners, habits, gestures, thoughts, a revolution in which intelligence of body and mind finally reunited will cause a profound upheaval in society. It is through the practice of Non-Doing in Aikido that we will be able to achieve this.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in July 2020 in Self et Dragon Spécial n° 2.

Notes:

Durkheim Émile, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895 for the 1^st ed. in French), trans. by W. D. Halls, 1982, The Macmillan Press Ltd (London), p. 59
Bory Anne, « Un point de vue sociologique sur les origines de la violence » [“A Sociological Point of View on the Origins of Violence’] (about Adèle Momméja), Le Monde, 26 February 2020
See his full biography in Itsuo Tsuda, calligraphies de printemps [Itsuo Tsuda, Spring Calligraphies], Yume Editions, 2017, pp. 388-457
Seitai: harmonisation of posture, see ‘To Live Seitai’ in Yashima n° 7, April 2020
Yuki: an act which consists in making ki flow through a partner’s body

Photo credits: Jéremy Logeay, Sara Rossetti, Bas van Buuren

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Zanshin, The Spirit of The Ordinary

2 September 2020 name

By Manon Soavi

As an Aikido teacher, as well as a pianist, I went across the notion of Zanshin through several experiences along my path. When I started studying several koryūs fifteen years ago (Bushuden Kiraku Ryū, Niten Ichi Ryū, Choku Yushin Ryū, and some Shinkage Ryū), I also went deeper into this notion when working with weapons, by handling a sword, a bō, a kusarigama, or even unarmed through the many jujitsu katas which are part of these ancient schools.

Though I probably still have a long way to go in martial arts, I wish to share here some thoughts on the topic.

I notice that one of the current human contradictions is our fascination for the external force that goes along with our contempt for the sensitivity and the sensations of our body which we relegate to the level of sentimentalism. Paradoxically, our Western way of life has never been so easy, with so few physical efforts to make, and our ancestors were probably more able to endure walking, cold or even pain, given there were not as many means to take charge of the slightest of their pains, or to assist the slightest of their efforts. Yet did they lack sensitivity? I do not think they did, because the capacity to feel before thinking has always been essential to live and Zanshin, from my experience, is above all a matter of sensation and presence at the present moment.

Zanshin can be translated as dwelling or remaining spirit but for Eastern cultures the body and the spirit are not two separate things. This “remaining spirit” corresponds to a precise sensation, and it is this sensation that guides us in its application regardless of the discipline one practises. These sensations are specific either to the one who acts or to the one who receives. Zanshin is a sensation and at the same time it is a state that we (re)discover.

Historically principles such as Zanshin, Mushin, etc., refer less to ideas than to realities that have been experienced by generations of people. They bring us back to direct, real experiences, which, in order to be passed on, have been “conceptualised”. We are therefore talking about an act or a state we can recover, despite our differences of times and cultures. They are not great principles gone with Samurais and their time, not even principles restricted to martial arts. They are principles that pervade the whole culture, especially the Japanese culture, but also and above all the Chinese culture.

The image: an eye-opener

Ancient Chinese would teach through images, evocations that were to give rise, that were to reveal, within the heart of the apprentice, a sensation that would guide him/her towards the understanding of the core of the master’s teaching. A physical understanding since it was about calling on a real experience that the apprentice would be able to share. They would mainly use nature to reveal the sensation, for observing nature was at that time a life experience shared by all. Yet we also find this way of transmitting in Western arts. Like in music for instance, because beyond some basic advice, the gesture of a musician cannot be transmitted nor intellectually understood.

What makes the difference between a beginner who presses a piano key and the master who plays the first note of a sonata ? It is objectively the same key and the same mechanism to strike the string. Yet the two sounds will be completely different. It’s the master’s sensitivity that will make the difference. Hence, year after year, the apprentice will seek how to make his/her instrument resonate differently, and the master will seek how to awaken in the apprentice the sensation he [the master] has inside himself. That is why some masters use evocative words, they speak of playing “at the bottom” or of “kneading‘ the keyboard, which objectively does not mean anything at all! All these images call on our inner resources, to retranscribe onto wood and strings an inner sensation and so that this sensation would be, in addition, shared by the listener. This is where we touch on the fusion of sensitivity that allows us to feel what happens inside the other person, it is a transmission from sensitivity to sensitivity. Like a Zanshin that will be right, genuine, only if both persons can feel it.

Then, beyond what we objectively know about what Zanshin means, I find interesting to search inside ourselves which experiences we can relate this principle to. How to make it concrete for us.

The spirit of the ordinary

During the years I have worked as a musician, sometimes I have been in a state that I liken to Zanshin. When I played with other musicians and singers I had to be both totally receptive to what happened outside, to the other musicians, and at the same time concentrated on my own gestures to play my piano part. Uncertainties of a live concert are such that I could not count on the fact that everything would go as planned. This never happens, no matter how one is prepared, being on stage is a unique experience. Preparation aims at reducing as much as possible the unexpected but absolutely not at removing it. One has then to react instantly, to stick as close as possible [to what is happening] for harmony to keep on going. To be hyper-vigilant and at the same time to keep a vague concentration, because as soon as I would focus on a single part I would lose the whole. This sentence by Musashi perfectly summarizes this state for me: ‘In daily life as well as in strategy, it is necessary to have an ample and broad mind and to carefully keep it very straight, not too tight and not at all loose’¹

Musashi also said that the ordinary spirit must be the one of the fight, and that the fighting spirit must be the one of the ordinary². Yet one cannot always be on guard, hence the fighting spirit does not mean being “on guard”, it means something different… We may also suspect that this state of mind is very far from the apathy that we very often come across today. The translation of Zanshin by remaining mind might give us a hint, more than the somehow reductive idea of vigilance.

Even though today only a few of us encounter “real fighting”, we all face the many little “ordinary fights” in our daily lives. And sometimes Zanshin can pop up there too. This happened to me during some unpleasant experiences I have had.

I remember once when, trapped in a festival during several days, in a small village, all female participants were embarrassed and worried because the person in charge of the workshop, a renowned violinist and professor, would put his hands on them in an inappropriate manner. I was then twenty-one and between lessons and rehearsals, the girls would talk to each other about these very awkward moments and would fear them. During a common meal, the professor started walking along the table, passing behind each of them to give the day rehearsal schedule. I could see him approaching, dispensing caresses in the hair or on the shoulders, little equivocal jokes etc., and I could see with dismay the girls lowering down their heads and waiting for the inevitable as he passed by, or laughing with a tight laugh. It was for me inconceivable not to do something whatever, so I looked at him coming up to me, not knowing what I would do, and before he passed behind me I turned to him and looked at him right into his eyes while talking about the schedule. I know that at that moment my eyes were saying ‘No’. He stopped and did not touch me. During all the workshop I remained present, without ever being opened to it. He never touched me.

This did not happen with only one man, several teachers and other drunk boys understood they had better stay away from me. Yet what would I have done? I don’t know. In all these little situations that happened to me, what always struck me is that everything was very predictable and it was in the end relatively simple to hold them on bay, it was “just” about being there and listening to this sensation of danger that reaches us before anything happens. Of course things would have been different in case of a more serious aggression, that is a different topic, but we also come across a lot of these “small‘ aggressions which, if we endure them, being unable to react, will leave an imprint in our heart and in our bodies.

Being influenced

My Aikido work since childhood, as a path – a search – towards harmonizing with others, has helped me, I am certain of it, to go through hard times, as it has helped me to work in symbiosis with other musicians. Because our way to interact with others, either negatively or positively, is determined by our inner attitude. The fact of not fighting against the influence of the other person, would he/she be a musician or an attacker, is decisive. The fact of understanding for the two of us.

Chinen Kenyū sensei expresses it with his words: ’The technique is uke [receive], the spirit is attack. […] When one has mastered the principle of uke, there is no longer any attack or defense. Uke is beyond this duality, and this has a profound impact on our being. […] When one is at ease with facing any attack, one develops a self-assurance that allows one to welcome everything, to face anything.’³

In our life, quite often to defend ourselves, we refuse to be influenced by the other person, yet by doing so we, de facto, close the only channel that allows us to feel and act according to what the other person does: our sensitivity. It is this sensitivity that enables us to feel the other person. Being in the attitude not to refuse the other person, accepting his/her influence does not mean being submitted to it. Absolutely not. Canceling the difference between oneself and the other person and thereby allowing fusion – if they move, I move, because we are but one. There is no longer any action-response. There is One. Basically it is the same thing, whether sensing what a baby who cannot yet express itself needs, sensing the bad intentions of a person or sensing when the singer will start.

Tsuda sensei wrote: ‘Even if we understand and accept Aikido as a means of communion with the Universe, it will be purely on the spiritual plane. As soon as it is faced with real difficulties, the mind gives way to petty aggression.’⁴

While being maybe very far from the capacities of these masters, we can practise following that direction and this can be useful for our lives. In order to work in the spirit of communion the first step is to let go. If one has the head full of fears, beliefs, if one is confused then we no longer can expect the right action to spring out from our very depths. This genuine action that the Chinese call Wu Wei – non-action. We search for the exit in all directions, we try to defend ourselves, we refuse the other so to escape him/her but we bump into the wall. Fukuoka sensei used to say about the theoretical search for a genuine nutrition: ‘If you expect a bright world on the other side of the tunnel, the darkness of the tunnel lasts all the longer. When you no longer want to eat something tasty, you can taste the real flavor of whatever you are eating.’⁵

Zanshin, remaining spirit, is also a fine perception of reality that connects with the principle of yomi. We all think we see the reality, but actually quite often what we see is our interpretation of what surrounds us. Either – too naive – we lack vigilance, or – too damaged, traumatized –, we end up hyper-suspicious. And we become agressive. But whether the defensive spikes of our personal armours are turned towards ourselves or towards the others, the result will be wound and pain. And this does not enable us to live fully too. With an art such as Aikido or ancient koryūs, by putting ourselves into situation, by allowing ourselves to overcome our fears, this can help us to rediscover that we are not that weak.

Then we will discover a different way to adapt ourselves to reality which no longer means being overwhelmed by it. This is something that can be found in other arts, I find something of Zanshin in this sentence by Rikyū, master of chanoyu⁶ from the 16^th century, which one day answered to his disciple:

‘Make a delicious bowl of tea; lay the charcoal so that it heats the water; arrange the flowers as they are in the field; in summer suggest coolness, in winter, warmth; do everything ahead of time; prepare for rain’.⁷

Manon Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Manon Soavi published in January 2020 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 27.

Notes

1
Tokitsu Kenji, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, ‘Part Two – Musashi’s Writings’, ‘4. “Writings on the Five Elements” (Gorin no sho)’, ‘The Scroll of Water’, ‘State of Mind in Strategy’, Eng. transl. by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, 2004, Shambhala Publications
2
ibid.
3
Léo Tamaki, « Chinen Kenyū, au cœur des traditions d’Okinawa » [‘Chinen Kenyū, At the Heart of Okinawa’s Traditions’], review Yashima #4, May 2019, p. 26
4
Tsuda Itsuo, The Science of the Particular, Chap. XVII, 2016, Yume Editions, p. 141
5
Fukuoka Masanobu, The One-Straw Revolution, Part IV, ‘Confusion About Food’, 1978, p. 126
6
chanoyu 茶の湯, improperly translated by ‘tea ceremony’, literally ‘tea hot-water’
7
Sen Sōshitsu, Tea Life, Tea Mind, ‘Host and Guest’, pub. John Weatherhill (New York & Tōkyō), 1979, p. 30–31

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Senpai-Kohai: The Shadow Ranking System

3 May 2020 name

The Itsuo Tsuda School is a no-grade school, where one can rediscover the freedom of speaking out, of intervening, of reacting within a group of people with no necessity of recourse to our respective “levels” in order to determine who has the right to speak and who has the right to listen. Our school is nonetheless endowed with some form of hierarchy, an implicit, moving and living hierarchy, which is for us to feel and appreciate a search that is an integral part of our practice. In his November 2019 blog article, renown martial artist and searcher Ellis Amdur recounts, across the senpai-kōhai relation in koryūs, a story of this shadow ranking system.

We thank Mr Ellis Amdur for his permission to share and translate his article.

Available on this blog: https://kogenbudo.org/senpai-kohai-the-shadow-ranking-system/

Ellis Amdur‘s written works can be found on https://edgeworkbooks.com.

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Life Force

4 April 2020 name

By Régis Soavi

Why talk about life force while the topic seems old-fashioned (it is considered today as a kind of ideological remnant from the 60’s), or remains apparently in the privileged field of a small quantity of people looking for mysterious effects?

If physical force remains for many reasons and in many cases an important area, it is not a permanent and inalterable state. There are many factors that we must take into account: the person’s age, health, mental state, social situation, world outlook, etc. The same applies to the so-called mental force, or more commonly speaking, the strength of character.

The spectacular

It has always been a dream for young people to have the body of a god or a goddess, the state of the body being clearly supposed to be reflected by its appearance. A way for evaluating someone’s health status, strength or power is her/his figure. Statues from ancient Greece or Rome would provide as many models. The focus was on aesthetic of shapes and proportions. The same applies today, but models have changed, since they now belong mainly to trendy circles of the “celeb society”: actors, high-level athletes, models, etc. Even when they have not been retouched, the images of these new models we are being offered dangle before us a completely unreal world of innocent young people, bubbling with health, hopping, and performing “exploits” with utmost ease. ‘The whole life of societies in which prevail modern conditions of production announces itself as a huge accumulation of spectacles. All what was directly experienced has moved away in a representation’ (1). In this world of sham, no wonder we are considered troublemakers when presenting other values than those acted by advertisements devoted to Economy and a few people’s will to power – all of this at the expense of majority.

Itsuo Tsuda showing the ventral points during a conference — Tsuda Itsuo showing the ventral points during a conference

A society issue

2019 society is not the XX^th century society, and even less the XIX^th century society. At that time physical force had a natural – would I dare say primitive – aspect but it is no longer the case. If, for instance, medical breakthroughs in the West could save people and enabled to extend lifetime, as a backlash they made many people dependant on treatments and drugs, thereby creating a society of assisted persons whose life force seems to have sorely weakened. Pharmaceutical companies are not shy about producing profusely more and more substances, new molecules, supposed to make life easier.

One of the examples that recently caused a scandal is that of drug-addicts on prescription. Opiate-based painkillers, through the addiction they generate, have not just brought already two million people to dependence, but also hundreds of thousands to addiction, not knowing any more how to get their dose, and even – dramatically – more than forty-eight thousand people to death in the US in 2017 (2).

In some countries, sports medicine too has drugged athletes without hesitation for decades in order to get their country a medal.

Records are continually surpassed in sports, as well as in any place where competition is raging, but it seems difficult to win – or even just to be selected – without having body and medicine specialists in one’s technical staff.

Natural physical strength alone does not suffice any longer, more, much more is required today. Food supplements are being offered, cocktails of ever more sophisticated substances to exceed natural human limits and even sometimes simply to be always in shape, or at least to appear so, and when the consequences of treatments – or rather the ill-treatment – of the body occur it is already too late to turn back.

Human Ecology

A part of the new generation becoming aware of the state of the planet could be the trigger for a more global awareness. The absolute necessity to reconsider not only the production of consumer products but also the patterns of this production should – if pushed a bit further – lead society to understand this imperative need for a change of orientation.

If technology has convenient aspects, should we give up thinking by ourselves and follow the tracks pre-printed by software, algorithms, or web-browsers? Western medicine, which is no science but an art, has progressed a lot in understanding and treating certain human diseases, but is it a reason to give up our free will and place ourselves in its hands without seeking to understand or feel what works best for us? Society over-feeds us with recommendations which, if they do not make us laugh anymore, often leave us indifferent: ‘Eat move’, ‘Eat five fruits and vegetables a day’, ‘Watch out your cholesterol level, eat low-fat products’, ‘Respect scrupulously the number of sleeping hours’, etc. The modern human being comes to follow directives from people who think for him about his health, his work, his relationships, everything is prepared, pre-digested, for the sake of our well-being, in order to realise what writers like Ievgueni Zamiatine, as soon as 1920, Aldous Huxley in 1932, or George Orwell in 1949 had described in their so-called anticipation novels, that is, “an ideal world”. Are we already living in the world Huxley predicted in his 1961 conference?

‘There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it’ (3).

Far from me the idea of carrying forward reactionary or backward-looking ideologies which tend to bring their solutions with the blow of ‘there is only to’ or advocating the resurgence of patriarchal or racist values which fortunately are – or hopefully should be – exceeded. The steps to be taken belong to a completely different dimension. It is nothing less than recovering human values and this seems to be the real revolution. Aikido carries this hope, but we must not take the wrong direction.

