by Régis Soavi

Is instinct a natural disposition? Is it an automatic, innate response to a given situation, or an irrational impulse based on inherited reflexes? Could it be a behavioural construct, acquired through some form of education, which has become second nature? Similarly, is intuition a form of subtle understanding that can occur without rational analysis – a thought process that may seem irrational? Or is it a feeling, a conviction about that which cannot be verified, about that which does not yet exist – or even a hoax invented by “New Age” theorists? The controversy fuels debates between the rational and the irrational, much like the disputes between proponents of the nurture theory and those of the nature theory.

‘There is another world, but it is this one’¹Paul Éluard, French surrealist poet (1895–1952). [The original quote („Freilich gibt es eine andere Welt, aber sie ist in dieser‟) actually dates back to Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, who is quoted by Albert Béguin, who is in his turn quoted by Éluard. See Fragmente [Fragments], „Fragmentensammlung‟ [‘Collection of Fragments’], „1. Philosophie, Anthropologie und Anthroposophie‟, „13. Wissenschaft des Übersinn-lichen‟ [‘The Science of the Supernatural’], pub. Willi Aeppli (Dreilinden-Verlag, St. Gallen), 1936, p. 134.].

The Animality of Human Beings

Are we simply animals, or do we belong to something ‘special’? Are we a sort of alien that has broken with its past, or are we in the process of developing the being of the future – the “augmented human”, the “Cyber-something”? I prefer to leave this debate to those best placed to address it – theologians, cognitive scientists and academics in general – so as not to get lost in theories and counter-theories, all of which are entirely legitimate and well-substantiated.

I have noticed that the flow of Ki has become either a smoke-and-mirrors sales pitch used by advocates of “well-being”, “kindness” and other Eastern-inspired concepts, or a subject reserved for discussion or round-table debates. In almost all cases, it remains largely theoretical, and as such, it is becoming increasingly detached from people’s everyday reality and, consequently, from the practitioners who come to the dōjō. We end up forgetting the basic workings of the human body, which everyone can sense even without formal knowledge, but through “common sense” and their own inner sensations. Everything must be analysed, dissected, noted down, annotated, catalogued – all in order to fit it into normative algorithms that are supposed to represent and guide us. Knowledge of Ki, its rediscovery in and through all its forms, becomes a form of knowledge, an instrument of power; it becomes reified, takes on a spectacular quality, and as Maud Mannoni so aptly writes: ‘From the moment knowledge becomes a commodity, it is subject to the laws of supply and demand. What matters is no longer the desire for knowledge […] but its use […] for the purposes of social advancement’.²Maud Mannoni, « Les exclus » [‘The Excluded Ones’], Les Temps Modernes, 30^th year, n° 340, Nov. 1974, section ‘Normalisation’ (3^rd text), Presses d’aujourd’hui (Paris), p. 312

We have forgotten that, as far back as 1928, René Magritte warned us against the deceptive nature of images with his painting entitled This Is Not a Pipe. It is high time, today, that we asked ourselves the real questions about the images and texts mass-produced by artificial intelligence.

Katsugen Undō

Through the practice of Regenerative Movement (Katsugen Undō), practitioners rediscover the joy of being “individuals” in the original sense of the term as defined in dictionaries: a ‘living, organised body with an existence of its own, which cannot be divided without being destroyed’³[French verbatim from the Encyclopédie Universelle online dictionary, entry I 2], but also a ‘human being, […] as a unique entity, distinct from all others’⁴[ibid., entry I 3]. To trigger the Movement is to rediscover the primary sensation of being both whole persons and, above all, biological organisms – living beings with instinctive reactions, resistances and effects that arise involuntarily and sustain life, with responses that enable the body to readjust itself by regaining its balance. We are not biological machines, mere robots, or objects that could possibly be repaired like car engines or computer software, before being declared obsolete and scrapped.

Memory

In many families – without anyone realising it, or sometimes because it is kept hidden, as it is not considered very “proper” – there are people of all genders and ages who have been labelled witches, magicians, healers, miracle-workers or fire-eaters; people who have premonitions, visions, and so on. Many of them were ordinary people working in all sorts of trades: craftspeople, manual workers, stay-at-home mums, farmers, and so many others. For the majority of them, their “special” activity towards others was sporadic, uncontrollable, unverifiable and, above all, voluntary.

Some of them had received a “gift” from a family member – even a distant one – or from a neighbour with whom they were on good terms; in other cases, it came about following an accident, for example, or sometimes even after recovering from a very serious illness. I am not counting all those who received this gift from ancestors, deities or various saints. Absorbed by what had become a heavy burden, they would sometimes ask for a small contribution, which was rarely commensurate with what they provided for others. In the village where I was born, for example, a “witch” would buy children’s warts; she would pay them a small coin for each wart, and thanks to this, the warts would disappear within a few days and sometimes even within a few hours. We children thought this was perfectly normal – after all, she had bought them!

