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Ki, a dimension in its own right

28 October 2025 name

‘Ki belongs to the realm of feeling, not to that of knowledge.’¹. Tsuda Itsuo

As soon as you mention ki, you are dismissed as a mystic, a kind of crackpot: ‘It’s not scientific; no instrument or machine is capable of proving or demonstrating that ki exists.’ I completely agree. Indeed, if we consider ki to be a super-powerful energy, a kind of magic capable of throwing people across the room or killing them with just a shout, as was believed with kiai, we risk expecting miracles and quickly becoming disappointed.

Is ki an Eastern philosophy?

What is this “Eastern” philosophy that we supposedly do not have access to? Is there a specific domain reserved for a select few adepts, a handful of hand-picked disciples, or is this knowledge available to everyone, and what is more, without complicating our lives? I mean by leading a normal life, without being part of an elite group with access to secret knowledge, without having special, hidden practices that are doled out sparingly, but more simply by having a job, children, etc. When you practice Aikido, you are obviously engaged in both philosophical and practical research, but it is an “exoteric” rather than “esoteric” research.

Tsuda Itsuo wrote nine books, thus creating a bridge between East and West to enable us to better understand the teachings of Japanese and Chinese masters, to make them more concrete, simpler, and accessible to all. You do not have to be Eastern to understand and feel what it is all about. But it is true that in the world we live in, we are going to have to make a little effort. We need to break out of our habitual behaviours and references. We need to develop a different kind of attention, a different kind of concentration. It is not a question of starting from scratch, but of orienting ourselves differently, of directing our attention (our ki) in a different way.

First, we must abandon the very Cartesian idea that ki is one single entity, when in fact it is multiple. We must also accept that our bodies are capable of sensing things that are difficult to explain rationally, but which are part of our daily lives, such as sympathy, antipathy, and empathy. Cognitive science attempts to dissect all this using mirror neurons and other processes, but this does not explain everything, and sometimes even complicates matters.

In any case, there is an answer to every situation, but we cannot analyse everything we do at every moment in terms of the past, present, future, politics, or the weather. Answers arise independently of reflection; they arise spontaneously from our involuntary responses. Whether these answers are good or bad, analysis will tell us after the fact.

Ki in the West

The West was familiar with ki in the past; it was called pneuma, spiritus, prana, or simply vital breath. Today, this seems rather outdated. Japan has retained a very simple use of this word, which can be found in a multitude of expressions, which I will quote below, taking a passage from a book by my master.

But in Aikido, what is ki?

If any school can and should talk about ki, it is the Itsuo Tsuda School, not because we claim exclusivity, but simply because my master based all his teaching on ki, which he translated as breathing. That is why he spoke of a ‘School of Respiration’²: ‘By the word respiration, I do not mean the simple bio-chemical process of oxygen merging with haemoglobin. Respiration is all at once vitality, action, love, a sense of communion, intuition, premonition, and movement.’³

Aikido is not a art of fighting, nor even a form of self-defence. What I discovered with my master was the importance of coordinating my breathing with my partner as a means of achieving a fusion of sensitivity in any situation. Tsuda Itsuo explained to us through his writings what his master Ueshiba Morihei had taught him. To convey this to us in a more concrete way, during what he called “the first part” – solitary practice, which we would now call Taisō – he would say KA when inhaling and MI when exhaling. Sometimes he would explain to us: ‘KA is the root of the Japanese word for fire, kasai, and MI is the root of the word for water, mizu.’⁴. The alternation of inhalation and exhalation, their union, creates kami, which can be translated as the divine. ‘But be careful,’ he would tell us, ‘we are not talking about the God of Christianity or of any other religion – if you are lacking reference points, we could say that it is God the universe, God nature, or simply life.’

In the dojo, there was a drawing in Indian ink by Master Ueshiba containing fourteen very simple shapes and which we called Futomani because O-sensei had said that it had been dictated to him by Ame-no-Minaka-nushi: the Celestial Center. Tsuda Itsuo explains this in his book The Dialogue of Silence⁵. Thanks to this, I gained a better understanding of the directions ki took when it had a form.

Dessin exécuté par Maître Ueshiba — drawing by Master Ueshiba

Reconnecting, rediscovering the links with what already exists deep within us

The founder spoke of Haku no budo and Kon no budo: kon being the essential soul that must not be stifled, but, he said, we must not neglect the haku soul, which ensures the unity of the physical being.⁶

Once again, we are talking about unity.

If our practice is called Ai-ki-do – “the way of unifying ki” – it is because the word ki has meaning.

Practical experience will allow us to understand this better than long speeches. And yet we must try to explain, try to convey this important message, because without it our art risks becoming a fight where “may the strongest, the most skilled, or the most cunning win,” or an esoteric, mystical, elitist, even sectarian dance.

And yet we know ki well; we can sense it from a distance. For example, when we walk down a small street at night and suddenly feel a presence, a gaze on our back, and yet there is no one there! Then suddenly we notice a cat watching us from a nearby rooftop. Just a cat, or a curtain that flutters surreptitiously. The gaze carries a very strong ki that everyone can feel, even from behind.

One of the practices of Seitai-dō called Yuki consists of placing your hands on your partner’s back and circulating ki. This is not about laying hands on someone who is, on the face of it, not sick to heal them, but about accepting to visualise the circulation of ki, this time as a fluid, like flowing water. At first, neither person feels anything, or very little. But then, little by little, they discover the world of sensation. You could say that it is a dimension in its own right, in all its simplicity. It is simple, it is free, it is not linked to any religion, it can be done at any age, and when you begin to feel this flow of ki, the practice of Aikido becomes so much easier. The kokyū hō exercise, for example, cannot be done without kokyū, and therefore without ki, unless it becomes an exercise in muscular strength, a way of defeating an opponent.

I would never have been able to discover the Aikido that my master taught if I had not willingly and stubbornly sought it out. In sensitive research, through all aspects of daily life, to understand, feel, and expand that understanding without ever giving up.

Atmosphere

Ki is also atmosphere, so in order to practice, you need a place that allows ki to flow between people. In my opinion, this place, the dojo, should, whenever possible, be “dedicated” to a particular practice or school. Tsuda Itsuo believed that entering the dojo was a sacred act, which is why we bowed when stepping onto the tatami mats. It is not a sad place where people ‘should wear a scowling constipated expression. On the contrary, we must maintain a spirit of peace, communion and joy.’⁷

The atmosphere of the dojo is nothing like that of a club or a multi-sports hall that is rented for a few hours a week and used, for reasons of profitability, by different groups that have nothing to do with each other. The kind of place, the kind of gym where you go, train, then take a shower and say goodbye; at best, you might have a beer at the local bar to chat a little with each other. When you know about ki, when you start to feel it, and especially when you want to discover what lies behind this word, a place like the dojo is really something else entirely. Imagine a quiet place in a small Parisian passageway at the end of the 20^th arrondissement. You cross a small garden and on the first floor of a very simple building is “The Dojo.”⁸

You can come every day if you want, because there is a session every morning at quarter to seven: you are at home. You have your kimono on a hanger in the changing rooms, the session lasts about an hour, then you have breakfast with your partners in the adjoining area, or you rush off to work. On Saturdays and Sundays, you can sleep in, with sessions at eight o’clock.

Explaining ki is difficult, which is why only experience allows us to discover it. And for that, we must create the conditions that allow for this discovery. The dojo is one of the elements that greatly facilitates the search in this direction. It reconnects circuits, but also unties the bonds that constrain us and obfuscate our vision of the world.

Little by little, the work will be done, the knots will be untied, and if we accept that they are untied, we can say that the ki begins to flow more freely again. At that moment, it flows as vital energy; it is possible to feel it, visualise it, and in a way, make it conscious. Unnecessary tensions that cannot be released cause our bodies to stiffen. To make this as clear as possible, we could say that it is a bit like a garden hose that is blocked. It risks bursting upstream. The stiffening of the body forces it to react for its own survival. This triggers unconscious reactions that act on the involuntary nervous system. To avoid these blockages, micro-leaks of this vital energy occur, and sometimes even larger leaks, for example in the arms, at the koshi, and mainly at the joints. The immediate consequence is that people are no longer able to practice with fluidity, and it is strength that compensates for the lack. Parts of the body stiffen and begin to react like bandages or casts to prevent these losses of vital force. This is why it is so important to work on feeling the ki, on making it circulate. At first, visualisation allows us to do this, but as we deepen our breathing (the sensation, sensitivity to ki), if we remain focused on flexible practice, if we empty our minds, we can discover, see, and feel the direction of ki, its circulation. This knowledge allows us to use it, and the practice of Aikido becomes easy. We can begin to practice non-resistance: non-doing.