Life force

Popular expressions such as “intestinal fortitude” or “to have guts” express well how important this region of the body was considered by most people who lived not so long ago. Courage did not originate in reflexion but rather in action from the bottom of the body.

Life force was a field well-known to martial arts masters and all of them paid the greatest attention to make it one of the main matters in their teachings, if not their backbone. All those who had the opportunity to know the first generation masters after O-Sensei know that the value of Nocquet sensei, Tamura sensei, Yamaguchi sensei or Noro sensei, as well as so many others, did not originate in their – obviously flawless – technical quality but rather in their presence as a mere reflection of their personality, their life force.

Tsuda Itsuo sensei, an Aikido master, also belonged to this generation but he was also one of the first generation masters after Noguchi Haruchika sensei in the art of Seitai, a field on which he wrote quite significantly ever since his first book The Non-Doing, from which I have taken a few excerpts.

‘From the point of view of Seitai, the abdomen is not merely a container for various digestive organs, as we are taught in anatomy. Already known in Europe under its Japanese name of “hara”, the belly is the source and storage centre of the vital energy.’ (4)

‘[L]ife acts as a force which gives cohesion to the elements we absorb. […] This cohesive force is what we call “ki”. […] Seitai is not interested in the details of the anatomical structure but in the way each person’s behaviour reveals the condition of this cohesive force.As it is, this cohesion is spontaneously searching for balance and it manifests itself in two diametrically opposite ways: in excess or in deficit. When ki, cohesive force or vital energy, is in excess, the organism automatically rejects this excess in order to regain its balance. The confusing thing is that this rejection, far from being simple, takes many different and complex forms. We can see its manifestations in the way a person speaks, makes gestures or acts. On the contrary, when ki is in deficit, the organism acts to fill the deficiency, by attracting towards itself the ki of others, i.e. their attention.’ (5)

In Seitai, there is a way to perceive the state of the koshi and life force, namely just by checking the elasticity of the third ventral point which lies approximately two fingers under the navel. If the point is positive, that is, if one feels it bouncing when pressed on, then everything is right, one will recover rapidly in case of difficulty or disease; on the other hand, if the fingers go deep and come back only slowly, if the belly is soft to the touch, then the body is in difficult condition and this lack of tonicity reveals the state of life force. I prefer to give no more details, so as to prevent sumptuousness or ill-informed handymen from beginning to touch everything. Anyway you can try on yourself, but not on others even if they agree, the risk of disrupting their biological rhythm and therefore their health is too great, it is no use playing the sorcerer’s apprentice.

Life force is what makes us rise again after sinking. It is what enables us to bring to reality projects that sometimes seem unrealizable.

Representation of the hara, Basilica Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, France

The Seitai technique: an orientation

Seitai provides in our daily life the tools we lack to take care of our life force. Practising Katsugen Undo (Regenerating movement), as well as the suitable Taisos according to Taihekis (bodily habits), or first aid techniques is just the visible part of it, its essence is to be found in its philosophy of life and understanding of human being. All attention given to the education of young parents, the baby care, how to make the ki circulate, to respect everyone as an individual rather than referring to general standards, all this makes it a science of the particular, as Tsuda Itsuo sensei liked to qualify it in his so-entitled book.

If workshops are occasions for me to provide practical indications which enable people to recover a good health condition and get their life force back when weakened, I am always relying on the individuals’ capacity to react, to understand that this implies a need for a different path, instead of dismissing their ability in favour of a technique, an idol, or a guru.

Without life force, physical force labours in finding a way out, it goes round and eventually disturbs the individual her/himself who does not know how to find her/his balance any more.

Life force has no moral standards, it can indeed be used in a relevant or irrelevant way but if it is gone, it is no use discussing about the value of the aims to be reached or about the prospects society is offering to us.

There are lots of questions about its nature, its origin, even its domestication. Some wish they could measure it thanks to highly developed technological devices, like for example, sophisticated electrodes capable of recording the subtle answers emitted by the brain. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately – considering the high risks of manipulation –, that seems impossible for the time being. Life force is of a totally different nature, one can understand it when one recovers the sensation of ki in one’s own body. But what is ki? In order to rediscover it, Tsuda sensei offers us a clue in a few words:

‘Ki is the motor of all instinctive and intuitive manifestations of living beings. Animals do not try to justify their actions, but manage to maintain a biological balance in nature. In man, the extraordinary development of the intellect threatens to destroy all biological equilibrium, to the point of total destruction of every living being.’ (6)

Aikido: an art to awaken life force

Aikido is easily at the heart of many polemics about its refusal of competition, its ideal of non-violence, its lack of modernity, even its alleged inefficiency. It seems to me that it is precisely time to affirm the values of our art – and they are numerous. In the practice of Aikido, what is determining is not physical force, it is rather the ability to use it; similarly, as far as technique is concerned, the most important thing is adapting it to the concrete situation, and this is impossible without our life force been awakened. To be put in situation on the tatamis day after day, session after session, if without concession and at the same time without brutality, opens our eyes and enables us to develop and find again what animates the human being, namely a force, a vitality too often allowed to atrophy. The power that can be developed but also the tranquillity, the inner quietness that can be found again are the visible manifestation of it, the reflection of what is called Kokoro in Japan.

No need to compare with other practices because, whatever criticism is made of it, even if Aikido merely helped to allow the awakening, the maintenance or improvement of life force, would it not have fulfilled its duty to practitioners? Would it not be relevant to consider it one of the main martial arts?

Life force is at the heart of all disciplines since the origin of time and, if all martial arts evolve, it remains the essential element to their practice.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in October 2019 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 26.

Notes:

Guy Debord, La société du spectacle [The Society of the Spectacle], éd° Buchet-Chastel (Paris), 1969, p. 9
« Médicaments antidouleurs : overdose sur ordonnance » [‘Pain-Relieving Drugs: Prescription Overdose’], newspaper Le Monde, 16 October 2018
Aldous Huxley, speech pronounced in 1961 in California Medical School of San Francisco (available online on https://ahrp.org/1961-aldous-huxleys-eerie-prediction-at-tavistock-group-california-medical-school/)
Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Yume Editions, 2013 (1973), p. 191
ibid., pp. 195-196, 201
Tsuda Itsuo, The Dialogue of Silence, Yume Editions, 2018 (1979), p. 101

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Relaxation

3 November 2019 name

By Régis Soavi

For most Westerners, practising Aikido on their knees rather than standing seems to be at first sight very difficult. Although in our everyday life, we are very rarely in this position, it has been since immemorial times a relaxing posture, still allowing to stay vigilant.

Relaxing

To sit in Seiza (in Japanese « the proper way to sit ») allows the spine to be aligned and helps abdominal breathing, and so allows to put power in the Hara. Moreover, if the position, the posture, is well in line, while relaxed, it is an extraordinary opportunity to relax the whole body.

To rest, to relax without having to lie down has always been what people working outside and therefore at the mercy of enemies, predators or even just because of bad weather conditions, have been looking for. The squatting position, still used in most countries of the African continent, in South America, Australia and many other countries, has the same function. On this matter, Tsuda Itsuo sensei recalls an anecdote in his book The Path of Less:

‘In an article probably conceived before 1934, Marcel Mauss describes this under the heading “Techniques of the body”.

Children squat normally. We no longer know how to squat. I believe that this is an absurdity and an inferiority of our races, civilisations, societies.

And he quotes an experience he had at the Front during the First World War. The (white) Australians he was with could rest on their heels during stops, while he was forced to stand.

The squatting position, in my opinion, is an interesting position that we can help children preserve. The biggest mistake is to take it away from them. All of mankind, except our societies, has retained it.

The squatting position presupposes flexibility of the hips. In doing Aikido, I see the huge difference between the Japanese and the Europeans. The Japanese, less structured intellectually and verbally, simply imitate what they are shown. Europeans observe, take note, make a file and paste a label on it. But when they begin to execute a movement, they sometimes find it difficult to coordinate everything. If they pay attention to the right hand, they forget the left. As for the feet, they don’t know where they are. This kind of mental habit does not make practice easy. Instead of having two components, A and B, B simply imitating A, they involve a third element, C, called intellect, file, or structure, thus forming a deflected circuit that complicates the situation.’

Childhood, adolescence

Before walking upright, we crawled, then, seeing and imitating other older children or adults around, we stood on our two legs. The vertical position released our hands and little by little we moved quicker and quicker even with our arms full of toys. During this period of our life, our usual playground, the one we feel comfortable to play in, where we can be independent of adults is the ground. And this whatever the area of the planet we live in. Then, we encounter great changes, our bodies spread out, we leave the ground for something more aerial, more mental too because our brain is better irrigated in a vertical position, so the more we grow up the more we get far from it. The society we live in provides us with high chairs, sofas, and other settees on which we can sit conveniently to enjoy ourselves or work, to relax or concentrate. From then, we live far from the ground, we will not be back on the ground again except in very few moments when we play with a child or when we are on the beach or on the lawn.

Tatamis

When people discover the dojo and that huge surface at their disposal, they feel some sort of a childlike joy that threatens them and at the same time attracts them. Some of them are aware of it, others are just impressed. While children immediately start running and rolling on the floor, grown-ups remain reserved, already conscious perhaps of the process to be followed.

The first steps, as to say, on the Tatami mats, start in a sitting position. Frequently beginners cross their legs, but even if they succeed in sitting in the Seiza position, which is extremely unusual, they will almost never be told to keep the position during the practice. After a few seconds or few minutes of meditation, often the whole session will carry on standing. Indeed we are not in Japan, and many people are not used any more to sit that way, but instead of considering it as a challenge, a goal to be achieved, it seems to me interesting to consider it as a game. A game that requires physical and mental implication, but still a game, so a pleasure. And even if there are constraints, they are fully part of the game we have just started.

Getting recentred

Practising on our knees allows to get recentred while remaining relaxed. I always have my students practise slowly, specially beginners, but it is very good for advanced students too since a workout performed slowly and smoothly (I often use the Italian word legato, used in music) allows the whole body to recenter. If, as we got used to it, we do not work using the muscle strength in our arms, but if we project our energy from our center, our Hara and have it run along our limbs, we can feel vividly the flow of Ki and see the effects. Arms must be neither flabby nor rigid, but supple and active, powerful, with this power they have when they are full of Ki. Working slowly in the kneeling position, for example in the basic forms that are Ikkyō or Yonkyō, allows, if one pays attention to this direction, to discover how Yin and Yang act, if we can say, spread out, interpenetrate. We then get recentred automatically because we need to recover our balance, the support on the knees become lighter because the body distributes the weight better, the hips themselves regain the flexibility they had lost by moving only from the standing position.

Two moments seem to me the right time to practise on the knees. The beginning of the session, since, as a slow work, it is a bit like a fitness. And the end of the session, the moment we do Kokyū-Hō which, in addition of being done on the knees, concentrates in a few minutes many physical and mental difficulties. It is, again, an opportunity to work on how to get recentred while one can check the state of the Koshi, its suppleness and so the whole posture.

A preparation?

Getting prepared with practising kneeling techniques, allows you to be ready when you face the opportunity of a Shihō-nage with a partner much smaller than you. The fact that you can turn while kneeling without any difficulty or loss of balance, to pass under his arm is an undeniable advantage.

But the range of advantages to practise in suwari waza (kneeling techniques) does not end there.

If I take as an example Irimi Nage in Hanmi Handachi Waza (techniques achieved with one partner on his knees and the other standing) one can feel more precisely the breath of aspiration down, and you can immediately feel if you are centred or not, if you have succeeded in creating a sufficient void in which the partner has plunged, where he has lost his balance while you stay stable. This is, still in Hanmi Handachi Waza, even more visible and concrete with two partners: the grab Katate Ryōte Dori (seizure with both hands of a wrist) begins with a strike that turns into a seizure — and this is the crucial moment for a kokyū nage. The projection can only be done if one has enough practice of kneeling techniques, if one is able to become very heavy by concentrating the Ki in the lower abdomen, and to pass it beyond the fingertips.

Of course all techniques can be done from this posture with sometimes some variations but what seems important to me is that after having practised on your knees, practising in Tachi Waza (standing practice) becomes much easier. This kind of work can have various consequences, if it is done forcefully, with the desire to win at all costs, or to stand a reputation, a role. Without having found the lines that allow the projection in flexibility, nor a deep and quiet breathing, there is a great risk of damage to the body, of having after a while serious problems with the knees or hips and a real handicap in everyday life.

Walking

Walking, moving on your knees, can be a good exercise, and for that there is Shikkō. Here again it is important not to overdo it, not to show it as a competition, a « tour de force » that some will succeed more or less happily. Shikkō is an excellent exercise but to use in moderation, especially at the beginning. After a few years of practice, if we have not forced, then it will have become a real pleasure. You can even do this training with a Bokken and by striking straight, this way of doing it makes it possible to check if it is the hips that move and if the rotation is done well at the lower level of the body and not from the chest. The shoulders must not move at all, but must remain exactly in the direction of the movement. When you start to feel comfortable you can start to make slow strikes with the Bokken while moving. All these exercises help to regain mobility in the hips. In my opinion, they have no immediate martial value, at first glance, simply because they are executed on Tatamis, which is normal, because who would like to train on gravel, for example, without protection on their knees?

Miracles?

Changes, that seem miracles to whom they happen, are possible. Years ago a woman came with crutches, she had been moving with enormous difficulties for several years. Very determined she came to practice every morning at the dojo. At the beginning there was no way for her to sit other than with her legs stretched in front of her, little by little however, after a few weeks her condition had improved. After a month she managed to get on her knees, but of course, straight and stiff as a board. From then, she began to get down, centimetre by centimetre, to end up, after several months, sitting on her heels without pain and, even later yet, enjoying it.

This is not a unique case, right now at Tenshin Dojo, in Paris, a retired gentleman who came in with serious problems with his knees and ankles as a result of various surgeries he had had several years before. In less than a year of very regular practice (he comes every day) he has regained a mobility he no longer expected and now can sit on his heels. No force, taking time, having continuity, if something is possible it is done naturally.

To be quite honest, I must say that in both cases the people concerned also started to practice katsugen undō (the regenerative movement) which facilitated the work of their bodies and their re-ordering.

Is groundwork essential?

Nothing, ever, is essential, but is it necessary? It is certain that we can do without it, there are even many good or bad reasons to avoid it, we can argue in these terms: it hurts the knees, it is dangerous for the joints, there is no point in that, because nobody moves that way anymore, etc. If we cannot make out the reason of it, why should we strain ourselves? There are so many rituals, exercises that have become incomprehensible in our modern society, that even the simple act of saluting by bowing may seem obsolete, even ridiculous for many Westerners who would be perfectly willing to swap it for the “Shake-Hands”. By adapting to modernity, are we not in danger of missing the essential, of losing the spirit that leads us in Aikido, would I dare say its soul?

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in July 2019 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 25.

Notes:

Itsuo Tsuda, The Path of Less, p. 175, Yume Editions, Paris, 2015 (trans. from La Voie du dépouillement, Le Courrier du Livre, 1975)

Aïkido, Aikido-decouverte, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Superficiality or Deepening

6 October 2019 name

In this article, starting from an I Chin hexagram (䷯ jǐng: the well), Régis Soavi discusses with us how the practices of Aikido and Regenerating Movement can be instruments of searching and deepening into oneself.

The dojo is, intrinsically, the well where all practitioners of martial arts in search for the Way, Tao, come to feed themselves. Contrary to rings or gyms, it offers a place for peace that is necessary, perhaps essential, to deepen human values.

dojo le puits — dojo Scuola della respirazione, Milan

Today we live at the speed of light. Communication has never been so fast. Waves loaded with bits and micro-bits circulate continuously around our planet, carrying more information that our brain can store. Social networks have replaced knowledge with a superficial veneer that may, seemingly, be fit to meet up with our social appearance. In the sixties, members of the Situationist International castigated the pseudo-intellectuals who would feed on magazines such as Le Nouvel Observateur or L’Express¹ to fuel their society conversations or their writings: what would they say about the democratisation that is now offered to each and everyone of us as a chance to become the new Monsieur Jourdain from Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme? Better than deepening anything, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ seems to be the motto of our times.

Martial arts tend apparently to be going the same direction. Many are those who are interested in the spectacular pictures broadcasted by media that present the fictive abilities of martial actors who, though highly skilled in their profession, mainly look for a rendering that is both superficial and commercial.

The image of the well in ancient China should make us wonder about the trends that govern our daily life. Whereas water used to be drawn from the well using a bucket and a pole, it was indeed the repetition of such an act that enabled the village life, and the provided food was considered as unlimited. What if we took a leaf out of this ancient book?

When we practice an art such as Aikido, it is not about accumulating ever more numerous techniques, nor blissfully repeating what is being taught, but rather about beginning a search, about reorienting oneself towards something more profound in order to abandon the superficial, the superfluous, that disappointed us so much and that we can no longer bear.