Noguchi sensei himself began practising his art as a healer without realising it, being just a child of barely twelve years old at the time of the great Tōkyō earthquake of 1923, when his “gift” was revealed.

In my family, then, as in many others, there was a great-uncle who alleviated ailments – not all of them, it is true, but according to what we were told, he was very gifted; he did not practise it professionally, but helped others in his village. My mother, when she was very young, had received from him – as a sort of inheritance – the gift of healing, or at least of bringing relief to those who asked her for it or whom she saw in need of whatever it was she possessed. And so she began, knowing nothing about it and without in any way making a career of it or receiving anything in return – neither money nor gifts; a simple ‘thank you’ was enough. She could tell whether an illness was serious or minor and whether it was necessary to see a doctor urgently, especially when the person took little care of their health or ignored the advice to be cautious. She also had, at times, numerous premonitory dreams that we could verify – and I was often a witness to them – but which she was unable either to control or to predict when they would occur.

I later learnt, during a lecture at one of Tsuda sensei’s seminars, that Akiko, Noguchi sensei’s wife, very often had premonitory dreams, and that Noguchi sensei would, on such occasions, check the back of his wife’s head at the occipital region. By doing so, he was able to tell whether the dream was a premonition or simply a compensatory dream.

So I grew up in this atmosphere, which I would now describe as somewhat magical, tinged with the occult yet at the same time simple and serene; it was part of my everyday life.

When I first saw Tsuda sensei during an Aikidō seminar organised by Maroteaux sensei, I immediately sensed that there was a mystery there, an astonishing power to be discovered, unravelled and understood. The incredible power of Ki, which I had heard about through my practice of martial arts and my reading of texts on the subject, was unfolding and becoming real before my astonished eyes. Ancient philosophers such as Laozi, Chuangzi, Sunzi and Linzi, and the great masters, such as Ueshiba Morihei, Kanō Jigorō and so many others, were no longer figures from another era or another world; something akin to knowledge or teaching had manifestly been passed down through the centuries and had reached us.

‘When the pupil is ready, the master appears.’⁵A proverb attributed to Laozi, the Chinese philosopher. [This attribution, however, seems to be wrong: it appears neither in the Tao-te-king nor elsewhere in Laozi’s work according to Fake Buddha Quotes website and, more specifically, to Barry Popik’s inquiry on the matter. Following Popik, the earliest known quotation can be found in Mabel Collins, Light on the Path, Cupples, Upham & co, 1885 (3^rd ed. 1886 available on Google Books), p. 48: ‘when the disciple is ready the Master is ready also.’]

First encounter

So I decided to go and see this “old” master (he was sixty and I was twenty-two). It was after an Aikidō session at the dōjō on Rue des Épinettes in Saint-Maurice, on the outskirts of Paris, that I first had the opportunity to experience Yuki as taught by Tsuda sensei himself. We were seated at a small table in a corner of the bar where we were having our customary post-session coffee. There were a few of us – five or six at most – asking him questions.

Personally, I had a problem which – of course – I could not resolve: I did not recognise people whom, incidentally, I’d already met, when they were standing in front of me – even if they were Aikidokas with whom I had practised several times before. However, if I saw them from behind, sitting in seiza, or when I touched them, I had a clear memory of the previous situation and recognised them. During that final session that morning, I had practised with someone new to the dōjō, a young man my own age, and I did not think I knew him; yet as soon as I touched his wrists to do the first exercise (which we call “solfège”⁶[French solfège literally reads music theory, and more precisely the basics of music theory. The solfège exercise contains indeed many fundamentals of Tsuda’s aikidō but also refers to a “tuning” moment between the partners, akin to the moment before a concert when the musicians tune their instruments – for the sake of harmony.]), I recognised him immediately. It was a certainty which, as usual, had come to me spontaneously. We had met a year earlier during a seminar led by Tamura sensei.

So I was telling Tsuda sensei all this and waiting for some sort of response, an explanation from him – perhaps a reference to a text by Laozi or Zhuangzi, or some kind of lead I could follow up on. He simply said to me: ‘It’s a professional warp.’ I was speechless; I thought to myself, ‘Professional in what sense?’. At the time, I was a delivery driver and I was teaching a few Aikidō classes at Henry Plée sensei’s dōjō in Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in Paris – there was nothing professional about any of it!