Women’s natural sensitivity to ki

Women generally have greater sensitivity to ki, or more accurately, they retain it more if they do not distort themselves too much in order to defend themselves in this male-dominated world where everything is governed by the criteria and needs of masculinity, the image of women that is conveyed, and the economy. Their sensitivity stems from the need to keep their bodies flexible so that they can give birth naturally and care for newborns. This flexibility cannot be acquired in gyms, weight rooms, or fitness centres; rather, it is a tenderness, a gentleness that can be firm and unwavering when necessary. Newborns need our full attention, but they cannot say ‘I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, or I’m tired,’ or ‘Mom, you’re too nervous, calm down, and tell Dad to speak more softly, it scares me.’

Thanks to their natural sensitivity, they sense the child’s needs, they intuitively know what to do, and ki flows between mother and child. When the father, who is always very rational, does not understand, the mother senses and therefore knows. Even if she is not a mother, even if she is a young woman with no experience, it is the body that reacts, it is the body that has this natural sensitivity to ki, and that is why, I think, there are so many women in our School. It is because ki is at the centre of our practice that nothing can be done without it. We focus our sensitivity in this direction and thus we can see the world and people not only on the level of appearances but much further, in their depth, what is behind the form, what structures it, or what drives it.

Some examples by Tsuda Itsuo, taken from The Non-Doing

‘“The most difficult thing to understand in the Japanese language is the word ‘ki’.”

It is true that the Japanese use the word many hundreds of times a day, without thinking about it, yet it is practically, and I would also say theoretically, impossible to find an equivalent in European languages.

While the word itself, taken out of context, remains untranslatable, it is nevertheless possible to translate current expressions of which it forms a part. Here are a few examples:

ki ga chiisai: literally, his/her ki is small. He (she) worries too much about nothing.

ki ga okii: his/her ki is big; he/she does not worry about petty things.

ki ga shinai: I do not have the ki to do… I do not want to. Or, it is too much for me.

ki ga suru: there is ki for… I have a hunch, a feeling, I sense intuitively…

waru-gi wa nai: he/she does not have bad ki, he/she is not a bad person or does not have bad intentions.

ki-mochi ga ii: the condition of ki is good; I feel well.

ki ni naru: it attracts my ki, I cannot free my mind from this idea. Something strange, not normal, is holding my attention, in spite of myself.

ki ga au: our ki matches, we are on the same wavelength.

ki o komeru: to concentrate ki. In the matter of concentration, nowhere else have I seen it taken to such heights as in Japan. […]

[…]

Ki-mochi no mondai: it is conditioned by the state of ki. It is not the object, the tangible result that counts, but the action, the intention.

[…]

One could give examples of several hundred more expressions which use the word ki.

Most Japanese themselves are incapable of explaining what ki is, yet they know instinctively when to use the word and when not.’⁹

Tsuda Itsuo started practising Aikido at the age of forty-five. He was not athletic, but his mere presence transformed the entire atmosphere of the dojo. I would like to tell you a story about one of the exercises I did in the 1970s, when my master was already over sixty years old. When I passed through the gate to the courtyard at the back of which the dojo was located, I would stop for a moment, close my eyes, and try to sense whether “he” was there. At first, it did not work very well; it was just random guesses, strokes of luck. Little by little, I understood: I should not try to know. So I began to “empty” myself, to stop thinking, and it came. Every morning, I knew whether he had arrived or not. I could feel his presence as soon as I approached the dojo.

From that moment on, something changed in me. I had finally understood a small part of his teaching, and above all, I had verified that ki was not part of the irrational, that it was concrete, and that its perception was accessible to everyone since it had been accessible to me.

Régis Soavi

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Article by Régis Soavi (on ki 気) published in January 2017 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 15.

Notes

1
Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Chap. II, 2013, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 27 (1^re ed. in French, 1973)
2
ibid., Chap I, p. 17
3
ibid., p. 16
4
[see e. g. Tsuda Itsuo, The Science of the Particular, chap. XVIII, 2015, Yume Editions, p. 152–3 (1^st ed. in French, 1976, p. 157–8)]
5
Tsuda Itsuo, The Dialogue of Silence, chap. XII, 2018, Yume Editions, p. 106–7 (1^st ed. in French, 1979, p. 157–8)
6
[see e. g. The Dialogue of Silence (op. cit.), chap. XII, p. 100–2; or The Way of the Gods (2021, same author & publisher), Chap XIII, p. 103–4]
7
Tsuda Itsuo, Heart of Pure Sky (posth.), ’Booklet n°3 – Respiratory Practice in Aikido’, 2025, Yume Editions, p. 102 (1^st ed. in French, 2014)
8
[more of which in Yann Allégret, On the wach for the right moment, pub. online (Feb. 2014)]
9
The Non-Doing (op. cit.), Chap. II, p. 25–7

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When Tsuda recited Noh #2

22 October 2025 name

We are pleased to present a restored version of the video of Master Tsuda reciting Nō.

During the 1981 summer workshop in Coulonges-sur-l’Autize, Master Itsuo Tsuda recites an excerpt from a Nō play. Before beginning, Master Tsuda introduces the story.

Here is the transcript of the presentation:

‘It’s related to a legend. Once upon a time, there was a young monk who was on a pilgrimage, and every time he stopped in a village, he stayed with someone who had a little girl, and then, as a joke, her father would say, “Hey, this monk will be your future husband!”

The girl grew up believing this promise. One day, as the monk was passing by, she said, “When are you going to marry me?”

The monk was terrified. He fled the house because he was forbidden to marry, and the girl chased him over hill and dale. Finally, the monk crossed a river and she turned into a snake.

The monk found refuge in the Dōjō-Ji temple, explaining this story to the monks of the temple, who decided to grant him asylum. So they said to him: “Hide in the bell.”

The bell was a huge room that could hide several people, so he hid inside it.

The snake arrived and searched everywhere for him. Finally, it wrapped itself around the bell and struck it with its tail, melting the bell and burning the monk.

So the Waki said, “Don’t be struck by this event,” and some time later, they wanted to rebuild the bell.

Since then, on the day the bell was inaugurated, the monks have forbidden women from entering the temple grounds.

A young female dancer arrives and asks to see the bell. “No, it’s forbidden for women!—Yes, but I’m a dancer and I’d still like to celebrate this inauguration with my dance.”

Finally, she was allowed to enter.

So, on stage, she wears a large, big hat, like this, and then she starts to dance. It is a somewhat frenetic, very jerky dance that shows a hysterical intensity.

Meanwhile, there is a large bell hanging from the ceiling. Just before, there is a rope that attaches it to a ring, behind the choir, and a few minutes before, the choir members untie the knot and wait like that; there are three or four of them, it’s very heavy.

And then this dancer arrives in the middle of the stage.

Finally, she stands under the bell and then yep! She jumps, at the same time as the bell falls. So the bell is there, pofff! As if the dancer had been absorbed by the bell.

It’s difficult because if there’s even a fraction of a second’s delay, the actor falls and the bell arrives after him… or if you jump too early, you hit your head. It’s very difficult. It has to give the effect of absorption.

And then in the bell, the actor changes his mask, switches for another creature. He wears a demon mask and demon clothes. And then, after the bell, he is in a demon costume. He begins the second act.

This is the moment when the dancer arrives.

She dances and comes to the center of the stage, and suddenly she jumps and the bell falls.’

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Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

An art of uniting and separating

5 June 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

My master Tsuda Itsuo, quoting Ueshiba O-sensei, wrote in his second book: ‘Aikido is an art whereby people unite and become separate again (musunde hanatsu)’ ¹.

This was a very present aspect of his teaching, but he never used the terms awase and musubi. He spoke to us in French, he spoke about something greater than ourselves. He invited us to empty our minds in order to perceive something. Sometimes he would say: ‘God (in the sense of kami) is talking all the time, but we humans can’t tune in, so we don’t hear anything. Or we only hear sounds like a scrambled radio. But God speaks clearly’. So for him, it was up to us to put ourselves in a state where we could “receive”. The Itsuo Tsuda School’s aikido is based on what he called the fusion of sensitivity, so on fusing with the partner: faced with an attack, there is a response, but for our response to be adequate, we have to fuse with the partner. During the sessions I talk, for example, about merging and harmonising with the partner, feeling their centre – then we are bound by something, nothing is foreign to us any more. Today I am starting to go a bit further in the practice of aikido and I feel much more what Tsuda sensei meant about the link that unites us with the Universe. You really feel yourself like a link between this Universe and your partner, and you realise it circulates, that everything returns to the Universe.

The Respiratory Practice: a Musubi practice

The Respiratory Practice² we do at the beginning of the session puts us in a “state of mind” that allows us to receive, to create this link between the Universe and ourselves. We do not really know what the Universe is. It is not the stars, it is not a black hole, etc. It is something else. For the Respiratory Practice we stay as close as possible to the teachings of Ueshiba O-sensei; Tsuda sensei was very precise about this.

For example, we do the vibration of the soul, Tama-no-hireburi, three times, each time with a different rhythm (slow, medium, fast) and only while breathing in. The first time we evoke Ame-no-minaka-nushi, the Centre of the Universe. I sometimes say this is an “invocation-evocation”. Ueshiba O-sensei used to say that it should be evoked three times during the vibration of the soul: the person leading the session says it out loud and then you evoke twice more internally. I heard this from Tsuda sensei, but nowhere else.

Awase Musubi — *Tama-no-hireburi* (vibration of the soul) by Régis Soavi sensei

So when we evoke Ame-no-minaka-nushi, as Ueshiba O-sensei used to say, we place ourselves at the Centre of the Universe. Centre of the Universe does not mean “Centre of the World”, nor “me and others”, nor something religious. It is somehow elusive, but at the same time extremely concrete. In any case, it does not encumber us, it is the Centre of the Universe and we can be there.

Then the second time we evoke Kuni-toko-tachi, the Eternal Earth, for me it is human, it is matter. The first is immaterial, the second becomes concrete, it is matter.

Then the third Kami evoked-invoked is Amaterasu, the sun goddess, life, what animates us. I sometimes tell the story of the cave where Amaterasu took refuge and of the rock door³. Ueshiba O-sensei often told it and Tsuda sensei also quoted it. It is life which had shut itself away in a dark cave and which has re-emerged. It is important to open the rock door inside us. We have closed ourselves off, we have become rigid, we cannot hear anything, and then one day we open up a little bit.

Aikido gives us a breath of air, something that allows us to breathe a little better. Then, with this breath, we can open up more and perhaps hear better what the Kami have to say to us, what the Universe has to say to us. I am not religious at all, but every morning I recite the Norito, as Tsuda sensei did, as Ueshiba O-sensei did. Every morning, at the beginning of each session, at quarter to seven, I recite the Norito, then I do the vibration of the soul, and I have been doing this for over forty years. And little by little I discover something, I go a little further, I am more permeable.

Awase: practising with the same partner can help you harmonise with the other person.

Straight from the first part of the session, which is an individual practice, it is important to get into a certain state of mind. The harmonisation work continues in the second part, where we practise with a partner. To facilitate this, in our school we work with the same partner throughout the session. Of course, we could change for each technique, but if you want to harmonise, it is difficult to do so in just five or ten minutes with each person. For those who have been doing it for twenty or thirty years, this is fine… But if you are just starting out, say for the first ten years, it is also reassuring to stay with the same partner, so that you have time to harmonise and become imbued with the other person. Thus you can feel them, the first few contacts can sometimes be a bit difficult. But with the same technique, a second, then a third, you can go a little further, get closer to your centre, breathe the “fragance” of your partner better. Tsuda sensei used to talk about discovering the inner landscape of somebody, but it is more difficult to discover the inner landscape of seven or eight people in the same session. Sometimes, particularly at the end of a session, I ask people to change partners, especially during Free Movement. But of course we change every session – they are not partners for life!

The Non-Doing

Uke has a role to play, without being violent, they must be sincere in their attack because without this energy, Tori will be in the “Doing” and not in the “Non-Doing”. In aikido, I often see very gentle Ukes and Tori happily slaughtering their Uke. This is not my principle at all. When I talk about attack, I mean when Uke does a Shomen, a Yokomen, a Tsuki or a seizure, it is important that an energy comes out of it, he or she “does”. Tori, on the other hand, diverts it, lets the energy that expresses itself in the gripping of the wrist or the striking pass, he moves to the side and transforms it, then it is “Non-Doing”. Tori does not respond to the attack, they let that energy, that ki, flow, they go beyond the attack. Of course, Tori does not foolishly wait to be hit! Non-Doing does not mean doing nothing.

I also assume that when someone attacks another person, it is because they do not feel good about themselves… When you feel good about yourself, when you are alive, you have no desire to go and attack others. It would not even occur to you. It is because you do not feel good about yourself that this happens. We live in a violent world, and we have been brought up to react in line with this violence – we have to defend ourselves against this, against that… It has made us sick. By practising aikido, when you are Tori, you are “healing” this violence. This violence, which is in the other person, which is expressed by the role and firmness of Uke, one guides it to transform it into something positive and liberating.

Working with weapons: Ame-no-uki-hashi ken

Ame no uki ashi ken_2 — Outdoor weapon session, summer workshop (Mas d’Azil), Régis Soavi sensei

Almost thirty years ago, I decided to use the term Ame-no-uki-hashi ken to refer to the work with weapons that we do in workshops and sometimes in regular practice. The ken, the sword, is a representation of the celestial floating bridge: Ame-no-uki-hashi. We speak of a celestial floating bridge when we see the katana with the cutting edge facing upwards, and we also speak of a celestial floating boat when the cutting edge is facing the other way, downwards. It is quite curious because it is both the bridge and the boat… It is what unites heaven and earth, the conscious and the unconscious, the Universe and us. When we work with weapons, they are an extension of ourselves, beyond our skin, something that allows us to go a little further, to discover our sphere too.

Ame-no-uki-hashi: being on the celestial floating bridge, this was an image used by Ueshiba O-sensei and passed on to us by Tsuda sensei. To be on the blade of the sword is to be in a state of attention that could even be described as “divine”, where a different perception can occur. I do not want to get into a discussion about whether or not weapons should be used in aikido, it does not matter. I work with weapons because it forces us to be in a state of extreme concentration while maintaining relaxation. They also help me to make the ki lines visible in a more obvious way, both those of my partner and those that come from myself. For example, when I place two bokken on my centre in a demonstration, I show that the strength comes from the hara and not just from the muscles.

demostration_2 bokken — Weapons make ki lines visible, the strength comes from the hara (Régis Soavi sensei)

Kokyū Hō: breathing

Traditionally with Tsuda sensei, the session always began with the Respiratory Practice, then we did the exercise he called Solfège⁴, then we worked on techniques and at the end there was always Kokyū Hō in suwari wasa.

For Tsuda sensei, Kokyū Hō was an opportunity to do just one thing: breathe. He gave us, among other things, the visualisation of opening the arms as the lotus flower opens. There is no more technique, just a person grabbing you, and then you breathe through them, circulating the ki through your arms, through your partner. Whatever the partner’s resistance, we open up to it and achieve the fusion of sensitivity between ours and theirs.

For me, every Kokyū Hō is different, with every person. There is no particular technique, but there are lines that spread out from the hara, it is like a kind of sun that shines and you can follow each ray of sunlight to find that hara, something ignites and the person falls to the left, to the right and you do the immobilisation. For me, this is a special moment of deep breathing. When I talk about deep breathing, I am obviously talking about ki, meaning that when you breathe deeply the ki starts to circulate in a different way.

Awase beyond the tatami: taking care of the baby, the height of martial arts

‘Knowing how to treat babies well is for me the height of martial arts’ ⁵. When Tsuda sensei wrote this sentence, he was relating aikido to the way of looking after a baby in Noguchi Haruchika sensei’s Seitai. He also said that taking care of a baby is like having a sword over your head; as soon as you make a mistake, “snip” the sword falls.

If we draw a parallel with aikido, the baby is both much more demanding than the master and at the same time much more gentle; in Seitai, taking care of the baby means having constant attention, it means abandoning yourself. The greatest masters talk about the importance of abandoning yourself, it is central to martial arts. Awase, this fusion we talk about, is also accepting to abandon yourself. With a baby, it is all a question of sensation, we are in a constant fusion of sensitivity, like when a mother knows if her baby is crying because it has to pee or if it is hungry or tired. In the same way, but in reverse, for the samurai facing their adversary, the art was to discover in the other the moment when their breathing would become irregular, the moment when they would be able to strike. It means calling on all our abilities.

Taking care of a baby is discovering a world of sensitivity, for example through the art of giving a hot bath in Seitai. Knowing how to put a baby into the water when it breathes out and how to take it out of the water when it breathes in, when you are able to look after a baby in this way you are also in martial arts. Touching a baby, changing a baby in the rhythm of its breathing, putting a baby to sleep and laying it down without waking it up… Of course, it is much more flamboyant to pull out your katana and pretend to cut off a head! But for me, it is so much more difficult and important to put to bed a baby who has fallen asleep in your arms, to be able to take your hands out from under the baby without waking it up, that is art! With an aikido partner, you can “cheat”, you can use a little shoulder pressure, you can push… but with a baby, you cannot cheat. There is fusion or there is not. I learnt a lot from my babies, I think I learnt as much from them as I did from Tsuda sensei, although in a different way.

Musubi and awase: the beginning

It is generally believed that one must begin by learning the techniques and that after many years of work one can grasp awase and musubi. In our school, the Respiratory Practice and the fusion of sensitivity are at the beginning and inseparable from the rest. All our research is done through breath, “ki”. This direction allows us to deepen the research in simplicity rather than acquisition, and in this sense we meet Ueshiba O-sensei’s definition: ‘Aikido is Misogi’.

Régis Soavi

Article by Régis Soavi published in October 2014 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 6.