Many of those who were, at first, extremely enthusiastic to start a true work with their body get weary of repeating, in an all-too-often schoolish manner, or get misled by the latest trend. This is how some people collect methods and go from one art to another, from Yoga to Tai chi, from Karate to Capoeiera, sometimes thinking that one of them is superior to the other, as so nicely explained by any trendy youtuber making up the news the way they like.

In view of all these characters who live only to influence their followers and earn a living on their backs thanks to the number of “likes” and to the ads they generate, is it not time to search deep into oneself? To take time to think rather than passively consume someone else’s thought? To move one’s own body to rediscover a lost harmony rather than search a virtual complement to the routine that stems from the poverty of one’s daily life?

The dojo as a place for searching has all the characteristics of the well: it is both a place for training, because one draws from it everyday, and at the same time (and maybe even more) it is a place for conviviality where the social gets rid of what prevents it from being true, that is to say, from being as close as possible to the profound nature of individuals. A place where sociability escapes conventions, a place where we can talk to each other, physically get in contact with each other in a simple manner, with all the difficulties potentially involved for who is not ready.

All the arduousness resides in not remaining at the surface of the practice, in not being content with surfing onto an ocean of images that have become virtual or wading on the strand – without getting too wet, please – but in absorbing what one finds out therein, in letting go of what encumbers us so as to be free to explore its depths.In his book The Non-Doing, my master Itsuo Tsuda delivers us with simplicity an insight into his own research and the work he had developed in Europe:

‘What am I in comparison with the greatness of the Universal Love of Master Ueshiba, or with the technique of the Non-doing of Master Noguchi, or the unfathomable refinement of Master Kanze Kasetsu, actor of the Noh theatre? I have known them all; two of them are dead and now only Master Noguchi is still alive. Their influence keeps on working in me. They are natural masters. I am simply a being who is beginning to wake up, who is seeking and going through an evolution.

An extraordinary continuity of sustained efforts is what marks out the works of these masters. I feel as though I am finding wells of exceptional depth in barren land. Where the work of categorization halts, is merely their starting point. They have drilled much deeper. They have reached the streams of water, the source of life.

However, these wells are not interconnected, although the water found in them is the same. My task is to draw up a map of the territory, and there, to find a common langage.’ ²

This language, Itsuo Tsuda will find it in the art of writing (he defined himself as a writer-philosopher, as attested by his funeral stele in Père Lachaise cemetery), in the teaching of a certain form of Aikido that is grounded in breathing and the deepening of the sensation of Ki, and finally in making known Katsugen undō (Regenerating Movement). Through his work, his writings, his teaching, he will manage to create a bridge between East and West.

What threatens who practices martial arts – and more specifically Aikido – is the boredom due to repetition, search for efficacy, polishing one’s technique, and all this at the expense of the depth of the art and the culture that underlies it. As a matter of fact, our time is no longer under the same imperatives as were previous centuries; while it is still useful to be able to react in case of agression or difficulties, what will be determinant is our inner force and the awakening of our instinct, more than our fighting capacity. Aikido remains a bodily practice, where rigour, dynamics, know-how, are of the utmost importance, but its philosophical aspect cannot be overlooked. This aspect is in no way contradictory, quite the contrary, one of my former masters Masamichi Noro had himself understood it very well when he created this new art that is Ki no Michi (the way of Ki) at the end of the seventies. The search in Aikido is something difficult and can sometimes even be pernicious, because it is not about confronting with other combatants, it is not meditation or dance either – and I can say so because I have an immense respect for these arts, there again the wells are different, but the search goes the same direction.

To go and search towards the development of human capacities, of the culture beyond what is known, to question oneself and question the ideas of the world, to move forward to make our society move forward. Maybe one day to get finally out of barbarism and obscurantism. We just need to read again Umberto Eco‘s conference³ on how the human being creates themselves enemies to understand that, more than ever, we need to know the other to better understand him or her.

Aikido as an art of the Non-Doing is a gateway to what many people are looking for: realising oneself, with no oversized ego, but in simplicity, and with the pleasure of an authentically lived experience.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Notes

1
Le Nouvel Observateur (today L’Obs) and L’Express are weekly French general information magazines. They are among the most prominent ones in terms of audience and circulation, and stand at the political centre in the French media landscape. [Translators’ note]
2
Itsuo Tsuda, The Non-Doing, 2013, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 12
3
Umberto Eco, Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali [Creating the Enemy & Other Occasional Wiritings], 2011, ed. Bompiani (Milano). The conference Creating the Enemy was given in Bologna on 15 May 2008 and its full text is availble online (in Italian)

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo

The unity of the body #5

3 September 2019 name

In this fifth part, Régis Soavi discusses a central principle in Seitai philosophy: the unity of the body.

Subtitles available in French, English, Italian and Spanish. To activate the subtitles, click on this icon. Then click on the icon to select the subtitle language.

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Some additional information

Seitai was developed by Haruchika Noguchi (1911-1976) in Japan. Katsugen Undo (or Regenerating Movement) is an exercise of the extrapyramidal motor system that is part of Seitai. Itsuo Tsuda (1914-1984), who introduced Katsugen Undo in Europe in the 70s, would write about it: ‘The human body is endowed with a natural ability to readjust its condition […]. This ability[…] is the responsibility of the extrapyramidal motor system.’ ¹

Excerpts from the video on Yuki

‘The current trend is that there are all kinds of programmes where people give you things to do, whether it’s exercise, food, fasting… all kinds of mental manipulation, mental exercises or other things to make people feel good.

But in fact, human beings are completely different. Sometimes it only takes one tiny thing to make everything better or worse. Sometimes just one number, one number can completely determine the quality of your life. If, for example, you see -4000 euros in your bank account, all of a sudden… ‘Ha!’, your heart can stop. It’s ridiculous. How can your heart stop because you saw a number? It’s absurd. And yet, that’s how it is.

So what matters, in my opinion, is the harmony of the body. It’s a balance that we’re going to find, always the same. Every time we talk about Seitai, every time we talk about what happens in relation to regenerative movement, etc., we have to think in terms of balance. That’s what a human being is: a balance. They are not separate. Of course, if there is a serious problem in one part of the body, the being, the individual, is out of balance, but they will not only suffer in that part of the body. They suffer throughout their entire body. So here again, it is balance that is decisive.

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, One, Chap. VI, 2016, Yume Editions, p. 46 (1^st ed. in French: 1978, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, culture, EN, FR, IT, Manon Soavi

Dôjô, Another Spacetime

4 August 2019 name

By Manon Soavi

‘[…] The path to in-depth discovery of oneself […]’ said Tsuda sensei ‘is not a straight line towards paradise, it is tortuous.’ (1) Like classical musicians who spend their life in an infinite search for evolution, martial arts practitioners are on endless paths. Yet these paths are not devoid of meaning, signposts or verifications. One of the signposts Tsuda sensei left to his students is « Dōjō ».

He himself wrote on the topic : ‘As I said before, a dojo is not a space divided into parts and provided for certain exercices. Its a place where spacetime is not the same as in a secular place. The atmosphere is particularly intense. One enters and leaves the space bowing so to get sacralised and desacralised. I am told that in France one can come across dojos that are simply gyms or sports centres. Anyhow, as far as I am concerned, I want my dojo to be a dojo and not a sports club with a boss and its regulars, so as not to disturb the sincerity of the practitioners. This does not mean that they must keep a sullen and constipated face. On the contrary, we must maintain the spirit of peace, communion and joy.’ (2)

But why create Dōjōs? It is quite complicated and requires a lot of work!

To answer this question, one might want to get back to the reason why we practice. If each of us has a personal and complex answer, I personally join the opinion of those who think that we practice first and foremost to “be”. To genuinely “be”, would it be only during the time of a session.Then Aikidō is a tool to bring us back to ourselves. To start “being” on tatamis is a first step which starts with a letting go: to accept stepping onto a tatami and get in physical contact with others! But a contact different from the one which is governed by social conventions. By the way I sometimes notice the reluctance of some beginners to put on a Keikogi, as if keeping their sport trousers allowed them to keep a social identity. The Keikogi puts us all on equal footing, outside of social markers, it rubs off body shapes, sexes, ages, incomes… Of course as long as one does not show off one’s grade, one’s dan, in order to impress beginners. If our state of mind during the practice is to share this experience with a partner, and not to show that we are the strongest, then the fear of the encounter with the other person can lessen. In the Itsuo Tsuda School, there is no grade outright, this settles the matter once and for all.

Adventure starts at dawn (3)

The Dōjō itself is a place out of the social time, out of the epoch, indifferent to the geographical location, and all of this also makes us completely disoriented. In addition we practice early in the morning (as Ueshiba O-sensei used to). Sessions take place every morning, all year long, at 6:45am during the week and 8am on weekends. Whether it snows, whether the sun shines, during vacations or on holidays, the Dōjō is open and sessions take place. Beyond the arbitrary slicing of time in our world.

Dawn is also a particular time. Between awakening and practising, there is almost nothing. Author Yann Allegret had put it as follows, in an article published in KarateBushido : ‘This happens around six in the morning. People leave their home and head towards a place. By foot. By car. With the metro. Outside, the streets of Paris are still asleep, almost empty. Dawn is drawing close. The Aikidō session starts at 6:45am. The rythm of the city is still that of the night. Those who are outside have not yet put on their armours necessary for the workday ahead. Something remains suspended in the air. At dawn, as the sun rises, one feels like walking within an interstice.’ (4)

An interstice of time and space where we can start working on ourselves. Because we have to lose, at least a little bit, our usual landmarks to recover the inner sensation of our own landmarks. The sensation of our biological speed rather than the time on the clock. In order to listen to oneself, silent surroundings are needed. And in our world silence is not so easy a thing to find!

A casket

This is why in Itsuo Tsuda School we give so much importance to creating Dōjōs. Of course it is possible to practice anywhere, to adapt to any circumstances. But, is it always to be desired? To resume the parallel with music (topic I know well, having been pianist and concertist during fifteen years) one can play outside, in a gym, in a school, a church, a hospital, etc. I have incidentally nothing against the democratization of classical music, quite the opposite. But a good concert hall, this is something else. It is a casket where the musician, instead of spending his time adapting to the situation, compensating for the bad acoustics or anything else, can immerse himself into listening, search through fineness and make music arise. Living both experiences is most probably necessary for a professional. For a beginner, finding concentration and calm in the midst of turmoil or airstreams frankly seems to me very difficult.

As to Aikidō, the Dōjō is the casket of this research. If one seizes this opportunity of having a Dōjō, another perspective opens up. Because if our mind can understand the philosophical concepts that underlie the discourses about the Path, about the soul, etc, for the body to truly experience them, that’s a different story. We are often too busy, too upset, and we do have the need for a frame that fosters some particular mindsets.

We can observe as our experience grows that the spirit of Dōjō is to be cultivated both in a rather precise manner and at the same time within something fluid and intangible. The same goes for religious worship places. Sometimes a small church in the countryside, a chapel hidden around the corner breathes more silence and sacredness than an immense cathedral visited by millions of tourists. It is the same with Dōjōs. It is neither the size, neither the absolute respect of rules that make a place different. Dōjō, « the place where one practices the path », is an alchemy between the place, the layout, the prevailing atmosphere. It is not enough that the Dōjō should be beautiful, although a tokonoma with a calligraphy mounted as kakejiku, an ikebana, do create an atmosphere, but it also has to be full and lively of its practitioners!

Architect Charlotte Perriand made this remark about the Japanese house, which « does not attempt to appear, but attempts to reconcile human beings with themselves » (5). It is a beautiful definition that perfectly applies to the notion of Dōjō. To reconcile human beings with themselves and therefore with nature which we are part of. We must feel this as soon as we enter the Dōjō. Often, people make a pause, even simple visitors. It is instinctive.

The prevailing activity in the Dōjō is also an essential aspect of it. We have the possibility to take in charge all aspects of life. Members do the bookkeeping, renovation works, cleaning… Incidentally Tamura sensei used to say about cleaning the Dōjō: ‘this cleaning not only concerns the Dōjō itself, but also the practitioner who, by this act, proceeds to cleaning in depth his own being. Which means that, even if the Dōjō looks clean, it still needs to be cleaned again and again.’ (6). Sinologist J. F. Billeter talks about the « proper activity » [in French « l’activité propre », where « propre » both means clean and personal] when human activity becomes the art of nurturing life in oneself. This was part of the research of ancient Chinese Taoists. For us in the 21^st century it is still about regaining a relationship to human activity, not as something separated from our life, allowing us to earn money and wait for holidays, but as a total activity. A participation of the entire being to an activity. The contribution of members to a common work in their Dōjō also enables us to own this Dōjō, not as a property, but as the real meaning of the common good: what belongs to everybody is mine, and not « What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody so why should I care ». This perspective inversion sometimes takes time. It cannot be learnt by words or by strict rules. It is to be discovered and it is to be felt by oneself.

I am sometimes told ‘in the Dōjō it is possible, but at work, at home, it is impossible’. I am not so sure about it. If what one has deepened in the Dōjō is enough, then one will be able to carry it over to somewhere else. Ueshiba O-sensei used to say ‘Dōjō, it is where I am’.

We may not revolutionise the world all at once, of course, but each time we will react differently the world around us will change. Each time we will be able to get back to our center and breath deeply, things will change. All our problems will not be solved, but we will live them differently,our reality will then also be different.

Having no money is an advantage

For Musashi Miyamoto everything can be an advantage. During a fight if the sun is on your back it is an advantage for you, if the sun is on the back of your enemy and he thinks he has the advantage, it is an advantage for you. Because everything depends on the individual, on how one orients oneself. Thus sometimes having no money is an advantage, because then we have no other solution than to create, to invent solutions. This is how we can create Dōjōs without any subsidies, entirely dedicated to one or two practices, what was a priori impossible becomes reality.

Sometimes difficulty stimulates us to create what is essential for us. By being a tenant, by volunteering, by doing things on our own, by not looking for perfection but for inner satisfaction. By listening to one’s own inner imperative and not birds of ill omen who tell you it will never work, before anything has even started.

Temporary? Like all that lives on earth, yes, but a temporary fully lived in the present moment. To live intensely, to follow one’s path, is not an “easy” thing. But poets already gave us some advice, like R. M. Rilke: ‘ We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that should never forsake us.’ (7)

Building while accepting instability, working to be satisfied and not to get an income or a reputation, here are values that go quite against our society of immediate pleasure, of consumption as compensation to boredom. If today there is not necessarily a struggle for life anymore in our societies, there is always a struggle for owning ever more. A happiness façade, a staged life, displayed on social networks. As theorized by situationists as early as the late sixties, what is directly lived moves away through representation, life then becomes an accumulation of shows, until its paroxysm when reality reverses: the representation of our life becomes more important than what we really and personally experience. As Guy Debord said ‘In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false.’ (8)

In a Dōjō we work to reconnect with the true that perseveres within ourselves.

Katsugen Undō practice, which enables the awakening of the body capacities, goes exactly in the same direction. The awakening of the living, of our deeper nature. Reality is then no longer an oppression that prevents us from doing what we want with our life but quite on the contrary, it is the fine perception of reality that shows us that all depends on ourselves, on our orientation. Founder of Katsugen Undō Noguchi Haruchika sensei wrote some thoughts about Tchouang tseu’s work. These thoughts are of great interest and I cannot resist concluding this article by the intertwined voices of these two thinkers:

‘When Tsu-yu contracted a crippling illness, Tsu-szu visited him and asked, “Do you think your fate is unpleasant?” Tsu-yu’s answer was astounding: “Why should I find it unpleasant? If changes are brought about and my left arm turns into a rooster, I’ll use it to herald the dawn. If my right shoulder is transformed into a bullet, I’ll use it to bring down a pigeon for roasting. If my buttocks become carriage-wheels and my spirit a horse, I’ll ride along on them. Then I would need no other vehicle but myselfthat would be wonderful!” This is the road Tchouang-tseu walks. Within his attitude – that whatever happens, it is proper, and that when something happens, you go forward and affirm reality – there is not a trace of the resignation that lies in submitting to destiny. His affirmation of reality is nothing but the affirmation of reality. The dignity of the man is conveyed only by Lin Tsi’s words: “Wherever you are, be master.” ’ (9)

Manon Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Manon Soavi published in July 2019 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 25.

Notes:

1) Itsuo Tsuda, Cœur de Ciel Pur, Éditions Le Courrier du Livre, 2014, p. 86

2) ibid., p. 113

3) Jacques Brel, 1958

4) Yann Allegret, « À l’affût du moment juste » [‘On the Watch For the Right Moment’], KarateBushido 1402, pub. online (Feb. 2014)

5) Mona Chollet, Chez soi. Une odyssée de l’espace domestique, Edition La découverte, 2015, p. 311

6) Noboyoshi Tamura, Aikido, Les presses de l’AGEP, 1986, p. 19

7) Rainer-Maria Rilke, Lettres à un jeune poète, pub. Grasset (Paris), 1989, p. 73 (Eng. transl. by M. D. Herter Norton, W. W. Norton & Company, 1962, p. 53)

8) Guy Debord, La Société du Spectacle, pub. Gallimard (Paris), 1992, p. 12

9) Haruchika Noguchi, On Tchouang-Tseu, pub. Zensei

Photo credits: Jérémie Logeay, Paul Bernas, Anna Frigo

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Seizing, an Art of Detachment

1 July 2019 name

by Régis Soavi

Seizing in itself is not the difficulty, it is the coagulation of ki in the wrist, the arms or around the body that causes a problem and blocks us, and it is through detachment that we can get free of it. The way to achieve this is visualization. Tsuda sensei provides us with an example in his second book The Path of Less:

Aide-mémoire Itsuo Tsuda saisie — Drawing by Master Tsuda showing different types of seizures.

‘Aikido for me is an art of becoming a child again. […] It takes art to become a child without being childish.[…]] John, for example, tackles me from behind. I want to crouch down to sit, but he prevents me from doing so. He has biceps twice as big as mine and weighs almost 200 pounds (90 kilos). I cannot move, he is holding me so tightly. What should I do? Throw him before I sit down? I try but I cannot do it because he is too heavy and too strong.

So I become a child. I see a wondrous seashell on the beach and bend down to pick it up. I forget John, who is still grasping me from behind. (There is an important technical detail here: I move one foot forward to make two sides of a triangle with the other foot, because it is more concentrated that way.) There is flow of ki, starting with me and moving towards the seashell, whereas before, the ki was frozen at the thought of John. John’s 200 pounds become very light, and he falls forward over my shoulders.How is it that with different ideas, we obtain opposite results, while the situation remains the same?

The idea of throwing provokes resistance. In the child’s gesture, there is the joy of picking up the shell that makes one forget the enemy’s presence.’ (1)

Grabbing, appropriating

There are many ways of seizing and it is the intention put into it that is often determinant. Some of them can be considered as superficial or even unharmful, others more dangerous, like for instance those which carry a mark of appropriation or others which can sometimes be insidious and insistent.

The scenography which allows training in Aikido considers seizing as the result of an act manifesting itself with some kind of aggressivity. This act in itself is already an attempt to appropriate the other person, so as to use him in some way, rob him, destroy him, destroy his person or personality, setting apart the well-founded cases which are not of our concern in this example. What I am talking about is the abuse of a power, whether it be real or unreal, known or desired, over the other, this other person being presumed unable to react when faced to such a display of strength.

Assuming power

In the animal world, the power of an individual or clan in the bosom of a larger group of the same kind matches quite definite criteria, generally in relation to reproduction, preservation or to the defense of a species. As a consequence, it is borne and finally accepted by the whole group; in case of any attempt to contest, genetic or merely ancestral rituals are meant to clarify the situation.

In human societies, particularly in ours which would like itself to be more modern in some respect, the need for assuming power over the other person seems to me more like a dysfunction, or even a disease, which are fully created by the behaviours induced by civilization. Uncertainty about one’s own power, as well as the conditionings exerted by all those already installed in the bosom of society bring about frustration and lead human beings to try to reconquer their power through words or even acts, trying where this power does not lie, where they vill not find it, that is in the other person who anyway does not detain it. But on the other hand, it forces them mentally to take all the risks implied by this vain hope. The arising of such aggressivity is often due to a lack or deficit of one’s own power, whether admitted or not, that one tries to make up. Pressure undergone and felt, hence experienced as such, sometimes since early childhood brings in people the will to reappropriate what they feel intimately robbed of, deprived of, or even what they just lost. It makes them dangerous persons, merely due to their frustration. We can all understand and feel that kind of thing when helplessly faced to an administration, or when put under power by somebody against whom there is apparently no possible opposition. From that point, there is just one step to becoming aggressive, which some people take, while others manage to be reasonable, resign themselves because they have already accepted this state of domination out of habit and they daily undergo it. If a few people are only hardly moved, it is because they have already overcome these difficulties and are not damaged in their own power, never having lost it or having already recovered it.

Prisoner

‘It’s a case of the biter bit’ says the proverb and this reversal of perspective is indeed what happens when seizing. We forget too easily that the one who is seizing becomes prisoner of what he has seized. He canot get rid of it without risking to lose something in the process he has initiated. His freedom, if he has any at all, is now transferred to the one he thought he could detain or retain. He becomes a jailer to the other person, who will only think of getting free, who will put all his strength, intelligence, sometimes all his craftiness or even perfidiousness into it, because he is totally within his right and nobody can blame him for it. Our society generates this type of alienating behaviour in which both persons try to free themselves, one against the other, instead of moving to another dimension which would be more human, intelligent, and respectful of the this other person. Wanting to change these behaviours might seem utopic, yet if Aikido exists and continues to be an art at the service of mankind, it is maybe to assert and demonstrate that, like others have already stated, other relations are possible between people and we aikidokas are not the only ones who wish to continue in this direction.

Respiration, an answer to a specific situation

It is through ventral respiration and the calmness it brings about that one can find the immediate solution to some difficult situations. To prepare for that, it is not absolutely necessary to be an outstanding technician, or someone brave as a blizzard, or a very competent analyst but on the other hand there is need to recover this force which has taken refuge at the very bottom of our body, of our kokoro, or which even sometimes has been scattered in multiple defense systems. Trying to find a defensive solution in violent martial arts when faced with the awareness of our weakness, real or assumed, is just dodging the issue, seeking an alternative, or worse, forging ahead regardless. Aikido, by its philosophy, suggests another direction but if this fails to be heard and above all understood, it may well cause Aikido to lose its justification, its singularity.

Attacks in Aikido are just a way of setting a situation in order to enable practitioners to solve a problem, or even a conflict, which by the way puts them in opposition more with themselves than to with their partners. Seizings, for instance, often represent attempts to immobilize the body, therefore to block the other’s movement, through imprisonment of the wrists, arms, trunk, keikogi or any other part which can be grabbed for this purpose. Sometimes, however, seizings may follow on from an attempt to strike that has failed. They are seldom solely a matter of blocking; considered in the perspective of a fight, they should almost always be followed by an Atemi or a final immobilization. They are only the first act, the first scene of a play which is much longer, if one may say so. It might seem paradoxical but it is through working on seizings that one will discover detachment.

Sensibility, instinct

Quite before seizing or hitting materializes, our sensibility is touched by something invisible even though very physical. This may be inexplicable as scientific knowledge currently stands, but this is something we know well, and even sometimes very well. That is what makes us move, dodge, although we have seen nothing but simply felt it in an indefinable way. In order to give a clearer example, one which everybody has been able to verify in one way or another, in different circumstances, I would like to write about gazing. Gazing carries an energy, an extremely concrete Ki that our instinct can perceive. Have you not ever experienced, while taking a walk one evening or one night, feeling something indescribable behind you as if someone was gazing at you, watching you; you turn around, nobody there, and still the sensation lingers? The sensation, if you are not at peace, can turn into anxiety or perhaps trigger an “irrational-since-there’s-nobody” fear, when at the angle of the street behind a half-opened curtain you suddenly discover somebody observing you – or on an overhanging roof a cat watching you. The gaze of cats, and of animals in general, as well as the gaze of humans when intently observing something or somebody, carries an extremely powerful Ki. Our instinct can feel it, but it all depends on our state of mind at that moment. If we are talking with a friend, if we are lost in our thoughts after a love encounter for instance, our instinct, if not well-prepared, will have difficulty feeling this kind of things. The same obviously applies when we are worried, frightened or anguished, in this case all our being is somehow weakened, it loses its instinctive abilities.

Discovering the direction taken by Ki

Aikido enables us to re-discover and conduct our instinctive abilities. It is thanks to a slow work on ourselves and our sensations that will appear again what we have often let go to sleep, rocked as we were by the comfort due to modern society which may seem so reassuring to us.The work based on seizing corresponds, like everything we do in Aikido, to a process of renewed learning and to a training of the body as a whole so that there will no longer be any separation between body and spirit. First of all, when our partner gets closer, there is no question of waiting kindly for him to seize us as requested, our whole body must feel the directions followed by the different parts of his body: arms, legs, his bearing points, all of this without looking, without observing, because it would already be too late. With unexperienced beginners, if the exercise is done slowly enough, they will be able to discover the routes taken by their partner’s Ki, the force lines. Since they work without any risk, they start again trusting the reactions and sensations of their bodies. During sessions, I do not only show the techniques, I am constantly on the move, serving as Uke to one person, as Tori to another; without blocking them, I make them feel the direction their body must take by putting myself in the situation, making ki more material, by materializing the force lines, visualizing the openings they can use, while allowing them to act and respond as they will.

Discovering the Non-doing

Seizing can be a first step on the path that leads to what Lao Tseu and Chouang Tseu would name Wu wei, the Non-acting, and it was the basis of my master Tsuda Itsuo’s teaching. How to teach what cannot be taught, how to show the invisible, how to guide a beginner or even an experienced practitioner towards what is the essence of the practice in our School? What is difficult to explain with words is easily understood when we let sensation guide us. To do so we have to take a few steps backward. To let go of our acquiring and piling up habits, those consumer reflexes of people always ready to fill up their trolleys with various products, techniques which are more or less modern, fashionable or old style, miraculous, easy and effortless, or even tough but efficient. Advertising is today the source of many illusions, luring its clients with colourful wonders of a world that has become so virtual. When will the new Wii console enable us to practice Aikido with enhanced reality glasses and a partner whose potentiometer can be adjusted depending on our level, our shape, or our mood?

But maybe I am behind and it already exists.

Seizing with Ki

Young children know and naturally use a certain way of seizing which is extremely efficient. It is a seizure devoid of any useless contraction. When they seize a toy they put all their ki into the act and when they let go of this toy they do it with complete indifference, there is no more Ki in it. On the other hand they have an incredible capacity when they do not want to let go of what they have seized and are holding tight in their small hand. If this is something dangerous, their parents must sometimes unfold their fingers one by one, though their hand is so small and devoid of any true muscular strength as adults mean it. They know in a manner completely unconscious how to use Ki, they do not need to learn, unfortunately they often lose this ability for the benefit of what is reasonable and most of the time education and schooling are responsible for this.

To learn again how to seize like a small child, without tension, and thus discover natural prehension. I often give as an example the way birds alight on a branch: they have skin micro-sensors in the middle of their paws which inform receptors which, thanks to these indications, stimulate reflex functions at the level of the involuntary, and give the order to their fingers to close as soon as they touch the branch. This manner of seizing avoids contortions, failures, and enables a very subtle adequacy of the members to the place caught (they catch). A quality seizure is a seizure which uses the palm of the hand as first contact, then the fingers close up on the object, the limb, the Keikogi. If we act in this way, seizing is faster, without any excessive tensions, and it has remarkable efficiency, allowing therefore a good quality work with a partner.

The only seizures which respect the other one’s freedom are light but powerful, like for instance that of a small child who wants to take along one of his parents to look at a small frog he’s just seen in the tall grass and is curious about, or like that of two beings, friends or lovers, bound by tenderness and respectful of each other.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in April 2019 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 24.

(1) Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, p. 175, Yume Editions, Paris, 2015 (trans. from La Voie du dépouillement, Le Courrier du Livre, 1975)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Misogi

2 June 2019 name

Starting with a theme taken from I Ching hexagram K’an (the Abysmal), Régis Soavi writes in this article about Aikido as a Misogi pratice.

Misogi 禊 is widely practised among shintoists. It consists of an ablution, sometimes under a waterfall, in a stream, or in the sea and allows a purification of the body at both physical and psychical levels. In a broader sense, Misogi encompasses a whole process of spiritual awakening. Misogi is also a way to relieve the being of what overwhelms him, so to allow him to wake up to life. Water has always been considered one of its essential elements.

Like water, Aikido is a way to achieve Misogi

Founder of Aikido O Sensei Morihei Ueshiba kept on telling his students that the practice of this Art is above all a Misogi.

Aikido is one of the Japanese martial arts for which the main character, the very nature, is, like water, fluidity. The teaching brought by Itsuo Tsuda Sensei who was during ten years a direct student of the Founder Morihei Ueshiba has definitely confirmed it. Although his words seem to have largely been forgotten, he kept on repeating that in Aikido there is no fighting, its just the art of uniting and separating¹. However, when you watch an Aikido session, it seems that two people are fighting each other. In fact one of them plays the role of the assaillant, but in real he is a partner, facing him there is no aggressiveness, you wont see any malicious gesture, no violence, even if the response to the attack may be impressive because of its efficiency.

Overall, the Aikido practised in the Itsuo Tsuda School is an Art of great fluidity, an art in which sensitivity and caring for the partner have the main part, and it is always through the smoothness of a first part practised individually that an Aikido session begins.Far from starting with warm-up exercices, an Aikido session begins with smooth, slow but still invigorating exercises. Breathing coordination is essential, as it allows us to harmonize with Ki, and thereby to take a step forward to discover a world with an additional dimension, the “World of Ki”.

This world is not a revelation, it is more what comes to light, what appears clearly when one recovers one’s sensitivity, when rigidity vanishes into thin air and that the living appears through. It is often women who first understand the importance of such a way of practising. That is why so many women practise in our school because they have experienced the bitter taste of sexist oppression in our society and they find in this art a way, a path, far beyond the simple martial art.

Ki, a driving force

Ai, 合 Union, Harmony

Ki, 気 Vital energy, Life

Do, 道 Path, Way, Tao

Ki is not a concept, a mystical energy nor a sort of mental illusion. We can feel Ki. In fact everybody knows what it is, even if, in Western countries nowadays, we do not give it a name. Learning to feel it, to recognize it, to make the most of it, is necessary for who wants to practise a martial art, and even more if you practise Aikido. In Aikido, if you dont focus on Ki, only the empty form of its contents remains, this form becomes quickly a fight, a struggle in which the strongest, or the most cunning will manage to defeat his partner. We are really far away from the founder’s teaching for whom it was an art of peace, an art in which there is neither winner, nor defeated. Each movement of the partner is accompanied by a complementary movement from the other partner, like the water that marries each roughness, every nook, leaving nothing behind or separate.

If the beginnings are usually tough, its because people have lost part of their mobility and mostly because they have become hard so to be protected from the world around. They have built a carapace, an armour, certainly protective, but which has become a second nature and an invisible prison. To have Ki flow in our body again, so to recover fluidity, and follow a teaching based on sensitivity enables us to understand physically the Yin and the Yang.

Bathing in a sea of Ki

Exercices and basic or advanced techniques have not only in common the breath which is nothing but the materialization or even better the visualisation of Ki, but they also allow to become aware of our body, physically and of our sphere of ki, which the Indians call the AURA, and that we have today practically forgotten almost everywhere.What modern science and in particular neuroscience has been discovering for a few years is only a small part of what everyone can discover on his own and put into practice in his daily life simply through the practice of Aikido as Itsuo Tsuda Sensei taught it.He would repeat over and over again that Aïkido as presented by his Master Morihei Ueshiba is the union of Ka the inspiration, the ascending force, the square, the weft and Mi, the exhalation, the downward force, the cercle, the chain.Ka being in Japanese a prononciation for 火 fire (which appears for example as a radical in the word Kasai 火災, wild fire) and Mi the first syllable of Mizu 水 water, the whole forming the word KAMI 神 which means divine in the sense of the divine nature of all things. Itsuo Tsuda would add that ‘in this gloss one mustn’t see a similar value to that of a scientific etymology. It comes from punning, the use of which is common among mystics’. ²

I have never seen such fluid movements as when he wanted us to feel a technique he showed to us. Moreover, in his dojo there used to be no accidents, nobody injured, everything would be in a flow of Ki both respectful and generous but at the same time firm and rigorous, that I can hardly find today in the sports halls where aikidokas have their trainings.

The dojo, an essential place

Do we really need a special place to practise Aikido? If we talk about the surface we need for falls, we could lay tatamis anywhere, from the moment we are sheltered from bad weather.

In his book Heart of Pure Sky, Itsuo Tsuda gives us his extremely clear view of what should be a dojo, he who was Japanese was in the best position to give us a glimpse:

‘Concretely, L’École de la Respiration is a “Dojo”, a particular kind of space in the East, which refers less to the material place itself than to the energetic space.’³

‘As I have already said, the dojo is not simply a space carved out and reserved for certain exercises. It is a place where the space-time is different from that of a secular place. The atmosphere there is particularly intense. We enter it by bowing to sanctify ourselves and we go out by bowing to desacralise ourselves.

Spectators are admitted, provided they respect the atmosphere[…]. They must not gratuitously parody the practice with words and gestures.

I am told that in France [or in Italy], we come upon dojos that are simply gymnasiums or sports clubs. So be it. As for me, I want my dojo to be a dojo, and not a club with a boss and his regulars, so as not to disturb the sincerity of the practitioners. This does not mean that they should wear a scowling constipated expression. On the contrary, we must maintain a spirit of peace, communion and joy.’⁴

A sacred space therefore and yet fundamentally non religious, a secular space, a space of great simplicity where the freedom to be as we are exists, beyond the social. And not what we have become with all the compromises we had to accept in order to survive in society. This freedom remains inside us, deep within us in our intimate heart, our Kokoro 心 as Japanese language talks so well about it, and is only asking for a chance to be revealed.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, The Path of Less, 2014, Chap. XIX, Yume Editions, p. 182 (1^st ed. in French, 1976, p. 174–5)
2
Itsuo Tsuda, The Science of the Particular, 2015, Chap. XVIII, Yume Editions, p. 153 (1^st ed. in French, 1976, p. 137)
3
Itsuo Tsuda, Heart of Pure Sky (posth.), ‘Interviews on France Culture radio’, ‘Broadcast no. 1’, 2025, Yume Editions, p. 13 (1^st ed. in French, 2014)
4
ibid., ‘Early Writings’, ‘Booklet n°3 – Respiratory Practice in Aikido’, p. 102

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Taiheki, The Revelator

1 May 2019 name

By Régis Soavi.

Noro Sensei, in the 70s, used to tell us that O-Sensei Ueshiba Morihei would sometimes reproach his learners for their lack of attention when they phoned from a phone booth, concentrated as they were on their conversation: You must be ready under any circumstances, whatever you do! he would say.

Aikido opts for a natural position, with no guard stance, which is called Shizen Tai. But a natural posture is not a laid-back posture as we understand it today, concentration and attention mustn’t be eased in any case. Given that the most widespread guard stance in Aikido remains Hanmi no Kamae, it depends more than we believe, on the polarization of energy in the body, as do all the other guards.

Kamae, the body’s instinct

I remember what Maroteaux Sensei had told us during one of my first Aikido sessions at the “Montagne Sainte-Geneviève” dojo: ‘You open the door, a dog jumps at your throat, what do you do?’ Obviously I remained speechless, but this question he had asked us had shattered me – I was a young practitioner of martial arts quite sure of himself at the time – and this became the root of my research on Kamae.

Assuming a guard stance is the response to an act of aggression or to the sensation of danger. This response, coming from someone who does not know martial arts, will be instinctive whereas it will be the result of training coming from a practitioner. Personal research can lead the practitioner to use his body in a manner different from what he had learned and for this he will find a positioning or a guard that suits him, sometimes a more appropriate one, sometimes one meant as a trap suggesting an opening or a weakness on his part. Even if there are many ways to assume a guard stance, hence to protect ourselves, we must take our own body into account, in spite of all we have learned, despite the many years of training, ultimately instinct will be our guide. The work in martial arts, far from being pointless, will rather be in this case a backing, a support. Training may sometimes induce over-confidence, a belief in techniques, postures which, though beautiful on pictures or on the tatamis, do not correspond to any reality in daily life.

Finding the right posture depends on each person’s body. Far too many practitioners try by working very hard to model their body in order to bring it into line with the idea they have of their art, or more simply with the efficiency they hope to gain. We consider the aesthetics of the art but then we miss its depth. We can see the work which has been done but we are not aware of the deformations acquired because of it. So many students repeat an incredible number of times the same exercise, the same technique thus hoping to reach the mastery of their art by imitating the master or simply the teacher, while they are instead following the path of deformation without realizing. One shall not be surprised by the number of accidents or disabilities resulting from this. How many people are unable to practice anymore because of a knee, an elbow, a wrist or their back, though they are still young and full of energy?

Noguchi haruchika. Taiheki — Noguchi Haruchika Sensei 1911-1976, founder of Seitai

The Kamae depend on the Taiheki

Seitai brought us a remarkable tool, the study of corporal tendencies which Noguchi Haruchika Sensei called Taiheki. Tsuda Sensei gave a first description of them, which though brief was already a revelation when his first book The Non-Doing was published in the early seventies. Later he supplemented this teaching in the books which followed over the years, continually giving examples which enabled one to understand Taiheki better. Reading Noguchi Sensei’s texts also enabled us to deepen our knowledge of human behaviours and particularly of their relationship with the body. Comprehending the bodily movements of individuals enables to help beginners improve their posture, so they do not deform themselves. Since explaining this teaching to uninformed readers would require a whole book, all I can do is give a few indications, without going into details.

The Taiheki classification developed by Noguchi Sensei is based on human involuntary motion. It is not a typology meant to make people fit into small boxes, but rather to identify the habitual behavioural tendencies, at the same time taking into account the interpenetrations that may occur between them.

This classification includes six groups: each of the first five is related to a lumbar vertebra, the last group being more related to a global state of the body rather than to the spinal column. According to either the Yang or the Yin aspect, each group is divided into two subgroups or types, called “active” or “passive”. In order to fully understand the interest of such a study, I have chosen a few examples which seem to me more telling than other in the light of the Taiheki.

La posture taiheki — Régis Soavi. Finding the right posture depends on each person’s body.

Taiheki, the revelator

According to the classification, the first group is also called the “vertical category” and it is related to the first lumbar vertebra. The energy tends to polarize to the brain.

Type 1, for instance, is extremely confident with respect to Kamae, his position is unchangeable and he is able to explain it to everybody, in a very logical way. Even with little experience he at once has an idea on the topic and sticks to it. Since his heels tend to get off the ground because of the tension he has in the cervical vertebrae, he will for example develop a theory according to which this position allows you to jump faster and further in case of attack and will refute any contradiction, until another idea emerges which will seem to him more brilliant and relevant.

Type 2 knows everything on the Kamae in almost all martial arts, the historical origins, the value of each one and its major flaws, the contribution of each master. He even knows little stories illustrating what he says, he is a mine of knowledge who does not hesitate to complete it as soon as he feels a lack somewhere in his argumentation or his references.

The second group is called the “lateral category” and it is related to the second lumbar vertebra. The energy tends to polarize to the digestive system.

Type 3 is a bon vivant, when he practices martial arts he chooses his club according to the ambiance rather than to the efficiency of the art he is being taught, or to the reputation of the master. All these stories about postures, guard stances, are of little interest to him, as usual he has his own little opinion about this topic, and he likes or dislikes, which means it is convenient to him or not.

Type 4, on the other hand is always restrained in his manner, it is hard to know what he thinks. An affable person, he seldom gives his opinion, even if a debate initiates about the value of different Kamae, he does not have any real opinion, everything seems possible to him depending on the circumstances. He is rather a diplomatic, moderate kind of person.

The third category is called the “pulmonary category”or “forwards/backwards category” and it is related to the fifth lumbar vertebra. The energy tends to polarize to the respiratory system.

Type 5 does not like to argue about nothing, a stance must have a practical meaning, either it is efficient, or it is not. We must check, and if it works, move ahead… Dodging is not his strong point, he prefers Omote techniques to Ura techniques. Because the bearing point of his posture tends to be the fifth lumbar vertebra, his shoulders lean forward and this incites him to act. He is easily combative but knows how to leave himself a way out if necessary.

Type 6 has too much tension in the shoulders to be able to act in a simple way. When this tension relaxes, it releases a huge amount of energy that goes off in all directions and that even he himself can’t handle. In front of him, no guard stance is possible, he is completely out of control and unpredictable at the risk of putting himself in danger.

The fourth category is called the “twisted category” and it is related to the third lumbar vertebrae. The energy tends to polarize to the urinary system.

Some Taiheki may a priori seem to be a help in assuming a good guard stance, as it is the case with the “twisted category” (type 7 or 8), because in order to defend themselves they instinctively adopt a kind of posture, rather a profile position, with arched lumbar vertebrae, one foot forward etc. The posture may look ideal, to strike a pose or on a picture. But apart from the precision of the position and the bearing points, the ability to move depends obviously and maybe mainly on the state of mind. There is a huge difference, which will completely change the deal, between a type 7 twist and a type 8 one. To put it in a simple way, I would say that the type 7 wants to win whereas the type 8 does not want to lose. The whole posture changes, one gets ready to pounce, the other to try dodging. Furthermore, the people of the twisted category have a permanent agitation which in this case turns out harmful. They are so restless all they are waiting for is to take action. Waiting is unbearable to them; unable to take it any longer, all of a sudden they get started, never mind if it is not the right moment.

The fifth group is called “pelvian” or “pelvis” group and it is related to the fourth lumbar vertebra. Its energy is not polarized towards a definite part of the body, it is the body as a whole which stretches and releases from the hips with one blow.

Type 9 is an example of continuity, when he practices martial arts, he tends to make it his unique reason of living, the trend of his pelvis to close gives to his koshi a lot of strength that makes his learning easier but he has got a predisposition to perfecting that may sometimes go to the point of absurdity. He cares about details and will perfect kamae to the slightest element, as long as his posture is not perfect according to his views he will not be satisfied, but this dissatisfaction, far from discouraging him, is precisely what pushes him forward. Nothing can be opposed to him, his only reference is inner satisfaction. Like O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei as well as other great masters, he may come to the conclusion that the natural position is the ideal kamae because it transcends all the others. But this natural position is the fruit of his many years of work and training, not a theoretical facility nor a slackening on his part.

As for type 10, he considers that a good guard stance is indispensable, that it is a guarantee of stability and that if we respected others, there would be no conflict. His open pelvis generally makes him someone very friendly, he has a great sensitivity and his intuition is fearsome. His open posture prevents him from being aggressive, he will tend to perform Ura techniques at which he is better and his guard will be more in the direction of absorbing the attack rather than repelling it.

Concentration and attention must not be relaxed under any circumstances.

The two last types that form the last group are, actually, states of the body called hypersensitive and apathetic.

Type 11 fails to have a precise and defined guard stand, because of his hypersensitivity, he is an unsettled person, unable to find benchmarks. His guard stand is imprecise, even confused or messy and almost every time totally ineffective. Fear tends to liquefy his legs. In his case, Aikido can be an excellent activity, provided the teacher understands his difficulties well and does not rush him, so as to to lead him to a normal sensitivity.

On the contrary, type 12 is an example of rigidity, his guard stance is very physical and often lacks flexibility, he is able to take any blow without flinching. His body may sometimes have a certain muscle laxity in the joints but this does not make him less rigid.

It is according to Taiheki that one can understand the uselessness of a given posture, hence of a given kamae. Support points being different from an individual to another, the potential for mobility or simply for movement is basically different too. So it is no use proposing an exercise, which even if it makes the apparent posture better, destroys the person in the very bases, or at least might cause physical as well as mental deformations.

Kamae and rigidification

Tsuda Sensei considered that rigidification and slackening of individuals are a part of the great flaws induced by our modern societies, but he did know that these problems existed long before, that they are inherent in human society. In his book The Path of the Gods he tells an anecdote about kamae which I found once more very evocative. It is significant of the risks to which imagination may expose people, even those whose profession it was, like the samourai.

‘Involuntary contraction gets stronger as imagination is filled with fear. Fear doesn’t remain in the head. It paralyses the whole body. The wrists especially lose flexibility and the arms become insensitive. That’s what happened to two samourais fighting a duel in a story I read somewhere. They were holding their sabre with both hands and were facing each other several meters apart. At this distance, they were still safe whatever they did but their faces were already pale. They were probably soaked in cold sweat. They stayed there at the same distance for some time. Finally they got closer, one of them was lying on the ground and the other was standing. The fight was over. But the winner was staying there, unable to let go of his sabre because his fingers were clenched on the handle. The contraction was such that it was difficult for him to loosen them ’.

If we want to avoid rigidification that can be caused by guard stands which dont agree with us or imply constraints that deform us, only commonsense and personal search for balance can allow that to us. There is no definitive solution for all problems and forever.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in January 2019 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 23.

Notes:

Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Yume Editions, Paris, 2014 (trans. from Le Non-faire, Le Courrier du Livre, 1973)
Tsuda Itsuo, La Voie des dieux, Le Courrier du Livre, 1982, p. 60

Photos credits: Régis Sirvent, Sara Rossetti

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo

Seitai

28 April 2019 name

The Seitai principles, which could even be described as “Seitai philosophy” – a way of seeing and thinking about the world – were developed by Haruchika Noguchi (1911-1976) in the first half of the twentieth century. In brief (!), Seitai is a “method” or a “philosophy” that includes Seitai sōhō, Taisōs, Katsugen undō, Katsugen sōhō, and Yukihō. These are practices that complement, permeate each other, and form the breadth of Haruchika Noguchi’s Seitai thinking. We can also mention the study of Taihekis (postural tendencies), the use of the hot bath, the education of the subconscious, the importance of birth, illness and death…

An art of living from beginning to end.

Today, unfortunately, the term “Seitai” is overused and means anything and everything. Some manual therapy practitioners too easily lay claim to Seitai (Itsuo Tsuda would say it takes twenty years to train a Seitai sōhō technician!). As for the charlatans who offer to transform you in a few sessions…, let’s not talk about it! The magnitude of the art of living, the global understanding of the human being in Seitai seem far away. If all there is left is a technique to be applied to patients, the essence is lost. If all there is left of Katsugen undō is a moment to “recharge your batteries”, the essence is lost.

Haruchika Noguchi and Itsuo Tsuda both went much further than that in their understanding of the human being. And the seeds they sowed, the clues they left for humans to evolve are important. Can we then speak of a way, of Seitai-dō (道 dō/tao)? Because that is a radical change of perspective, an upheaval, a totally different horizon opening up.

Let us go back in history…

The meeting with Haruchika Noguchi: the individual as a whole

Itsuo Tsuda met Haruchika Noguchi around 1950. The approach to the human being as proposed in Seitai interested him from the very beginning. The sharp observation of individuals taken in their indivisible entirety/complexity, which Itsuo Tsuda found in Noguchi, was an extension of what had already captured his interest during his studies in France with Marcel Mauss (anthropologist) and Marcel Granet (sinologist). Itsuo Tsuda then began to follow Noguchi’s teaching and continued for more than twenty years. He had the sixth dan of Seitai.

‘Master Noguchi enabled me to see things in a very concrete way. Through the things manifested by each individual, it is possible to see what is going on inside. It is completely different from the analytical approach, in which the head, the heart, the digestive organs each have their own specialization; and there’s the body on one hand and the psyche on the other, isn’t that so? Well, he made it possible to see the human being, that is, the concrete individual, in its totality.’ ¹

Illness as a balance factor

All the more as it was precisely in the 1950s that Haruchika Noguchi, who had very early discovered his capacity as a healer, decided to give up therapeutics. He then created the concept of Seitai, i. e. “normalized terrain”.

‘the word “terrain” referring to the whole that makes up the individual, the psychic and the physical, whereas in the West we always divide things into psychic and then physical.’²

The change of perspective with regard to illness was crucial in this reorientation of Noguchi.

‘Illness is natural, the bodys effort to recover lost balance. […]

[…]

It is good that illness exists, but people must avoid becoming enslaved to it. This is how Noguchi happened to conceive of the notion of Seitai, the normalisation of the terrain, if you will. Diseases are not to be treated; it is useless to cure them.

If the terrain is normalised, illness disappears of its own accord. And moreover, one becomes more vigorous than before. Farewell to therapeutics. The fight against illness is over.’³

Itsuo Tsuda. Photo de Eva Rodgold© — Yuki. Itsuo Tsuda. Photo by Eva Rodgold©

A path towards autonomy

Abandoning therapy also goes hand in hand with the desire to get out of the dependence relation that binds the patient to the therapist. Noguchi wanted to allow individuals to become aware of their ignored capacities, he wished to awaken them to the fulfilment of their own being. During the twenty years they followed each other, the two men spent long moments talking about philosophy, art, etc., and Noguchi found in Tsuda‘s vast intellectual culture the substance to nourish and expand his observations and personal reflections. Thus a relation which was enriching for both developed between them.

Itsuo Tsuda was the editor of the magazine Zensei, published by the Seitai Institute, and he actively participated in the studies led by Noguchi on Taihekis (postural tendencies). A text by Haruchika Noguchi published in the magazine Zensei of January 1978 reveals that it was Itsuo Tsuda who advanced the hypothesis – validated by Noguchi – that type nine (closed basin) would be the archetype of the primitive being.⁴

The development of Katsugen undō (Regenerating Movement) by Noguchi particularly interested Itsuo Tsuda, who immediately understood the importance of this tool, especially as regards to the possibility it gives to individuals to regain their autonomy, without needing to depend any more on any specialist. While recognizing and admiring the precision and the deep capacity of the Seitai technique, Tsuda considered that the spreading of Katsugen undō was more important than the teaching of the technique. He therefore initiated groups of Regenerating Movement (Katsugen Kai) in a great many places in Japan.

Conférence d'Itsuo Tsuda. Photo d'Eva Rodgold© — Itsuo Tsuda giving a talk. Photo by Eva Rodgold©

Itsuo Tsuda favoured the spread of Katsugen undō in Europe as a gateway to Seitai.

Today, even in Japan, Seitai sōhō has taken an orientation that brings it closer to therapy. One problem: one technique to apply. Katsugen undō becomes a kind of “light” gymnastics for well-being and relaxation. This is far from the awakening of the living, of the autonomous capacity of the body to react that Haruchika Noguchi‘s Seitai is meant to be.

The yuki exercise, which is the alpha and omega of Seitai, is practised at every Katsugen undō session. Thus, although Tsuda did not teach the technique of Seitai sōhō, he transmitted its essence, the simplest act, this “non-technique” that yuki is. The one that serves us every day, the one that gradually sensitizes the hands, the body. This physical sensation, that is real, that can be experienced by all, is today too often considered a special technique, reserved for an elite. We forget that it is a human and instinctive act. The practice of mutual Katsugen undō (with a partner) is also getting lost, even in the groups that followed Tsuda‘s teaching. What a pity! Because through yuki and mutual Katsugen undō, the body rediscovers sensations, those that do not go through mental analysis. This dialogue in silence, which makes us discover the other from the inside and which therefore brings us back to ourselves, to our inner being. Yuki and Katsugen undō are for us essential tools, recommended by Haruchika Noguchi, on the path towards normal terrain.

But time goes by and things get distorted, like words of wisdom of some people become religious oppressions… Little by little Katsugen undō is nothing more than a moment to “recharge”, relax and above all not change anything in one’s life, in one’s stability. Seitai, a method to lose weight after childbirth… While it is a life orientation, a global thinking. The huge step Haruchika Noguchi took in moving away from the idea of therapeutics is a major advance in the history of mankind. His global understanding of the individual, the sensitivity to ki, sufficiently recovering sensitivity and a center in oneself from where to listen to one’s own body and act freely.

It is not even about opposing methods, theories or civilizations. It is purely and simply about the evolution of humanity.

Manon Soavi

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, Interviews on France Culture radio, “Master Tsuda explains the Regenerating Movement”, Broadcast N° 3, early 1980s (Heart of Pure Sky, 2025, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 23 (1^st ed. in French, 2014, p. 24))
2
Itsuo Tsuda, ibid., Broadcast N° 4, p. 28 (1^st ed. p. 29)
3
Itsuo Tsuda, The Dialogue of Silence, Chap. IX, 2018, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 75–76 (1^st ed. in French, 1979)
4
About Taihekis, consult Itsuo Tsuda, The Non-Doing, 2014, Yume Editions (Paris) (1^st ed. in French, 1973)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Ukemi: the Flow of Ki

6 April 2019 name

by Régis Soavi

The fall in our art – Ukemi – is more than a liberation, mere consequence of an action. It is the Yin or Yang of a whole, the Tao. In practice, at the end of the technique, Tori emanates a yang energy: if he wants to avoid injuring his partner, Tori lets him absorb this yang energy and transfer it to the fall.

Breathing during the fall

Aikido is an art where there is no loser, an art dedicated to human beings, to the intuition of humans, to their adaptability, and going beyond the contradiction brought by a technique by means of the fall is nothing else than adaptability to it.

Not to teach a beginner how to fall would amount to putting him in a situation of handicap from the start and risking discouragement, or to shaping a spirit of resentment, or even of revenge.

There are different attitudes among beginners, those who hurl themselves at the risk of getting hurt, and those who, because of fear, contract when about to fall and who of course take a bad fall and suffer painful consequences if you force them. My answer to this problem is softness and time…

When surprised by a noise, an act, the first reaction is to breathe in and block the breath, this is a reflex and vital functioning that prepares the answer and therefore the action. Surprise starts a series of biomechanical processes which are totally involuntary, it is already too late for reasoning. It is by breathing out that the solution to the problem will come. If there is no risk after all, or if the reaction is exaggerated and the risk minor, one drops the blocking and the breath is released in a natural way (ha, the usual sigh of relief). If there is danger, whether great or small, we are ready for action, ready to act thanks to the breath, thanks to breathing out. Problems occur when, for instance, we do not know what to do, when the solution does not arise immediately, we remain blocked in inspiration, with our lungs full of air, unable to move. It is a disaster! It is approximately the same pattern that occurs when we are a beginner, our partner is performing a technique and the logical answer that will enable us to get free, and thus to fix up this contentious problem is the Ukemi. But if one is afraid to fall, if one has not had the technical training of many forward and backward rollings done in a slow, nice and easy way, one remains with lungs blown up like a soccer ball, and if the technique is completed, one ends up on the floor, with more or less damage done.

Bouncing painfully on the tatamis like the aforesaid ball would then be the least harm. Learning to let go as soon as absolutely necessary, not falling before by caution, as this impairs Tori’s sensation and gives him a false idea of the value of his technique and often of himself. Grasping the right moment to breathe out and land softly on the tatamis without any air left in the lungs. Then as for the clapped falls, which one does when more advanced, it will be enough to breathe out faster and let oneself go so that the body finds the right receiving position by itself.

Training the old way!

My own training through Judo in the early sixties, in Parisian suburbs, was very different. To us school youngsters, Judo was a way to expend our energy and canalize what otherwise ended badly, that is turned into struggles and other kinds of street fights. The training, twice a week, required two essential things: absolute respect to our teacher and learning how to fall. It was still a time when our teacher transmitted the « Japanese » Judo without weight categories. In spite of Anton Geesink’s recent victory at the Olympic Games, he would define himself as a traditionalist. Falls were one of the lessons foundations: rolling forward, backward, sideways, we used to spend about twenty minutes practising that before performing the techniques, and sometimes, when he would not find us focused enough, too much scattered, he would say: ‘Turn your kimonos inside out so you won’t dirty them’ and we would go out for a series of forward falls, in the small paved blind alley in front of the dojo. Afterwards, we were not afraid to fall anymore, well, that is, those who still wanted to continue!

The world has changed, society has evolved, would nowadays parents agree to trust such a “barbarian” with their progeny, besides there are rules, protective laws, insurances.

Bob – that was his name – felt a responsibility for our training, and teaching us how to fall whatever the circumstances and on any sort of ground was part of his values and his duty was to retransmit them to us.

Bodies have changed, through food, lack of exercise, over-intellectualisation; how can we pass on the message that learning physically how to fall is a necessity, provided that the results of it will be ascertained only several years later. What benefit is to be expected of it, what profitability, nowadays everything is accounted for, there is no time to lose.

It is the philosophy of Aikido which attracts new practitioners, so that’s where our chance lies to pass on the message of this necessity.

Dualism

Aikido, by nature and above all because of the orientation O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei gave to it, carries a vision of the fall completely different from that of Boxing or Judo for instance, where falling is losing. To an external viewer, and that is what falsely gives a certain character to our art, it seems that Tori is the winner when Uke falls on the tatamis. It is psychologically difficult to admit that this is not at all so. Society gives us but rarely any examples of behaviour other than this Manichean dualism ‘Either you win or you lose’. And it is logical, at first sight, not to understand and to see only that. In order to understand the matter differently, one must practice, and practice with another conception in mind, which can only be given by the teacher. Tsuda Itsuo sensei provides an example of this pedagogy in his book The Path of Less:

‘In Aikido, when there is a flow of Ki from A, who is performing the technique, towards object B, opponent C, who is grasping A by the wrist, is thrown in the same direction. C is pulled in and joins the main current that goes from A to B.

I have often used this psychological mise-en-scene, for example, with the phrase “I’m already there”. When the opponent grabs your wrists and blocks your movement, as in the exercise of sitting Kokyu, one is inclined to think that this is a pushing exercise. If you push the opponent, it immediately produces resistance in that person. Push against push, they struggle. It becomes a sort of sitting sumo.

In the phrase “I’m already there”, there is no struggle. One simply moves, pivots on one knee to make an about turn, the opponent is driven by the flow of Ki and flipped into his side. It takes very little for this exercise to become a struggle. As soon as the idea of winner and loser gets mixed up in it, exaggerated efforts are made to obtain a result, all to the detriment of overall harmony. One pushes, the other resists, bending excessively low and squeezing the wrists to prevent being pushed. Such a practice will not benefit either one. The idea is too mechanical.

[…] The idea of throwing provokes resistance. […] Nonetheless, to forget the opponent while knowing he’s there is not easy. The more we try to forget, the more we think about it. It’s the joy in the flow of Ki that makes me forget everything.’ (1)

Imbalance serving the purpose of balance

Balance is definitely not rigidity, that is why falling as the consequence of a technique may perfectly enable us to rebalance ourselves. It is necessary to learn how to fall correctly, not only in order to enable Tori to be free of any fear for his partner, because Tori knows him and anticipates that his capacities will enable him to come out of this situation as well as a cat does in difficult conditions. But also and simply because thanks to the fall, we get rid of fears our own parents or grandparents have sometimes instilled in us with their “precautionism” of the kind ‘Be careful, you’ll fall down.’ invariably followed by ‘You’ll hurt yourself’. This Pavlovian impregnation has often led us to rigidity and in any case to a certain apprehension as regards falling, dropping down.

The French word chuter (to fall) has obviously a negative connotation, while in Japanese the most commonly accepted translation of the term Ukemi is receiving with the body, and we understand here that there is a world of difference. Once more the language shows us that the concepts, the reactions, differ profoundly, and it underlines the importance of the message we have to convey to people beginning Aikido. Without being especially a linguist, nor even a translator of Japanese, the understanding of our art also involves the study of Eastern civilisations, their philosophies, their artistic tastes, their codes. In my opinion, extracting Aikido from its context is not possible, despite its value of universality, we have to go and look in the direction of its roots, and therefore in that of the ancient texts.

One of the basis of Aikido can be found in ancient China, more precisely in Taoism. In an interview with G. Erard, Kono sensei reveals one of the secrets of Aikido that seems to me essential although quite forgotten today: he had asked Ueshiba Morihei: ‘O-sensei, how come we don’t do what you do?’ O-sensei had answered smiling: ‘I understand Yin and Yang. You don’t!’ (2)

To project in order to harmonize

Tori, and this is something peculiar to our art, can guide the partner’s fall so that the latter may benefit from the action. Tsuda Itsuo tells us about what he used to feel when he was projected by O-sensei:

‘What I can say from my own experience, is that with Mr Ueshiba, my pleasure was so great that I always wanted to ask for more. I never felt any effort on his part. It was so natural that not only did I feel no constraint, but I fell without knowing it. I have experienced the surge of great waves on the beach that topple a,d sweep one away. There is, of course, pleasure, but with Mr Ueshiba it was something else. There was serenity, greatness, Love.’ (3)

There is a will, conscious or not, to harmonize the partner’s body. In this case it may be called projection. It is thus relevant to say that Aikido is not anymore in martiality but rather in the harmonization of mankind. In order to realize this we need to leave behind us any idea of superiority, of power over another, or even any vindictive attitude, and to have the desire to give the partner a hand in order to allow him self-realization, without him needing to thank anybody. The fusion of sensibility with the partner is indispensable to achieve this, it is this same fusion which guides us, enables us to know our partner’s level and to release at the right moment if they are a beginner, or to support their body if the moment is adequate for going beyond, to allow them to fall further, faster, or higher. In any case pleasure is present.

The involuntary

We cannot calculate the direction of the fall, its speed, its power, nor even its angle of landing. Everything happens at the level of the involuntary or the unconscious if we prefer, but which unconscious are we referring to? It is an unconscious devoid of what cluttered it up, of what prevented it from being free, that is why O-sensei would so often recall that Aikido is a Misogi, practising Aikido is realizing this cleaning of body and spirit.

When we practise this way, there is no accident in the dojo, this is the path Tsuda Itsuo sensei had adopted and the indications he was giving were leading us in this direction. This makes his School a particular School. Other paths are not only possible, but certainly match even more, or better, the expectations of many practitioners. I read many articles in magazines or blogs which take pride of violence or the ability to solve conflicts through violence and toughening up. To me, it does not seem to be the way indicated by O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei, nor by the masters I was fortunate to meet, and particularly Tsuda sensei, Noro sensei, Tamura sensei, Nocquet sensei, or others through their interviews, such as Kono sensei.

Ukemi enables us to understand better physically the principles which rule our art, which guide us beyond our small self, our small mind, to glimpse something greater than us, to be one with nature which we are part of.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in October 2018 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 22.

Notes:

Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, pub. Yume Editions (Paris), pp. 171–2
Guillaume Érard, Entretien avec Henry Kono: Yin et Yang, moteur de l’Aikido du fondateur [Interview with Henry Kono: Yin & Yang, the Drinving Force of Founder’s Aikido], 22 April 2008, www.guillaumeerard.fr
The Path of Less (op. cit.), p. 180

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, katsugen undo découverte, Non classé

Seitai and daily life #4

4 March 2019 name

Why is practising Katsugen Undo important in our life? Régis Soavi, who has been teaching and introducing people to Katsugen Undo for forty years now, gives a brief answer and provides an overview of the impact that an individual gives on their daily life when orienting themselves according to Seitai.

Subtitles available in French, English, Italian and Spanish. To activate the subtitles, click on this icon. Then click on the icon to select the subtitle language.

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Some additional information

Excerpts from the video

‘We no longer see things in the same way. Obviously, our relationship with illness changes completely. Once we understand that illness is a response from the body, that illness as a symptom is a response from the body, we accept the symptoms and get through the illness. It changes everything. You are no longer dependent on the doctor or therapist; you no longer need them. You realise that lots of things are returning to normal. Before, you always had pain here and there, you had trouble digesting, you couldn’t sleep – and now, little by little, it’s all disappearing.

That doesn’t mean that afterwards we are an elite… a super elite… no, not at all! But when we have small problems that arise, they are resolved more quickly. So in terms of health, we react more quickly. Our immune system works faster. Skin reactions are faster. Digestive reactions are faster. Our minds also open up. We no longer see things in the same way. And there are things that no longer seem acceptable to us. We can no longer accept that children, women or foreigners are treated like animals… Something inside us changes. We are no longer the same. Our outlook on life changes. That’s why, after a while, people who knew us before look at us and say, “Hey, it’s funny, you’ve changed…” They don’t really know how to put it… Well, yes, we have changed. We haven’t changed. We’ve found ourselves, that’s all. We’ve found ourselves inside.’

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, One, Chap. VI, 2016, Yume Editions, p. 46 (1^st ed. in French: 1978, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Manon Soavi

Coming Out Of the Shadows

4 February 2019 name

By Manon Soavi

I discovered late in life that I was a girl. Of course I knew it, but it did not matter, it had no impact on my life, the way I would get in touch with other people and practice Aikido. I was not aware, unlike most of my fellow women citizens, that I was a “girl”, before being an “individual”. Part of the explanation for why I grew up outside of these ubiquitous schemes is that I have never been to school.

My parents had chosen a different path, it was a revolutionary decision, it was disobedience to “compulsory” schooling as Catherine Baker recounts in her book [1]… Of course this conditioning of women does not only take place within the school environment, but also within families, social circles, the media and culture in general. In families, it is always the little girls who are told that they are “so pretty, so cute”. Whether with a judo Keikogi or a pink tutu, they are being dressed like dollies. This is so present, as plain as the nose on your face, that we no longer consider it a problem. What is wrong with complimenting a little girl, a baby, on their clothes, their curls or smile? Well, precisely because the current importance of beauty and appearance is learnt during early childhood, and because this will brand them for life. It is with all those remarks and comments, these pink toys and these smiles that future women are being taught their traditional role: to please, and to enjoy pleasing. As writer Mona Chollet puts it: ‘the consequences of this alienation [for women] are far from being limited to a loss of time, money and energy. The fear of not pleasing, not meeting expectations, the subjugation to others’ judgments, the conviction of not being good enough to deserve love and attention from others both reflect and amplify a psychic insecurity and a self-depreciation whose effects reach every area of women’s life.’ [2].

In my case, I was preserved from this situation in my early childhood, I only discovered it during adolescence, I got shocked when I became aware that I was regarded and talked to, first and foremost as “a girl”! Of course I could not bear it and rebelled, as many other women did, against this treatment. But unfortunately no one ever fully escapes a culture, a society, I am part of it and I was affected by it too. The situation of Western women is obviously not to be compared with that of other countries where women have no right. Yet can that be a reason why we should not get things to progress? Because, even though women suffer from this situation, which they themselves perpetuate by raising over and over their daughters and sons to reproduce the same schemes, it is actually humankind as a whole which loses out from this imbalance. If men can be perceived as “oppressors”, I think women have the keys to get our society out of this impasse. Kobayashi sensei’s saying ‘Freedom is expressed by moving where it is possible’ (3) supports my thought that it is for women to exert their freedom. It is our responsibility not to reproduce over and over this story. And this is where, precisely where, that for me, this issue connects with Aikido.