If I remember correctly, the conversation turned to the Regenerative Movement, which I did not practise because, although I had read one of his “notebooks” – as he called them (his books not yet having been published) – in which Tsuda sensei spoke of “normalisation”, it had struck a nerve with me. I told myself that I did not need to “normalise” myself, that I was already “normal” enough as I was, and that it was the world that needed to change, to be fairer – that is what should have been normal. However, I was then talking to him about my mother and, consequently, about her “legacy”, to which she had introduced me and which was part of my life. He interrupted me straight away with a sentence that, to me, was suddenly very shocking: ‘Healers warp!’ That was all. He was, as usual, rather sparing with his words.

I took the opportunity to ask him what this “Yuki” he was talking about actually was, and how it differed from the “healing” I was familiar with – and which I practised to some extent within my own family. He did not answer, but ran his hand over my back and left it there for a minute or two, then said: ‘Yuki is this.’ From that day on, I stopped completely laying my hands on anyone or anything to heal them; the difference between what I had been doing and what I had experienced with Yuki was such that I could no longer act otherwise. I found myself facing an ocean that I would have to cross under my own steam.

Experience

When I began to sense the flow of Ki in my partners during Katsugen Undō sessions – and particularly during Yuki – certain areas, more sensitive vertebrae, carrying lines and directions very quickly became apparent, without me making any specific effort to seek them out; it was, in a way, a kind of happenstance, some involuntary in its purest form. At the time, I spoke to Tsuda sensei about it, and he simply gave me a piece of advice – but very precisely, and in words that surprised and even shocked me: ‘Don’t tell anyone’, he said.

It was imperative; fortunately, today the taboo has lost some of its power. At the time, I had explained to him that it was as if the vertebrae I could sense – and which reacted to Yuki – were sending messages that I could translate into phrases such as ‘I am the 5^th thoracic vertebra’ or ‘I am the 3^rd lumbar vertebra’, for example. I was very anxious before I spoke to him about it; I expected him to brush me off, to tell me I was delusional and perhaps even to throw me out of the dōjō. In fact, something completely different happened. He advised me not to worry about it, otherwise it would become fixed in my mind and I would be held back by the very sensations I was discovering; he said I should clear my head and forget about it, as that way I could go further in deepening my breathing.

So I carried on without saying anything to anyone except close friends and family, and this went on for several years. It was towards the end of the 1970s that a change came about, both in my relationship with him and in my personal life; it was then that, for several months, I began telling him every morning what I was discovering about the connection between my perception of the vertebrae, postures, and the symptoms that were occurring in the people around me (colleagues, friends, family). Tsuda sensei would give me directions to observe, lines to follow or to create by doing yuki at a specific point. At first I needed a great deal of concentration and a lot of time; little by little, the sensations became more precise, more raw too, more direct, but as sensei taught, I always checked them against reality, through direct observation, separate from my sensations, to see if it made sense, if I was not deceiving myself, so as not to sink into the mental delusions that I later encountered in some practitioners or even organisers of various techniques.

Time

Developing – or, to put it more accurately, rediscovering – the primitive sensitivity that all beings possess from the outset and generally retain during early childhood requires time, concentration and, at the same time, both self-sacrifice and humility in the face of life’s manifestations. Any attempts driven by the will inevitably lead us to failure, a sense of unease, a deterioration in our vital energy, and a psychological poisoning of those around us. It is important to be cautious, to allow the process of re-sensitisation to take place quietly, without forcing it, with neither hope nor despair. Time is at work!

Both body and mind are working to restore balance, but they need freedom. Many of our blockages are in fact merely obstacles to the flow of our vital energy, our Ki; as soon as a blockage is released in one of these barriers – often because we leave them alone and no longer feed them with physical or psychological tension, whether intentionally or not – life reasserts itself. This is quite simply a natural, healthy effect of the “normal” functioning of human beings. No one can free another person, even if all the doors were opened; on the contrary, there is a risk of serious harm. The undertaking is perilous even for specialists armed with qualifications, knowledge or expertise; I prefer to leave it to them.

The practice of Katsugen Undō is a practice of Non-Doing; it seems important to me to understand this properly, and to repeat it to oneself a few times: ‘The Regenerating Movement obviously has therapeutic effects, but that is only a secondary aspect. It would be like saying that it is peculiar for a statue to cast its own shadow.’⁷Itsuo Tsuda, The Non-Doing, Yume Editions, Apr. 2023 (1^st ed. in French: 1973), p. 20 (1^re ed. 1973), p. 20

It is an individual practice that requires nothing more than a small, quiet space where one can sit undisturbed for about fifteen minutes. However, there are other ways to practise. For example, one can practise in pairs; this is known as mutual movement, which allows not only an encounter with other Ki, but above all the activation of the Movement through Yuki during all the session.

People come together and form small groups, each independent of the others, to practise without the need for a leader or person in charge; they are autonomous and independent. Yet as early as 1973, in his first book The Non-Doing, Tsuda sensei warned us with this simple sentence: