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.
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.
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:
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.