Aikido, a third path

Aikido can be an answer to this “fight or submit” impasse which women have to face. Because Aikido is a martial art which has nothing to do with fighting. May one dare use the word ‘non martial art’? Many Masters and great experts repeat it (again recently Steve Magson, student of Chiba Kazuo sensei, in Aikido journal): it is ridiculous to raise the question of Aikido’s “efficiency” in a “real fight situation”. It is meaningless (which of course does not mean that one should do anything). But while a high level martial expert can write this without the value of his Aikido practice being questioned, a woman saying the same thing would immediately be suspected of not being up to it, not being capable enough. This issue however precisely concerns women, because we face very acutely the question of fighting as a dualistic situation. Even if it is not about fistfighting but rather cultural and social fighting. In addition, we are as soon as we are born potential victims of violence. Maybe we will escape it, but it will then be an exception. All women live knowing they will be a victim one day or another. And when we wish to express ourselves, get a job, again we are obliged to demonstrate our value, our right to stand where we are, all along our life. And, precisely, Aikido falls completely outside this framework! There will be no winner, nor loser. Aikido is like another dimension where our values no longer hold. If practised in a certain way, it can be a tool to practice, human being to human being, without any distinction. Régis Soavi sensei writes about Aikido that it is ‘a school for life, a school that arouses the life of those who practice it. Far from being just another string to our bow, it questions the fallacies and subterfuges which our society offers’ (4). I am also inclined to think that Cognard sensei follows the same line when writing about an Aiki ritual that could change us so much as to overcome history that has been legitimating violence for centuries (3). It is a pity that women do not take hold of this tool, this art, in order to escape submission, without imitating men in position of power, but rather by entering a third path. Where no one expects them.

Following this third path has always been my direction since my childhood, by walking, of course, outside of the school system, but also by practising Aikido since I was 6. I am not saying that I always manage to find the right way, but I am working on it. Daily reviving the practice of going down another path, of getting out of situations differently. I consequently practice with my own father being my Master. At the same time, it is a chance and it is not easy. I have always seen him ahead of me, on this path. He has been walking for a long time, before I was born, and I sometimes had the impression he was an unreachable horizon in Aikido. Benevolently, but with extraordinary firmness, he guided me, held my hand, without overlooking anything but letting time work. Now I walk by his side, I also teach Aikido myself… and I can better see how fortunate I am. I wish I could prompt other women (without excluding men of course) to practice this art with the state of mind I have experienced, the one of the Itsuo Tsuda School. And to practice it long enough, because it takes time, one cannot change one’s culture in a few years. One can acquire a few techniques, some self-confidence maybe. But really deciding for a different life course will require more time. The first step is daily practice, at least regular practice, which brings us back to ourselves. Writing on a seemingly completely different topic (calligraphy), sinologist J. F. Billeter gives us a remarkably vivid account which strikingly resonates with Aikido practice:

‘In the current world, practice also brings us back to ourselves by reintroducing us to the pleasure of gratuitous gesture. Dictated by machines, our daily activity more and more shrinks to moves that are programmed, domesticated, produced with indifference, without any imagination nor sensitivity taking part. Practice remedies this gesture atrophy by arousing our stiffened abilities. It restores the pleasure of playing, it brings back to life capacities which, even though not immediately “useful”, are nonetheless essential. As the most evolved among animals, human beings need more playing than any other species to maintain their balance. Practice also affects our perception of time. In our daily life, we keep going back in time and projecting ourselves into the future, leaping from one to the other without being able to stop at the present time. Because of this, we are haunted by the feeling that time is slipping away. By lining up with ourselves, practice on the contrary suspends the flight of time. When we handle the paintbrush, the present time seems to detach from the string that tied it to the past and the future. It absorbs in itself all duration. It amplifies itself and transforms into a vast space of tranquility. It is no longer governed by the flow of time, but it resonates with moments of the same nature which we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday and the days before. These moments get threaded to each other, they create another continuity, a kind of majestic avenue that travels across the disorganized time of our daily activities. Our life tends to reorganize around this new axis and the inconsistency of our external activities stops impeding us. Daily practice performs the function of a ritual.’ (5)

Restoring sensation

But how did we get there? According to Tsuda sensei, today’s world tends to favour cerebral hypertrophy and voluntarism at the expense of the living. He said about it: ‘I don’t refuse to understand the essential character of Western civilisation: it is a challenge of the human brain to the order of the world, an effort of the will to extend the boundaries of the possible. Whether it is about industrial development, medicine or Olympic games, this character predominates. It is an aggression against nature. Superb human acts, yet without knowing it, against nature. Life suffers, despite our increased knowledge and possession.’

There also precisely lies the matter. We disconnect from our sensations, from the sensation of living inside us. It is also because women no longer feel their needs, their profound natures, that they let themselves carried away into situations that do not suit them. Too busy with acquiring and fighting, their instinct which should safeguards their life no longer reacts. It got atrophied. Even with their babies today’s women struggle to feel, to know what to do and turn to science and books to dictate them how to behave. Listening to their baby and listening to their intuition is outdated, it is archaic! And after centuries when being a mother was the only horizon for respectable women, we have nowadays achieved the feat of strength of reversing the imperative. Now, being “only” a stay-at-home mother is shabby! What a breakthrough!

Here also Aikido brings us back to our sensations. One cannot mentally compute a move. Upon an oncoming attack one has to move, it is too late to think. One has to sense one’s partner in order to move in a right, appropriate way. We (men or women) are often like the famous overfull cup in the Zen philosophy, which spills out when more tea is added. We are too agitated and too full of ourselves to be able to perceive the other. Let us not even talk about understanding them! This is also the meaning of the Non-Doing Tsuda sensei was talking about. We need to be empty, we need to start by listening. Women first should start by listening to themselves. Listening to their own body in Aikido everyday is rewriting their own experience. Relearning to trust themselves, restore the confidence in what their body says. Hino sensei makes the same observation, he writes about humans who have become ‘insensitive and incapable’ (6). He deplores the blatant lack of perception of what happens in the other person. Whether we grab his/her wrist or discuss with him/her, sensation is broken off. Intuition no longer works. We content ourselves with ‘Hi, how are you? — Fine, how are you?’, how superficial! If one is sensitive, it just takes a simple look to feel the other, to know whether they are happy or sad, whether they are half-asleep or on top form. But because of repeated stereotyped relationships we lose sight of authentic human relationships. Here again some masters have left us guideposts to reconnect with ourselves.

Tsuda sensei used to talk about intuition and authenticity of the relation we have with our child. Because, if when searching for intense sensations and experience some martial arts practitioners fantasize about past masters’ uchideshis, about experiences one can live under an icy waterfall, about the total availability for the Master, etc., there is one extreme experience which a woman can go through, a life experience rather similar to what Noro sensei recounts, he who once was Ueshiba Morihei’s Otomo. I can attest to it, it really feels like this: ‘If s/he sleeps, you have to watch over her/his sleep. If s/he wakes up at night, you have to be ready to satisfy her/his needs. If s/he gets bored, you have to entertain her/him. If s/he gets ill, you have to take care of her/him. You have to prepare her/his bath, her/his meals, and clean everything up as soon as s/he changes activity. […] It is obviously about adapting and even about becoming capable of anticipating the very precise desires in order to remain, day and night, awake or not, in total harmony.’ (7).

In total harmony with whom? With one’s newborn of course for a mother or a father! But why should one choose such a treatment? While there are so many solutions to relieve us from the burden of having a child. It is like slavery! Yet, for those who live this experience of a unique, wordless communication with a human being, it is an inestimable teaching. It is most likely when this state of fusion with the other person was reached that the genuine transmission from the Master, the transmission of the spirit of an art, could be achieved. Martial arts practitioners are looking for this life intensity! Unfortunately, when a woman experiences it with her child, this is relegated to a mere domestic task, which could be done by any underpaid nurse. Tsuda sensei used to talk about childhood as the only area where one could still live such an impossible experience. He was even saying that ‘knowing how to take care of a baby was the acme of martial arts’! Here again, if women became aware of this, would they realize the potential of hidden power they have? Would we then stop aiming at equaling men as the only path towards self-realisation?

Living in this world, while still being in another

If the purpose of our practice is human evolution, I believe the Dojo to be its casket. A Dojo can be a microcosm where we let go our social conventions, even temporarily. Through his books and calligraphies, Tsuda sensei prompts us to question the established order, to look further beyond the social organisation. If we practice in a certain direction, we can forget with whom we practice. If, and only if, we leave behind our social reflexes. It is obviously very difficult at the beginning not to bring in with us our baggage. It is as difficult for men as for women to forget who they have become in this world so to focus on what they are inside. Before any distinction, of sex, colour, age, fortune, culture, etc. Looking into ourselves for this shared humanity requires from us a voluntary act of breaking away from codes. The Dojo, its atmosphere of serenity and concentration (which cannot be found in a sports hall), the feeling of an intangible dojo, all this brings us into a certain state. The sequence of a session, with its first part of individual movements which brings breathing back to the center, followed by the practice with a partner, the harmonization of breaths, the attention to sensation. A combination that allows the Dojo to be a little bit “outside” the world, which prompts us to let go so to get into a different state during practice. Ivan Illich mentions such a state of consciousness when saying: ‘I don’t wan’t anything between you and me. [I am] afraid of the things that could prevent me from being in contact with you’ (8). In a dojo, we sweep these things away, conventions, fears, which stand between one another. It is not about abandoning our culture, no, it is simply about abandoning the manifestations of the social being in order to find each other so to walk along together.

For this to happen, we need women to wake up and come out of the shadows.

Manon Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Manon Soavi published in October 2018 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 22.

Notes :
1) C. Baker, Les cahiers au feu, Éd. Barrault, 1988
2) M. Chollet, Beauté fatale, Les nouveaux visages d’une aliénation féminine, Éd. La Découverte, p. 8
3) A. Cognard, « Rituel et Symbole », Dragon Magazine Spécial Aïkido n°19, janv. 2018, p. 22
4) R. Soavi, Mémoires d’un Aïkidoka, Dragon Magazine Spécial Aïkido n°19, janv. 2018, p. 60
5) J. F. Billeter, Essai sur l’art chinois de l’écriture et ses fondements, Éd. Allia, 2010, p. 164
6) H. Akira, Don’t think, listen to the body!, 2017, p. 226
7) P. Fissier, Chroniques de Noro Masamichi, Dragon Magazine Spécial Aïkido n°12, p. 77
8) I. Illich, Mythologie occidentale et critique du “capitalisme des biens non tangibles”, Entretien avec Jean-Marie Domenach dans la série “Un certain regard”, 19 mars 1972.

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, katsugen undo découverte

Yuki #3

9 January 2019 name

Sequel of interviews where Régis Soavi, who has been teaching and introducing people to Katsugen Undo for forty years now, gets back to basics about Seitai and Katsugen Undo. In this third video, the concept of Yuki is explored.

Subtitles available in French, English, Italian and Spanish. To activate the subtitles, click on this icon. Then click on the icon to select the subtitle language.

Some additional information

Excerpts from the video on Yuki

‘There is natural Yuki. The Yuki that mothers naturally do on their stomachs. There is natural Yuki, which is very simple: when a friend is in pain, you place your hand on their back, and that is natural Yuki. Sometimes we add a few words.

There is natural Yuki, when you have a headache, you put your hand on your head. If you have a very bad headache, you put both hands on your head. But not everyone puts their hands there, precisely. Some people put their hands like this, some put them like that, and that’s natural Yuki. That’s precisely why you can’t teach Yuki. You can’t say, “If you have a headache, put your hands like this and do Yuki, circulate the ki.” “Oh yes, but that doesn’t work for me.” — Oh yes, yes, that’s the technique. — When I have a headache, I do it like this — And I do it like this — And I do it like this, there, that feels good.”

And then there is Yuki as an exercise.

Yuki’s exercise is a specific moment. We do it during Katsugen Undo sessions. At a certain point during the session, there is Yuki. So first we bow to each other. The bowing between two people is the coordination of breathing. Then, one of the two turns their left side toward the other. One hand behind, you see, at eye level, and one hand in front. Then the person lies down, we put our hands on their back and circulate the ki. In this case, it is the exercise to rediscover Yuki. During the movement sessions, it lasts 5 minutes, up to maybe 8 minutes. We all do it together. It is both an exercise that allows us to become aware of ourselves and to make the other person aware. It is not learning, it is discovery. We discover and we deepen our understanding.

Yuki is circulating ki. But ki has no form. Well, here it takes on a form. Ki has no form, ki is atmosphere… the concept of ki is very vague. But here, because there is an action, it has a form. Some people want to associate it with energy, we talk about vital energy. I don’t really like that. I don’t really like that term. “Energy” immediately makes us think of electricity, etc. Or psychic energy that bursts forth, etc. And that’s not what this is about.

Yuki is an experience. It is first and foremost an experience.

he first time I encountered Yuki was because — I remember we were at a café with my master Itsuo Tsuda. It was in the early 1970s, and during a conversation, he simply placed his hand on my back and said, “Yuki is this.” That changed everything.’

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, One, Chap. VI, 2016, Yume Editions, p. 46 (1^st ed. in French: 1978, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris)

Aïkido, Aikido-decouverte, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Is Aikido a Martial Art?

4 December 2018 name

by Régis Soavi

This seems to be a recurring question in the dojos and one which divides practitioners, teachers, as well as commentators in more or less all schools. Since no definitive answer can be given, one turns to the story of martial arts, to social requirements, to the history of the origin of human beings, to the cognitive sciences, etc. entrusting them to provide an answer which, even if it does not solve the problem, will at least have the merit of justifying what is claimed.

Aikijutsu has become a dō

From the moment it has dropped the suffix jutsu to become a dō, Aikijutsu has acknowledged itself as an art of peace, a way of harmony on the same basis as Shodō (the way of calligraphy) or also Kadō (the way of flowers). By adopting the word that means the path, the way, has it become for this an easier path? Or in the contrary does it compel us to ask ourselves questions, to look again at our own course, to make an effort of introspection? Does an art of peace necessarily have a compliant side, is it a weak art, an art of acceptance, in which cheaters may gain a reputation at little expense?

It is certainly an art that has managed to adapt to the new realities of our time. But do we have to foster the illusion of an easy self-defence, within everyone’s reach, suiting any budget, with no need to get involved in the least bit? Can you really believe or make people believe that with one or two hours of practice a week, furthermore excluding holidays (clubs are often closed), one can become a great warrior or acquire wisdom and be able to solve any problem thanks to one’s calm, peace of mind or charisma?

Does the solution then lie in strength, muscular work and the violent arts?

If a direction exists at all, it can be found in my opinion, and despite what I have just said, in Aikido.

A School without grades

Tsuda Itsuo never gave grades to any of his students and, when somebody had a question about that, he used to answer: ‘There is no such thing as a black belt in mental emptiness’. One might say that these words had ended all discussion. Having served as an interpreter between O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei and André Nocquet when the latter had come to Japan as a learner, Tsuda Itsuo later acted as an intermediary when French or American foreigners showed up at the Hombu Dōjō to start learning Aikido. This allowed him, since he translated the students’ questions and the master’s answers, to have access to what was underlying the practice, to what made it something universal, to what made it an art beyond pure martiality. He talked to us about O-sensei’s posture, about his amazing spontaneity, about his deep gaze which seemed to pierce him to the very depths of his being. Tsuda Itsuo never tried to imitate his master whom he considered inimitable. He was immediately interested in what inspired this incredible man capable of the greatest gentleness as well as of the greatest power. That is why, when he arrived in France, he tried to pass on to us what for him was the essential, the secret of Aikido, the concrete perception of ki. What he had discovered, and later summarized in the initial sentence of his first book: ‘Since the very day when I had the revelation of “ki”, of breath (I was over forty years old at the time), the desire to express the inexpressible, to communicate what cannot be communicated had kept growing in me.’¹

For ten years he travelled Europe to make us Westerners, who very often had a Cartesian, dualistic frame of mind, discover that there is another dimension in life. That this dimension is not esoteric but exoteric as he liked to say.

A School with its own specificity

There is obviously a variety of motivations leading people to start this practice. If I think of the people who practice in our School (the Itsuo Tsuda School), apart from a few of them, there are not many who came for the martial aspect. On the other hand, many of them did not see anything martial about it at first sight, even though at each session I show how the techniques could be effective if performed with precision, and dangerous if used in a violent way. The martial aspect arises from the posture, the breathing, the ability to concentrate, the truthfulness of the act of attacking. Dealing with a learner, it is essential to respect the partner’s level, and to practice known forms.