Notes :

Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. XIX, 2014, Yume Editions, p. 182 (1^st ed. in French, 1975, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), pp. 174–175)
A Series of exercises done individually that precede the technique, cf. ‘The Itsuo Tsuda School, Meeting the Breathing’, an article by Régis Soavi published in July 2014 in Dragon Magazine Spécial H. S. Aikido n° 5 (on the theme: individual work), pp. 6–12
Myth described in the Kojiki
[French solfège literally reads music theory, and more precisely the basics of music theory. The solfège exercise contains indeed many fundamentals of Tsuda’s aikido 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. (Translator’s Note)]
Tsuda Itsuo, Facing Science, 2023, Yume Editions, Chap. III, p. 23 (1^st ed. in French, 1983, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 24)

Aïkido, EN, FR, IT

Ki no nagare: visualisation

1 May 2025 manon

by Régis Soavi

In his teaching, Tsuda Itsuo sensei insisted on visualisation which, linked to breathing, is a means of discovering the path of ki no nagare, the flow of ki. Breathing and visualisation are tools for deepening our perception of this flow and taking advantage of its benefits in everyday life.

Imagination or visualisation

Imagination produces no tangible results other than disillusionment and disappointment when you return to reality. Visualisation, on the other hand, is not a mental process, a kind of wandering of the mind, but involves the whole body. Few people can tell the difference until they have experienced the two processes separately and verified their reality. Visualisation is both action and non-action, anticipating and waiting for the right moment. It requires the utmost relaxation and concentration, but there is no difficulty in finding them because visualisation is based on the felt foundation of experienced unity.

Tsuda sensei was an intellectual in the best sense of the word, a philosopher of the older generation. @Eva Rotgold

Ki no nagare: an ocean of interactions

Every culture develops its own understanding of the world, its own philosophy. Over the centuries, our Western culture has developed an analytical approach, leading to great precision and attention to detail. This interesting approach is clearly visible in science and technology, but also in martial arts. This quest for precision is also what drives human beings to excel, to become better at their discipline, as some top-level practitioners have already shown us. At that stage, it is not just about the detail of the gesture, it is also about understanding how the human being works, both physically and psychologically. Although important and necessary, it is the same direction, when becoming exclusive, which prevents us from reaching unity; if detail and control become too present, we lose the whole and in particular the perception of the flow of ki.

Others, such as Japanese culture, also pay great attention to detail, but have retained a more present conception of the links between living things and therefore of the whole. In his book Jamais seul [Never Alone], biologist Marc-André Selosse proposes a change of perspective on this subject: we have now broadened our understanding of living things with the notions of extended phenotypes or ‘holobionts’. But M.-A. Selosse goes even further, saying that we can see the world as an ‘ocean of microbes’ where larger, multi-cellular structures are “floating”’ ¹ (plants, animals), and also have the ecologist’s vision of an ‘ocean of interactions’ where ‘[e]ach “organism” (this is also true of each microbe) is a node in a colossal network of interactions. The ecologist sees living organisms as this network, where what we call organisms are in fact no more than points between which these interactions are articulated.’ ²

M.-A. Selosse notes that this is a vision of the world already held by certain non-Western cultures, which ‘have a perception more focused on interactions and incorporate us into a whole with what surrounds us. […] [p]erhaps it is time to get rid of the avatars that Western individualism projects onto our biological… and everyday worldview. Western science has transposed a philosophy based on the individual into a biology based on the organism: beyond the successes achieved, the real breakthrough would now be to restore interaction to its central place.’ ³

Ki no nagare, which translates as flow, circulation of ki, is perhaps one way of understanding this ocean of interactions. I believe that the essence of Aikido lies in the physical, tangible understanding of this notion of the flow of ki. Because even a very small river can give a large river a different direction. Who is at the origin of the change, who acts on the other? It can take years, even centuries, to resolve such a question.

Breathing and visualisation are tools that enable us to deepen our perception of this circulation.

The Art of Non-Acting

Through an art such as Aikido, we can experience this sensation of ki no nagare in a very concrete and subtle way, and gradually discover that ki no nagare goes hand in hand with the spirit of Non-doing. You position yourself while accepting “to go with it”, without deciding to influence the direction in a voluntarist way, all while remaining a strong centre well in its place, without boasting nor taking advantage of the situation. This is the position of the “wise man” in the Taoist sense, as evoked by Zhuangzi in the story of the swimmer at the Lüliang Falls who maintained himself perfectly in a place where no animal could swim and who explained: ‘I let myself be caught up by the whirlpools and lifted up by the updraft, I follow the movements of the water without acting on my own behalf.’ ⁴ Wei wu wei, literally “acting in non-acting”, is based on the sensation of flow, interaction or ki no nagare.

It is perhaps driven by an indefinable inner sensation, and because we have sensed this direction that we have chosen the path of Aikido, whatever our past life which, depending on circumstances, may have been different or even the opposite. Aikido opens up a different perspective to those who ask questions about their surroundings and their day-to-day lives.

Yet there are moments when everything stops, regardless of our daily routine. It is when everything comes to a halt that we sometimes become aware of ourselves, of who we really are and of certain faculties that are now discredited in so-called modern society. It can be an incident, an accident that happens unexpectedly, a fight, an emotional shock that we had not foreseen and that could turn out badly, or a twist of fate that strikes us and that we do not understand at all. And then you get the feeling that everything is falling apart, that nothing is worth anything any more, that all your efforts are pointless, futile and derisory. This can be the start of a deep depression, which some people only come out of with medical help.

But it can also be the starting point for a different direction in our lives, like a step backwards that will take us forward. And it was this kind of change of direction that I personally realised when I met my sensei, Tsuda Itsuo.

My experience over the years has shown me that by practising seriously, on a daily basis, doors opened and infinitely precise sensations guided me towards dimensions that I did not know about, or that I had forgotten – like many of us – from my childhood, or that I was no longer able to feel.

Intuition is one of these discoveries, and visualisation is its vehicle and its driving force. Not the perception of something becoming or some kind of premonition, but rather the perception of the relations between things; unchanging at times, if not hidden, at least invisible without this state of sensitivity.

Through an art such as Aikido, we can experience this sensation of ki no nagare very concretely and finely.

Conscious visualisation

Harmonising with your partner is obviously an essential part of Aikido practice, but Tsuda sensei‘s teaching took us much further. His insistence on making us work on visualisation every morning, despite our difficulties and laziness, gradually produced results for those who wanted to continue along this path. I remember once, during Kokyu Hō, I found myself trapped in the shoulders against a formidable partner who was determined not to let go; to be more specific, without any aggressiveness but with implacable determination. Suddenly, without my having seen or heard anything, I noticed that my partner lifted himself off the ground and fell back to my side without me having to make the slightest effort. I turned around and Tsuda sensei was standing behind me, looking as if nothing had happened and smiling mockingly, revealing a hint of irony. During his demonstrations, he never hesitated to make us feel how difficult, if not impossible, it was to resist this flow, as powerful as it was gentle, that he managed to bring out during the technique, leaving us both amazed and amused. Many times I felt like a child playing with his grandfather.

The beauty of visualisation is that it can begin consciously as a daily task and then move on to the unconscious level, sometimes very quickly, even if not permanently. The advantage of using visualisation is that by allowing the ki to flow in a direction other than the one blocked by the opponent, we find ourselves in a state of non-combativeness, non-aggressiveness and the desire to merge with the other person. It is perhaps here, in this territory with no map nor landmark, but which is nonetheless very concrete, that we will find the roots of the universal love of which O Sensei speaks.

Drawing by Ueshiba Morihei sensei representing his inner Aikido landscape and given by himself to Tsuda sensei

Here is a passage from one of Tsuda sensei’s books which I find enlightening and significant in terms of the development he sought to encourage in his students:

‘We often talk in Aikido about the flow of ki, ki no nagare, which psychologically speaking would correspond to visualisation. But the flow of ki has a content that is richer and more concrete than visualisation. It involves the idea that something actually comes out of the body, hands or eyes to trace the path we will then follow. Hence it eliminates the absolute separation between what is inside and what is outside.

Truth to tell, isn’t such a separation a fictitious idea invented for intellectual convenience? A human being cannot live for even a moment completely separated from the outside.

It also establishes the extension of the voluntary system outside of the conventional framework of the voluntary muscles. If there were no flow of ki, Aikido would simply be a kind of exercise or a dance.

The difficulty in this matter is that the flow of ki is unseen, whereas you can feel and verify the existence of muscles, for example.’ ⁵

‘Given that the flow of ki implies movement in space and also in time, it can take a premonitory appearance. Mr Ueshiba used to say that he saw the image of his opponents falling before it happened. It would be at once prescient and controlled. This remark leads us to the revolutionary idea that one can act upon the future with certainty, and it comes at the very moment when science, abdicating its absolutism, admits uncertainty as a rigorous truth. With the flow of ki, the future may become as concrete as the present.

Neither the flow of ki nor the ability to anticipate the future are the exclusive preserve of Aikido. On a more general level, they can exist in everyone. If I take a pencil from the table, there is flow of ki to the pencil. Let’s say that the flow of ki in this action is not very intense. It does not engage my whole person. In times where occupations were more traditional and less cluttered with innovations, this natural ability was more intense. All the same, there was more concentration in the accomplishment of an act. There was joy and disappointment because there was a real sense of anticipation. Today, with advances in technology and the more highly developed economic environment, we do not know where we stand. Perhaps the occupation you learn now will no longer be valid in years to come. Youth is flooded with possibilities to choose from, but none of these are stable. Young people are on the lookout for all sorts of things, without being able to fully engage in anything.’ ⁶

Tsuda sensei was above all an intellectual in the best sense of the word, a philosopher of the older generation who, thanks to his clear view of the society around him, was not content to criticise or praise it, but knew how to find the substance of the questions and make connections, both between ancient civilisations, their cultures and customs, and with examples of what he observed in his own time, following the thread that he himself had found thanks to his masters, both Eastern and Western.

Curious about everything he sensed would be useful to his teaching, he found examples that used to speak to us and that still do when we reread his books, such as his interest in the work of Constantin Stanislavsky⁷ whose teaching, based on the emotional relationship and the actors’ own experience, influenced the famous New York Actor Studio course run by Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan, and which Tsuda sensei found significant in terms of his conception and understanding of the message he was trying to convey. This allowed him to be exhaustive, and even lapidary in this sentence about visualisation as seen by the director:

‘[He] put to good use the effects for the actor of recreating a psychological situation.

If the situation created is perfectly accepted and carried out, there is flow of ki. Whether the gesture is performed with an intense visualisation of the situation or a head full of abstract ideas, hypotheses or theories, the gesture is the same but the result is not the same. This is what makes the difference between the actor and the ham.’ ⁸

Régis Soavi

An article by Régis Soavi published in July 2022 in Yashima #16.

Notes:

Marc-André Selosse, Jamais seul [Never Alone], 2017, pub. Actes Sud (Paris), pp. 326–7
ibid., p. 327
ibid., p. 329
Jean François Billeter, Leçons sur Tchouang-Tseu [Lessons on Zuangzi], 2002, pub. Allia (Paris), p. 28
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. XVIII, Yume Editions, 2014, p. 169
ibid., pp. 173–4
Constantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938), Russian actor, metteur en scène and theatre arts teacher
The Path of Less (op. cit.), p. 171

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Making the impossible possible

1 January 2025 name

Interview with Régis Soavi

Why did you start Aikido?

I started Judo-jujitsu, as it was called at the time, in 1962 and our teacher presented it to us as “the way of suppleness”, the use of the opponent’s strength. I was nearly twelve years old and I loved the techniques, the imbalance, the falls, which could also be a way of overcoming the technique we had undergone. Our instructor used to talk to us about hara, posture, and we knew that he himself was learning Aikido and that he had the rank of “black skirt”, which was very impressive for us. The events of 1968 turned me towards street fighting techniques, kobudō, and different tactics. However, in 1972 I wanted to take up judo again, and I signed up with Plée sensei on rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève. You could practise judo, karate or aikido for the price of a single membership fee, which was ideal for training. But judo had changed: weight categories, working on a special to win a fight – I was very disappointed. One evening after the session I stayed to watch Aikido, Maroteaux sensei was leading the session and I was immediately won over.

Why continue?

In Aikido I have found much more than an art, I have found a very rich “Path” which, like any other path, only needs to be explored further. Each day’s session allows me to discover a new aspect, to feel that I can go much further, that I am just on the edge of something much broader, as if an ocean were opening up before me. Beyond the pleasure I get from it, I think it is important to bear witness to its existence.

Which aspect speaks to you most: martial, mystical, health, spirituality?

There is no separation for me between all these things, they are interdependent.

Why are you creating dojos rather than practising in gymnasiums?

I understand your question, it would be so much easier to use existing facilities – nothing to do, not even cleaning, everything would be taken care of by the management. We would be entitled to complain if it is not clean enough, to grumble if something is not right, and in any case we would just be temporary passers-by. For me, on the other hand, the dojo is of crucial importance. Firstly, because it is a dedicated place and therefore provides a different atmosphere, free from the constraints of the authorities, a place where you feel at home, where you have the freedom to organise yourself as you wish, where you are responsible for everything that happens. Being put into this situation is what makes us understand what a dojo is, it changes the game, it allows a practice that goes beyond training and leads individuals towards autonomy and responsibility. But the main reason is that from the perspective of KI the place becomes charged, in the same way as an old house, an ancient theatre or certain temples. This charge allows us to feel that another world is possible, even within the one we live in.

You set up several dojos and other venues as soon as the 80s. The Floreal Garden¹ – a place for children –, then several painting workshops, as well as a music school – Music in the bushes². Why all these places? What do they have in common?

My desire has always been to encourage the freedom of bodies and minds, with the aim of bringing them together. To be successful, this work requires a very broad vision, free of ideology, free of mind-numbing systems, free of competition, always in search of sensitivity – which seems to have become a disease or a defect in our society – and spontaneity – among other things. To create a kindergarten to provide the basis for an education in freedom, thereby encouraging non-schooling; to create “painting-expression workshops”³ in the spirit of Arno Stern’s work, which are like bubbles and liberate human beings from the neurotic sclerosis that surrounds them; to give adults and children the chance to develop a passion for music – particularly classical music – thanks to a notation known as “plain music”⁴, which allows them to play immediately and to discover the pleasure of playing without having to endure the rigidification of the mind and body organised by the specialists of music theory and music teaching in general. All in the service of the human being and the possibility of harmonious development of body and mind.

créer un dojo, impossible ? — Régis Soavi has been teaching every morning for over forty years. Tenshin Dojo, Paris

You cultivate a position of non-master, do you not? By being both the sensei, the one who shows the way, the one who takes responsibility for teaching, and at the same time an ordinary member of the association, who takes part in the day-to-day tasks and worries as much about the heating as about a leak or DIY.

I can see that you understand my position very well. This attitude is a necessity for me, there is no question of me losing myself, abused by a false power that I would have acquired by taking advantage of subterfuges and pretence but which would flatter my ego. My search in this direction stems from Non-Doing and concerns all aspects of my life. It is and has been a long and hazardous process, ‘without fixed reference’ as Tsuda sensei wrote⁵. This orientation is an instrument, an essential tool to enable the members of the associations to move towards their own freedom, their own autonomy through the activity in the dojo. To sum up my thoughts, I would like to quote a 19^th century philosopher whom I have appreciated for a very long time and whose importance has always seemed to me to be undervalued in our society:

‘No man can recognize his own human worth, nor in consequence realize his full development, if he does not recognize the worth of his fellow men, and in co-operation with them, realize his own development through them. No man can emancipate himself, unless at the same time he emancipates those around him. My freedom is the freedom of all; for I am not really free – free not only in thought, but in deed – if my freedom and my right do not find their confirmation and sanction in the liberty and right of all men my equals.’ ⁶

What was Tsuda Itsuo like and what struck you about him?

He was a man of great simplicity and at the same time great finesse. The fact that he also spoke and wrote French perfectly allowed us to communicate in a way that I could not find anywhere else with a Japanese master. He was also an intellectual in the best sense of the word; his knowledge of the East and the West enabled him to get across a certain type of message about the body and freedom of thought, particularly in his books, which is still unequalled today. He met Ueshiba Morihei in 1955 as Nocquet sensei’s translator and began practising in 1959, when he was already forty-five. He was his student for ten years, but as he was already a Seitai practitioner and translated O sensei’s words for French and American foreigners, he was able to grasp the depth of what he said as well as the importance of posture, mind and above all breath (Ki) in the first part of Aikido, which seems to have been forgotten today – to my great sadness.

Tsuda Tsuda Itsuo with Régis Soavi in 1980, Paris

How can one find the balance between teaching and personal practice?

Quite simply, I have been practising Aikido for fifty years, every morning at 6.45am for an hour and a half, 365 days a year. Of course, I also practise Katsugen Undo (which Tsuda sensei translated as Regenerative Movement) there too – I could say – every day, if only, at the very least, through the Seitai hot bath⁷. As far as teaching goes, I have workshops about once a month, whether in Paris, Toulouse, Milan or Rome.

Have there been any changes in your practice or teaching?

Of course! How could it be otherwise? If we practise sincerely, the practice extends to all aspects of our lives. I find it hard to understand people who have given up or go in search of other arts because they find Aikido repetitive. Is life, when fully lived, repetitive? Every moment of my practice provokes changes, evolutions and even upheavals that have led me to question myself and go deeper. This is what gives me joy in my Aikido practice. Even the most difficult moments, and perhaps those more than others, have been vectors of transformation and enrichment.

Your master, Tsuda Itsuo, once gave you a koan, did he not?

Yes, but I find it difficult to tell the exact circumstances. First of all, I must explain that Tsuda sensei knew how to talk to people’s subconscious. Whenever he did this, it was a way of giving them a helping hand, but he hardly ever spoke about it. He said that Noguchi sensei did it routinely because it was part of the Seitai techniques. One day, following a discussion, he said to me ‘Bon courage’, a fairly banal phrase, but the tone he used, obviously relying on the ‘breathing intermission’, overwhelmed me and made me react, giving me an inner strength I had not suspected.

Another time it was more important because it was then that he gave me the koan. As I was telling him about my difficulties with work (how to earn a living for my family and myself, etc.) and how to find a way to continue practising, or even to set up a dojo since I was going to leave Paris for a few years and be 800 kms away, he began by explaining to me that in the Rinzai Zen school (I had just read The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi⁸ and he knew it) the master gives his disciples koans they have to solve. Suddenly he said to me ‘Impossible’, ‘here you go’! Then he left quickly, leaving me stunned and completely dumbfounded. I have to say that at first I thought it was absurd and ridiculous. He had already given me a direction for my practice some time before, when he specifically chose the calligraphy entitled MU⁹ as a gift from my Parisian students. But this time I was shocked, I did not understand. Mu seemed to me a real koan, already known, listed, acceptable, but ‘impossible’ did not make sense. Why say that to me? It was over the years that the ‘answer’ became obvious.

What role does Katsugen Undo play in your practice?

Oh, it is of prime importance, but to answer your question, here is an anecdote. We were at a restaurant with Tsuda sensei, when Noguchi Hirochika – Noguchi sensei’s first son – who was sitting next to me suddenly asked me: ‘Katsugen Undo, what does it mean to you?’ My answer was as immediate as it was spontaneous: ‘It is the minimum’, I replied, and I have not changed my opinion since. Tsuda sensei really liked this answer and he used it in some of his lectures during workshops. The ‘minimum’ to maintain balance, to allow our involuntary system to function correctly so that we no longer need to worry about our health, no longer need to be afraid of illness.

Noguchi Hirochika with Régis Soavi (Paris, 1981)

Does Aikido without Katsugen Undo make sense to you?

Yes, of course, although it all depends on how you practise. It is just a shame not to take advantage of what can make us independent, of what can awaken our intuition, our attention, our ability to concentrate and free our mind.

You have been contributing to Dragon Magazine for many years now. What do you get out of it?

It allows me to get a message across and at the same time forces me to be as clear as possible about the teaching of my master Tsuda sensei, and therefore about our school. It is also a way of stepping out of the shadows while keeping things simple, without advertising or making a fuss. The fact that I regularly read articles by my contemporaries as well as young teachers brings me a lot and allows me to see and understand the different directions in which Aikido is heading and their reasons for being, even when I do not agree with them.

Is writing important in Budō?

Writing is always important because it is one of the bases of communication – ‘words fly away, but the written letter remains’. However, without real practice there is a risk that it will remain in the realm of ideas and only satisfy the intellect, in which case the target is missed.

Have other masters also left their mark on you?

I am lucky enough to belong to an era when it was possible to meet a large number of first-generation sensei. The 70s were very rich in this respect, and we went from training course to training course, listening attentively to their words and postures to get the best out of what each of them had to offer. I would therefore like to express my gratitude to all those who taught me, my master Tsuda Itsuo sensei, Noro Masamichi sensei, Tamura Nobuyoshi sensei, André Nocquet sensei, as well as those I had the opportunity to meet. I prefer to mention them in alphabetical order so as not to suggest anything about the importance they have had on my practice: Hikitsuchi Michio sensei, Kobayashi Hirokazu sensei, Shirata Rinjiro sensei, Sugano Seiichi sensei, Ueshiba Kisshomaru sensei, as well as – although I have never practised Karate – Kase Taiji sensei, or Mochizuki Hiroo sensei whom I met thanks to Tsuda sensei and who left an indelible mark on me. I cannot forget Rolland Maroteaux sensei, who was my first Aikido teacher and who introduced me to my main mentor: Tsuda Itsuo sensei.

Régis Soavi

Interwiew with Régis Soavi published in April 2023 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 13.

Notes :

[French: Le Jardin Floréal. The premisses of this Toulousian association, which was closed, were brought to life again in 2018 by Association The Edge of the Forest (Fr: La Lisière)].
[French: La Musique Buissonnière. “The bushes” refer to the off-road (buissonnier) places where children who used to play truant preferred to go for their learning – probably a preference for the shade and berries over the chairs and chalks. L’école buissonnière (lit. “off-road school”) translates as “truancy from school”.]
today known as “play-of-painting workshops”
pedagogy of pianist Jacques Greys (1929–2019) [original French: la musique en clair]
[Tsuda Itsuo, Even if I don’t think, I am, Chap. XVIII–XX, 2020, Yume Editions (1^st ed. in French: 1981, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris))]
Mikhail Bakounine (1814-1876), anarchist philosopher [quoted in Errico Malatesta’s Anarchy, pub. Freedom Press, 1948, p. 14]
Yashima magazine, No. 13, October 2021
[Many English versions of the Rinzai-roku are available on the above link (French 1^st ed.: Les Entretiens de Lin-tsi, Paul Demiéville, 1972, pub. Fayard (Paris))]
“nothing” or “non-existence”, a term used in Taoism to express emptiness

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

To unbalance is to destabilise

27 June 2024 name

by Régis Soavi

When we try to unbalance a person we know instinctively where we must touch, be it physically or psychologically. In most cases, we must reach the person’s centre in order to weaken them or make them vulnerable.

The vision of Seitai

It is hard to reach the centre of the partner’s sphere when the rim is powerful because all actions seem to bounce off the surface or slip as if on a smooth layer, elastic and capable of deforming itself without losing its density, therefore without being penetrated nor reached in any way. Everything depends on the way each of the partners will know how to use their central energy, their ki, and will succeed in doing so, be it in the role of Tori as well as in that of Uke.

Needless to say that other factors just as important, like determination, the urge to win, form an integral part of this sphere and can change the outcome, because ki is not an energy, that is to say, a kind of electricity or magnetism, as Western people are used to consider it nowadays. Ki is the result of multifactorial components which, having taken a certain form, becomes tangible even if it is hardly analysable and nearly unmeasurable except through its effects.

In all cases, one of the core elements of the action carried out will be the posture; not only the physical posture, but its energy balance, its tensions, coagulations, the areas where they are stuck, imprisoned, along with its relations – as well positive as negative – with the rest of the body and the resulting consequences. A science of human behaviour based on physical observation, sensitivity to the flows that go through the body and anatomical knowledge is of prime importance when needed in the practice of quite a lot of occupations. All the same, even for a dilettante or an amateur, such a science can help us understand those around us or get out of trouble when necessary.

One of the goals of that science – Seitai – is to gain a better understanding of human beings in their movement in general and unconscious movement in particular. It is a high-quality instrument which has already provided evidence of its value in Japan as well as in Europe and can be hardly neglected when we practice a martial art. Though it had been taught in France for over a decade by Tsuda sensei through the practice of Katsugen Undo, his conferences and the publication of his books, the ignorance of Seitai originator Noguchi sensei’s work in Western countries was a hindrance to its diffusion.

Today, Seitai calls for more recognition, in order to enable anyone taking interest in it to find elements that will bring them a better understanding, at least theoretical. It is thus important that Seitai becomes known to be better understood and accepted. That is why, from time to time, I modestly give to interested people a few indications, especially on Taihekis, which present – even if in a somewhat caricatural manner – a kind of charting of the human territory as regards ki, its circulation as well as its passageways, bridges, entry and exit points, etc.

One can better understand Taihekis and Seitai by practising Katsugen Undo, which is at the basis of the return to the physical balance and sensitivity that are required to approach this field of knowledge in a practical way. One can also, at least intellectually, go straight to the information source, by reading or rereading the books Tsuda sensei wrote in French – the basic principle being summarised in this “definition” he himself used to give:

‘The aim of Seitai is to regulate the circuit of vital energy, which is polarised in each individual, and thus to normalize the person’s sensitivity.

The philosophy underlying Seitai is based on the principle that a human being is an indivisible Whole, which distinguishes it clearly from the Western science of the human, founded on an analytical principle.’ ¹

déstabiliser — Letting the right action emerge

An athletic body

Some people have a body with harmonious proportions, large and square shoulders, long legs, they look extremely steady, for many people they represent an example of the ideal human being – woman or man. But if we observe their behaviour just as they move, they tend to lean forward (this is one of the characteristics of type 5 people, who belong to the “pulmonary” or “forwards-backwards” group).

As a consequence, when they have to bend, they propel their behind backward and sometimes press their hands on their knees to compensate. We can easily recognise them because, even motionless, they often cross hands in their back in order to remain balanced; this is not a habit, it is a need for rebalancing. This is clearly the sign of a pelvis which lacks balance and solidity, the centre, the Hara remains vulnerable despite all the efforts. During an encounter or a training, it is yet enough, if we have taken the time to observe properly, to take advantage of the moment when the partner is moving – and thus leaning forward – to enter under the third point of the belly, about two fingers under the navel, and suck them or let them slide above us, regardless of the chosen technique.

This sounds simple when we read it but, though this is only one aspect of things, discovering and understanding postures are probably among the elements that have the greatest importance. At the beginning, during the learning phase of martial arts, some knowledge is needed to be able to perform the techniques on a concrete level; nevertheless it is through a training based on sensation and breathing that we acquire the ability to seize the right moment and be “in it”. Moreover, the work of observing partners, if we know about postures, can only be good for us; it can be a decisive plus in the case of a competition or if we have to determine whether there is real danger or merely intimidation.

Sumotoris

Sumotoris, with their corpulence, their very low posture, the way they move, seem to be ideal examples of stability and balance, at least physically. Though their training emphasises certain tendencies they already have and reinforces their abilities in the direction of solidity, it might deform others for the sake of prospective success.

Anyway, from the point of view of Taihekis, they cannot escape their basic tendency. Of course there are Sumotoris of all types, but some tendencies, some Taihekis are more represented than others. In the case of Sumotoris belonging to the vertical² groups, there are few of type 1 because this kind of deformation quickly causes their elimination. The reason is that from their very early age they turn out to be quite incompetent, even when they are strong physically they are very easily destabilised. The main cause of this lies in the way they approach action. They always follow an idea of a preconceived fight or they follow their perception of the fight as it progresses, and thus they are always late and surprised by the action of their opponent.

On the other hand, type 2 sumotoris, when they have observed their opponents’ most recent fights properly, when they are well guided, can define a strategy which, if not disturbed by imponderables, can lead them to victory. They have an excellent knowledge of physiology and body anatomy as well motionless as in motion, which enables them when they want to unbalance their opponent to do it with best chance of success, because the ground has been well prepared at least theoretically. They also rely on the logic and thinking stemming from the previous fights because this is what guides them – rarely sensation or intuition. Once they have become Yokozunas, they retire and dedicate themselves to writing books, articles about their life, their training, or else use their reputation in order to support righteous deeds, etc.

Sumo. Photo by Yann Allegret, passage from *Dohyô*.

Twisting for winning

For some people, unbalancing means winning, by charging and then taking advantage thanks to a direct frontal attack. It seems to be the best solution if not the only possibility occurring to their mind, and in no case can they resist it. These persons always ready to fight, to react, are generally very physical in their reactions. When they react with attacks or psychological replies, for instance little insidious sentences, one can easily see that they twist, their pelvis no longer being in the same direction than the central line of their face. One can also notice that, in order to prepare for immediate action, their body shows a torsion that strengthens their fulcrums. This torsion, when permanent, is an obstacle to free movement for the person who has it and must bear it. If one fails to normalise it, a way out could be managing to use it, say, in a work or an activity that requires a good sense of competition. The people with this type of deformation suffer the consequences in spite of themselves. They show an almost permanent tension and therefore a lot of difficulties to relax and take their time. This leads to difficult relationships with others because they eternally feel in competition.

Having a knowledge of Seitai and more precisely of Taihekis enables us to understand this type of behavioural tendencies better. It makes it possible to know when and how to take action without falling into the trap of rivalry that these people try to set up around themselves in order to prepare for defence and consequently to attack. Individuals of this kind belong to the “twisted” group and everything is based on their having unconsciously a sensation of great weakness that they will never admit. Basically they feel in danger permanently, that is why they consider the best defence to be immediate attack, because it surprises the opponent and is meant to leave no occasion for reply.

Déséquilibrer avec le regard — Ueshiba Morihei Osensei, destabilising through the gaze

An archetype of the human being

Sometimes, a little sentence or a few well-placed words can change a situation – for better or for worse. If one can breathe deeply and concentrate ki in the lower abdomen, by taking action at the right moment one can bring down a whole building and transform what seemed to be an impregnable fortress into a funfair cardboard-paste decor. Abdominal respiration is part of the secrets available to all practitioners provided they direct their attention to it and keep training in that direction. According to Seitai, people whose energy naturally concentrates in the lower part of the body, at the risk of coagulating in absence of normalisation, are classified either in so-called “twisted” group (mainly³ type 7) or in the “pelvic” group.

I would like to elaborate on those within this group (type 9 people⁴) who have a tendency to close the pelvis – namely the area at the level of the iliac bones – because they represent a tendency which, for Tsuda sensei, stands at the origin of humanity. In these historically very distant times, survival from a physical perspective was paramount but sensitivity as well as intuition were also indispensable qualities. These qualities, precisely, enable type 9 people to be one step ahead of others in case of danger because their intuition makes them feel whether they should answer an act of threat or if it is merely a provocation, moreover they know whether this provocation will be followed by an action or if it will deflate at the slightest breeze.

‘Intuition cannot be replaced by either knowledge or intelligence. Intuition does not generalize. In many cases, it is knowledge and intelligence which distort intuition.’ ⁵

A person of this type being present in a human group never leaves anyone indifferent, even if one is unable to know or perceive easily why that is so. These persons behave in a way that sometimes surprises most people, either because of their rigidity – for they can very easily become dig in their heels – or because of their concentration power which is most unusual in our world where dispersion and superficiality are the norm.

‘When they concentrate, they do not concentrate just a part of their physical or mental functions. They concentrate their whole being.’ ⁶

Their concentration can be perceived through the intensity of their gaze, which is already extremely destabilising in itself; we need only see again the few movies that we know about O sensei – who belonged himself to type 9 – to be persuaded.

The posture of Sumotoris when about to fight is highly suitable for a type 9 person since ‘[t]here is a big difference whether the pelvis is open or closed with the persons of this type. They can squat right down without raising their heels off the ground, and can stay in this position for a long time: it is their position of relaxation. When they stand up, the weight shifts from the outer edges of the feet to the root of the big toes. This is their position of tension.’ ⁷

Sensitivity and intuition

Aikido leads us to stability and balance. Although by means of different exercises, Seitai also appears as a way following the same direction. The combination of both – Aikido as a martial art and Seitai through Katsugen Undo as proposed by Tsuda sensei – has allowed our School to continue in this direction, back to simple yet essential sensitivity, in a world being more about insensitivity and stiffening for sake of protectiveness. Only by recovering our intuition and getting our receptivity active again can we be actors of our life.

Régis Soavi

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‘To unbalance is to destabilse’, an article by Régis Soavi published in October 2022 in Self et Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 11.

Crédits photos : Bas van Buuren, Yann Allegret, Paul Bernas

Notes:

Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Chap. VII, Yume Editions (Paris), 2013, p. 72 (1^st ed. in French, 1973, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 68)
there are two vertical groups, whose tendencies are called type 1 and type 2 (Translator’s note)
type 7 and type 8 are the names of the two tendencies making up the twisted group (Translator’s note)
the pelvic group is divided into two tendencies named type 9 and type 10 (Translator’s note)
op. cit., Chap. IX, p. 94 (1^st ed. p. 90)
ibid., Chap. IX, p. 92 (p. 87)
ibid., Chap. IX, p. 91–2 (p. 87)

Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT, Non classé

We have to lose our heads so as to inhabit out bodies

2 June 2024 manon

by Manon Soavi

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

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 XXth century society, and even less the XIXth 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 Haruchika Noguchi 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

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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, 1969, p. 9
« Médicaments antidouleurs : overdose sur ordonnance » [‘Pain-Relieving Drugs: Prescription Overdose’], newspaper Le Monde, 16th 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

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

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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

Articles_Blog, EN, 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

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

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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), p.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

Aïkido, Aikido-decouverte, Articles_Blog, EN

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, Itsuo Tsuda later acted as an intermediary when French or American foreigners showed up at the Hombu Dojo 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 not our desire in fact 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 cant 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

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

Notes:

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

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Hello Illness #1

4 March 2018 name

Interview of Régis Soavi about Katsugen Undo (or Regenerating Movement), a practice made by Haruchika Noguchi and spread in Europe by Itsuo Tsuda: article by Monica Rossi “Arti d’Oriente” (#4 / may 2000).

“After reading the books of Itsuo Tsuda ( 1914-1984 ), I was fascinated by his arguments, which range freely from the subject of Aïkido 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 Aïkido 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.

Aïkido, Aikido-decouverte, Articles_Blog, EN

The spirit of Aikido lies in the practice

7 February 2018 name

by Régis Soavi

One often tends to consider the spirit of an art as a mental process, a path that should be consciously taken, or rules to observe. All this because in the West we live in a world of separation, division. On one side there is spirit, on the other side body, on one side the conscious, on the other the unconscious, this is what is supposed to make us civilized beings while this separation actually generates inner conflicts. Conflicts which are strengthened by the systems of prohibition set up in order to protect society, to protect ourselves against ourselves.

regis soavi meditation — The practice of Aikido leads us to the reunification of the human being.