But the discovery one can make by practising known forms goes far beyond that. It is about making something else grow, revealing what lies deep within individuals, freeing oneself from the underpinning influence exerted by the past and sometimes even by the future, on our gestures, on the whole of our movements, physical as well as mental. Indeed in our dojo everybody realizes that.

The session starts at 6:45am. The fact of coming to practice so early in the morning (O-sensei and Tsuda Sensei always started their own sessions at 6.30) has neither to do with an ascesis nor with a discipline. Some practitioners arrive around 6 every morning, to share some coffee or tea, and to enjoy this moment before the session (a pre-session so to speak), sometimes so rich thanks to the exchanges that we can have between us. It is a moment of pleasure, of conversation about the practice, as well as about everyday life sometimes, and we share it with the others in an extremely concrete way and not in the virtual way that society tends to suggest us.

Of course all this may appear regressive or useless, but it avoids the aspect of easy entertainment and does not encourage clientelism, which does not mean that it does not exist, but in that way there is less of it and with time it evolves. This is because people change, they are transformed, or more precisely they find themselves again, they retrieve unused capacities that they sometimes thought they had lost or often, more simply, had forgotten.

Yin the feminine: understanding

There are so many women in our School that equality is not respected, men are outnumbered, by a narrow margin of course, but that has always been the case. I would not want to speak on behalf of women but what can one do? As far as I know they do not form a separate world, unknown to men.

As a matter of fact, for many men, maybe it is so!… Nevertheless I think all a man has do is to take into account his yin side, without being afraid of it, to find and understand what brings men and women closer and what separates them. Is it a matter of personal affinity, is it a research due to my experience during the events of May 68 and to this blossoming of feminism which revealed itself once again in those days, or maybe more simply is it the fact that I have three daughters, who, by the way, practice Aikido all three of them: the result, whatever the reasons, is that I have always encouraged women to take their legitimate place in the dojos of our School. They take the same responsibilities as men and there is of course no disparity in level, neither in studying nor in teaching. It is really a pity to have to clarify things like that, but unfortunately they cannot be taken for granted in this world.

Despite everything, women scarcely take the floor, or I should even say take up the pen in martial arts magazines. It would be interesting to read articles written by women, or to devote space in Dragon magazine special Aikido to the female perspective on martial arts and on our art in particular. Do they have nothing to say or does the male world take up all the space? Or else maybe these sectarian disputes on the efficiency of Aikido bore them, for women seek and often find, so it seems to me, another dimension, or in any case something else, thanks to this art? Tsuda Itsuo Sensei gives us an idea of this “something else”, which is perhaps closer to O-sensei’s search, in this passage of his book The Path of Less:

‘Do people see Mr Ueshiba as a man completely made of steel? I had quite the opposite impression. He was a serene man, capable of extraordinary concentration, but very permeable in other ways, inclined to outbursts of ringing laughter, with an inimitable sense of humour. I had the opportunity of touching his biceps. I was amazed. The tenderness of a newborn. The opposite of hardness in every way one could imagine.

This may seem odd, but his ideal Aikido was that of girls. Due to the nature of their physique, girls are unable to contract their shoulders as hard as boys can. Therefore their Aikido is more flowing and natural.’ ²

Yang the masculine: fighting

art martial

We are educated to competition from early childhood; under the pretext of emulation, school tends to go in the same direction, all this to prepare us for the world of work. They teach us that the world is tough, that we absolutely need to gain our place in the sun, to learn to defend ourselves against other people, but are we so sure about that? Would our desire in fact not tend to guide us in a different direction? And what do we do to achieve this goal? Could Aikido be one of the instruments for this revolution in social values, habits, should it and above all should we do the necessary effort so that the roots of this evil corroding our modern societies may regenerate and become healthy again? In the past there have been examples of societies in which competition did not exist, or hardly existed in the way it does today, societies in which sexism was absent too, even though you cannot present them as ideal societies. Reading the writings on matriarchy in the Trobriand islands by the great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsky, discovering his analysis, may help find new leads, and perhaps even remedies to these problems of civilization which have so often been denounced.

Tao, the union: a path for the fulfilment of the human being

The path, in essence, not that I am an idealist, justifies itself and takes all its value by the fact that it normalizes the terrain of individuals. For those who follow it, it adjusts their tensions, restores balance, and it is appeasing for it allows a different relationship to life. Is it not that what so many “civilized” people are desperately seeking and what in the end is to be found deep inside the human being?

The path is not a religion, furthermore it is what separates it from religion that makes it a space of freedom, within the dominant ideologies. According to me the way of thinking that seems closest to this is agnosticism, a philosophical current which is little known, or rather known in a superficial way, but which allows to integrate all the different schools. In Aikido there is quite a number of rituals that are kept up even though their real origin (the source O-sensei drew from) is not understood or there are sometimes other rituals that other masters found through ancient practices as Tamura sensei himself did. Those rituals have often been associated to religion whereas the fact could be checked that it is the religions which have taken over all these ancient rituals to use them as instruments serving their own power, and way too often they are used for the domination and the enslavement of people.

A means: the respiratory practice

The first part of the session in O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei’s Aikido, far from being a warming up, consisted of movements the depth of which it is primordial to retrieve. It is neither to get an intellectual satisfaction, nor out of some fundamentalist concern and even less to gain “higher powers” that we continue them, but in order to return to the path that O-sensei had taken. Some exercises, like Funakogi undo (the so-called rower’s movement) or Tama-no-hirebori (vibration of the soul), have a very great value, and if they are practised with the necessary attention, they can allow us to feel beyond the physical body, beyond our sensation, limited as it is, to discover something greater, much greater than ourselves. It is an unlimited nature which we take part in, in which we are immersed, which is fundamentally and inextricably linked to us, and yet which we find it so hard to reach or even sometimes to feel. This notion that I made mine is not the result of a mystical relationship with the universe, but rather of a mental and physical opening which many modern physicists have reached through a theoretical approach and are trying to verify. It is something that you can neither learn by watching Youtube videos, nor by consulting books of ancient wisdom, despite their undeniable importance. It is something you discover in a purely corporal way, in an absolutely and fully physical way, even though this dimension is expanded to an unusual extent. Little by little all the practitioners who agree to look in this direction find it. It is not related to a physical condition, nor to age and obviously not to sex or nationality.

Education

Almost all psychologists consider that the essential part of what will guide us in our adult life takes place during our childhood and more precisely in our early childhood.

The good as well as the bad experiences. Therefore particular care should be taken in education to preserve the innate nature of the child as much as possible. In no way does this mean letting the child do whatever he wants, making him a king or becoming his slave; the world is there and surrounds him, so he needs reference points. But very quickly, often shortly after birth, sometimes after a few months, the baby is put in the care of persons outside the family. What happened to his parents? He no longer recognizes his mother’s voice, her smell, her movement. It is the first trauma and we are told: ‘He will get over it’. Sure, unfortunately it is not the last trauma, far from it. Then comes the day care center, followed by kindergarten, primary school, junior high, and finally the baccalaureate before perhaps university for at least three, four, five, six years or even more.

But what can you do? ‘That’s life.’ I am told. Each of these places in which the child will be spending his time in the name of education and learning is a mental prison. From basic knowledge to mass culture, when will he be respected as an individual full of the imagination that characterizes childhood? He will be taught to obey, he will learn to cheat. He will be taught to be with the others, he will learn competition. He will receive grades, this will be called emulation, and this psychological disaster will be experienced by top as well as by bottom of the class students.

In the name of what totalitarian ideology are all children and young people given an education that breeds fear of repression, submission, decommitment and disillusionment? Today’s society in wealthy countries does not propose anything really new: work and free time are only synonyms of the roman ideal of bread and circus games, the slavery of the ancient times is only turned into our modern wage employment. A somewhat improved state of slavery? Perhaps… with spectacular brain washing, guaranteed without invoice, thanks to the advertising for products that is pushed on us, with its corollary: the hyper-consumption of goods both useless and detrimental.

The practice of Aikido for children and teenagers is the opportunity to go off the grids proposed by the world around them. It is thanks to the concentration required by the technique, a calm and quiet breathing, the non-competitive aspect, the respect for differences, that they can keep or, if necessary, retrieve their inner strength. A peaceful strength, not aggressive, but full and rich of the imagination and the desire to make the world better.

A practical philosophy, or rather, a philosophical practice

The particular character of the Itsuo Tsuda School derives from the fact that we are more interested in individuality than in the dissemination of an art or a series of techniques. It is neither about creating an ideal person, nor about guiding anyone towards something, towards a lifestyle, with a certain amount of gentleness, a certain amount of kindness or wisdom, of balancing ability or exaltation, etc. It is about awakening the human being and allowing him to live fully in the acceptance of what he is in the world surrounding him, without destroying him. This spirit of openness can do nothing other than waking up the strength pre-existing in each of us. This philosophy leads us to independence, to autonomy, but not to isolation, on the contrary: through the discovery of the Other, it brings us to the understanding of what this person is, also perhaps beyond what the person has become. This whole process of learning, or rather this reappropriation of oneself, takes time, continuity, sincerity, in order to realize more clearly the direction in which one wishes to go.

What lies beyond, what lies behind

I am interested in today is what lies behind or more precisely what lies deep inside Aikido. When you take a train you have an objective, a destination, with Aikido it is a little bit as if the train changed objective as you moved further, as if the direction became at the same time different, and more precise. As for the objective, it pulls away despite the fact that you think you have come closer. And this is where you have to recognize that the object of our journey is the journey itself, the landscapes we discover, which become more refined and reveal themselves to us.

Régis Soavi

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Article by Régis Soavi published in July 2018 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 21.

Notes

1
Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Yume Editions, 2013, p. 9
2
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Yume Editions, 2014, p. 157

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, katsugen undo découverte

Health condition according to Seitai #2

13 October 2018 name

Sequel of interviews where Régis Soavi, who has been teaching and introducing people to Katsugen Undō for forty years now, gets back to basics about Seitai and Katsugen Undō. This second video tackles the notion of health according to Seitai.

Subtitles available in French, English, Italian and Spanish. To activate the subtitles, click on this icon. Then click on the icon to select the subtitle language.

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Some additional information

Seitai was developed by Haruchika Noguchi (1911-1976) in Japan. Katsugen Undo (or Regenerating Movement) is an exercise of the extrapyramidal motor system that is part of Seitai. Itsuo Tsuda (1914-1984), who introduced Katsugen Undō in Europe in the 70s, would write about it: ‘The human body is endowed with a natural ability to readjust its condition […]. This ability[…] is the responsibility of the extrapyramidal motor system.’ ¹

Régis Soavi starts practising martials arts with Judo when he is twelve. He then studies Aikidō, especially alongside Masters Tamura, Nocquet and Noro. He meets Tsuda Itsuo sensei in 1973 and will follow him until his death in 1984. With the permission of the latter, Régis Soavi becomes a professional teacher and disseminates his Aikidō and Katsugen Undō throughout Europe.

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, One, Chap. VI, 2016, Yume Editions, p. 46 (1^st ed. in French: 1978, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris)

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, katsugen undo découverte

Seitai and Katsugen Undo #1

10 September 2018 name

Many thing are being said and circulated on the internet about Seitai and Katsugen Undō (Regenerating Movement). In this round of interviews, Régis Soavi, who has been teaching and introducing people to Katsugen Undō for forty years now, gets back to basics to address the question: ‘What are Seitai and Katsugen Undō?’

Subtitles available in French, English, Italian and Spanish. To activate the subtitles, click on this icon. Then click on the icon to select the subtitle language.

Would you like to hear about the next article?

Some additional information

Seitai was developed by Haruchika Noguchi (1911-1976) in Japan. Katsugen Undō (or Regenerating Movement) is an exercise of the extrapyramidal motor system that is part of Seitai. Itsuo Tsuda (1914-1984), who introduced Katsugen Undō in Europe in the 70s, would write about it: ‘The human body is endowed with a natural ability to readjust its condition […]. This ability[…] is the responsibility of the extrapyramidal motor system.’ ¹

Régis Soavi starts practising martials arts with Jūdō when he is twelve. He then studies Aikidō, especially alongside Masters Tamura, Nocquet and Noro. He meets Tsuda Itsuo sensei in 1973 and will follow him until his death in 1984. With the permission of the latter, Régis Soavi becomes a professional teacher and disseminates his Aikidō and Katsugen Undō throughout Europe.

Notes

1
Itsuo Tsuda, One, Chap. VI, 2016, Yume Editions, p. 46 (1^st ed. in French: 1978, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris)

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, katsugen undo découverte

Hello Illness #2

4 April 2018 name

Continuation of Régis Soavi Interview’s about Katsugen Undō (or Regenerating Movement), a practice made by Haruchika Noguchi and spread in Europe by Itsuo Tsuda. An article by Monica Rossi, published in Arti d’Oriente #4, May 2000.

You can read part 1 here.

Part 2

– How can one define Yuki?

– Letting the Ki circulate.

– How can Yuki help to activate the Movement?

– It helps, in the case where one has done the three exercises, or the exercises for Mutual Movement (activation through stimulation of the second pair of points on the head; that is another way to activate the Movement). Yuki helps because it activates; It’s very important for me to say that Yuki is fundamentally different from what we often hear spoken of, because when we do Yuki, we clear our heads, we don’t cure anyone, we don’t look for anything. We are simply concentrated in the act. There is no intention, and that is primordial. In the statutes of the dojo, in fact, it is underlined that we practice without a goal”.

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Katsugen undo, katsugen undo découverte

Hello Illness #1

4 March 2018 name

Interview of Régis Soavi about Katsugen Undō (or Regenerating Movement), a practice made by Noguchi Noguchi and spread in Europe by Itsuo Tsuda. Article by Monica Rossi publisehd in the review Arti d’Oriente (#4, May 2000).

Part 1

‘After reading the books of Tsuda Itsuo (1914-1984), I was fascinated by his arguments, which range freely from the subject of Aikido to that of children and the way they are born, illness, or his memories of Ueshiba Morihei and Noguchi Haruchika, and I wanted to know more. I continued to have a sensation of something beyond my understanding.

So I began to ask, what exactly is this Regenerating Movement (Katsugen Undo) that Tsuda spoke of, a spontaneous movement of the body that seemed able to rebalance it without needing to intoxicate it with medication; an ancient concept but still revolutionary, above all in our society. I was unable to get any satisfactory answers to my questions: those who have practiced the Regenerating Movement couldn’t describe it or explain; the answer was always: “You should try it yourself in order to understand; the first time, it will probably unsettle you a bit.” So I decided to try it. In Milan, the school that refers to the teachings of Itsuo Tsuda is the “Scuola della Respirazione”. There, one can practice Aikido and the Regenerating Movement ( in separate sessions ). But, in order to go to the sessions of Movement, one must first participate in a week-end course conducted by Régis Soavi, who has continued the work of Tsuda in Europe.

Mas-d’Azil, the meeting

A transformation

The summer workshop: the irreversible ephemeral

Yes, Riai exists, I’ve met it

Behind the scenes

Creating a comparison is dangerous

KA MI breathing

Non-Doing

Subscribe to our newsletter

Seeing, feeling

Chiselling an insect, engraving a flower

The role of the teacher

Working on the body

Which partner to use

The secret of the living

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter

Seitai: philosophy or therapy?

Noguchi Haruchika 野口 晴哉 sensei

Seitai: a global view

A dream

The symptom

The body has its reasons that reason does not know

To live Seitai

The notion of individual in Seitai

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter

Notes

Self-esteem

Self-love

A humble dojo

Humility and posture

One

A proud bearing

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter

A vocation?

Pedagogy

The path I have been following

Continuity

Freedom

A reciprocal and asymmetric relationship

The mnemonic that consists of forgetting2

The role of the sensei

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter

Breathing, its mechanism

Prior to birth

Taiheki, a tool for understanding

The vertical group

The lateral group

The forwards-backwards group

The twisted group

The pelvic group

Type eleven, known as “hypersensitive”

Type twelve, known as “apathetic”

Aikido, a prospect

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter

Regaining flexibility

Circulate the ki

Mindset

Posture

Feel the other

Seitai

Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter

Notes

Émile Durkheim: definition of ‘the social fact’

The situation creates the conditions, the conditions create the situation

I

A preliminary, the normalization of the terrain

The sake of practicing the Regenerating Movement and of its alliance with Aikido

The knightly art of archery

Subscribe to our newsletter

The image: an eye-opener

The spirit of the ordinary

Being influenced

Subscribe to our newsletter

Notes

The spectacular

A society issue

Human Ecology

Life force

The Seitai technique: an orientation

Noguchi Haruchika 野口晴哉 sensei

The mnemonic that consists of forgetting²