Towards the reunification of human being, this is the Path we head for through practising Aikido. This reunification is necessary in a world where the human being is objectified, where the human being becomes both a consumer and a commodity. Without realizing the way taken, the civilized person executes life instead of living it. This society that leads us to consumption leaves little room for inner work, it leads us to search outside for what lies inside. To buy what we already have, to search for solutions to all our problems outside ourselves, as if other people had better solutions. This leads to the individual being cared for and supported by the different protection systems, which are at the same time social, ideological or health care, thus increasing supply and creating an ideal market for dream-sellers of any kind, charlatans, gurus and co.

Today I have heard that a new practice has just been created: “Respirology”, and as usual, customers abused by the power of words will certainly flock. Should we, in the name of body and mind normalization, of people getting back into shape, change the name of our art into: “Aikido therapy”?

The spirit of Aikido cannot be taught

I do not believe it can be told that there is a specific spirit of Aikido but rather that Aikido must be the reflection of something much greater that we, little human beings, have difficulties to realize during our life.

The spirit of an art cannot be taught, it is rather a transmission, but an Aikido without a spirit, what would it be: a struggle, a fight, a kind of brawl without head nor tail. Teaching the technique without transmitting anything of the spirit is quite possible, but then, it happens to be a totally different thing. It may be self-defence or a wellness technique.

Like in any martial art, we have the Rei, the salute, which is obviously the most immediately visible expression of it, but what is most important will be transmitted through the teacher’s posture. By posture I mean an extremely complex set of signs that students will find recognizable: of course the physical aspect, dynamics, precision, etc., but also the way of conveying a message, the attention given to each practitioner according to thousands of factors that the teacher must perceive. It is through developing intuition that one can get the greatest and finest pedagogy, and so provide the elements needed by practitioners to deepen their art, to better understand its roots.

The spirit of Aikido cannot be learnt

The spirit of Aikido cannot be learnt, it is discovered, it does not change us, it enables us to recover our human roots, to join what is best in human being.

‘Aikido is the art of learning in depth, the art of knowing oneself.’

The Aikido founder’s desire was to bring human beings closer, to him the world was like a big family:

‘In Aikido, training is not meant to become stronger or beat the opponent. No. It helps to get the spirit of placing oneself at the centre of the Universe and contribute to world peace, bring all human beings to form a big family.’

A hymn to joy

O-sensei used to say: ‘Always practice Aikido in a vibrant and joyful manner’.

We do not talk about joy often enough, our world incites us to sadness, to react violently to events, to criticize the systems’ failures, to see other people’s flaws, to be competitive. But all this eventually makes us grumpy, harsh and spoils our pleasure of living, quite simply.

Joy is a sensation that I consider sacred. The joy of living, of feeling fully alive in everything we do, or don not do. Joy enables us to experience in a totally different way what many people consider as constraints, to consider them as opportunities allowing us to go further, to deepen what my master used to call respiration.

Joy leads us little by little to inner freedom, which is the only freedom that is worth discovering, as so well told by the Taji Quan master Gu Meisheng (1926-2003) who discovered it in Chinese prisons during Mao’s era.

It enables us to get out of the conventions that different systems impose on us.

Aikido is the art of learning in depth, the art of knowing oneself

The spirit of Aikido is to be found in nature, not in a nature external to the human being but rather in the human being as a part of nature, as nature.

‘The practice of Aikido is an act of faith, a belief in the power of non-violence. It is not a type of rigid discipline or empty asceticism. It is a path that follows the principles of nature, principles which must be applied to daily life. Aikido must be practised from the moment you get up to welcome the day until the moment you withdraw for the night.’

To start every morning in the dojos quiet with a two or three minute meditation in order to refocus, to concentrate. Then switch to the Respiratory Practice, as Tsuda sensei named it, and which O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei used to do at every session. It is then possible to turn to the second part, the practice with a partner, the pleasure of communication through technique, the Ka Mi respiration and all of this very early in the morning while many people outside have just emerged from sleep.

When nothing is planned, when we are devoid of any thought, in these sublime moments when fusion with the partner takes place, then we are in the spirit of Aiki.

Like in Zen, it is suggested to us to live here and now, to be no different from what we are, but to look with lucidity at what we have become.

The transmission of the spirit

In order to understand the spirit of Aikido, one must, in my opinion, dive into the past, not only that of Japan but also, and maybe even mostly, that of ancient China. Go and search for the thinkers, philosophers, poets who enriched reflexion and gave weight to the Oriental way of thinking.It is thanks to my master Tsuda Itsuo that I dug in this direction: not that he gave lectures on philosophy or held seminars on the matter, he who only spoke with parsimony, but on the other hand he bequeathed to us through his books a reflexion on the East and the West, bridging the gap between these two worlds which seemed antinomic.

The immense culture of this master whom I was fortunate enough to know had flabbergasted me at the time but little by little I was able to enter the understanding of his message and philosophical work which had nourished me. But this man I had admired had also left traces I could see without understanding them, other signs in the way Zen masters did: he left calligraphies. As in this art nowadays called Zenga he transmitted a teaching to us through ideograms, maxims by Zhuangzi, Laozi, Bai Juyi, or folk proverbs. Each of these calligraphies introduces us to a story, a text, an art which actually enables us to go further in the understanding of this spirit which underlies our practice.

Awakening the inner force

‘There are forces in us but they remain latent, dormant. They must be awakened, activated’, wrote Nocquet sensei in an article published in 1987. To me this sentence echoes Tsuda sensei’s calligraphy The dragon gets out of the pond where it remained asleep, talent shows through. In both cases, these masters were referring to ki and they incite us to search in this direction.

Without the concrete sensation of ki we miss the point. How can we talk about the spirit of Aikido without making it a sequence of rules to observe, other than by following, rediscovering the foundations of the human being. Our modern, industrial society makes life so easy for us that we move no more, we get around too easily, in the cities we just have to cover a few meters to find food instead of running, hunting or cultivating. Aikido enables us to spend this excessive energy which otherwise would make us sick. But this is not only about the physical, motor aspect, its our whole body which needs to recover, normalize itself. Our mind, overloaded with useless information, also needs to rest, to find peace in the middle of the surrounding agitation.

The spirit of Aikido is Aikido

The spirit of Aikido just lies in practice and little by little it comes to be discovered. And this discovery is real enjoyment. Beginners, when becoming aware of its importance, get fully involved in this art of ours. That is often the moment when difficulties to explain what we do begin. We feel like talking about it, inviting friends to participate at least to a session.

We try to make what we feel understood. Other people witness our enthusiasm but do not come to understand what it is about. And the answers we get to our explanations, to what we try to hand down are often rather disappointing. They may vary from: ‘Ah yes, me too, I practised Yoga last year during my holiday at Club Med. But I don’t have time to do a stuff like this, you see, I really don’t have time.’ to ‘Yes, your stuff is nice but it racks brains, I practice Californo-Australian self-defence, you know, and it’s really efficient’. To move from a world to another requires to be ready, ready to just discover what you do not know yet but have sensed. We start practising because we have read a book, an article, and we have been shocked, we said to ourselves: ‘Strange guy but I like what he tells, I like this spirit, it’s close to me, to what I think’.

An art to normalize the individual

It is the spirit of the practice, quite often, that makes us go on for many years, and seldom physical or technical achievements which anyway will be limited by ageing. The only ageless thing is ki, attention, respiration as Tsuda sensei used to call it. This can be deepened without any limit and thats why there have been great masters.

If you awaken your sensibility, if you have persistence, and if you are well guided; if the teaching is not limited to surface but enables us to dig deeper, to open by ourselves doors that we did not suspect, then everything is possible. When I say everything is possible I mean that everyone becomes responsible for oneself, for one’s life, for the quality of one’s life.

As Yamaoka Tesshū says: ‘Unity of body and mind can do everything. If a snail wants to ascend mount Fuji then it will succeed.’

No seeking for reputation, no attempting to become something but rather seeking to be, thanks to self fulfilment. Pacifying internal tensions, unifying body and mind which quite often work in the wrong way if not one against the other. Heres the deep meaning of the research we can do in the practice of martial arts.

Régis Soavi

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Article by Régis Soavi (about the spirit of Aikido) published in October 2017 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 18.

Quotations are from O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei’s collected talks, some through the book: The Art of Peace, teachings of the Founder of Aikido, compiled and translated by John Stevens, pub. Shambhala.

Aïkido, Aikido-decouverte, Articles_Blog, EN

Aikido: an evolution of the inner being

5 January 2018 name

by Régis Soavi

Aikido is an instrument of my evolution, it made me evolve, I just had to follow with perseverance and obstinacy the road that was opening in front of me, that was opening inside me.

Like many other people, I came to this practice for its martial aspect. However, its beauty, as well as the aesthetic of its movements, quickly fascinated me, and this with my first teacher Maroteaux Sensei already. Then, when I saw Noro Masamichi Sensei, and Tamura Nobuyoshi Sensei, I had confirmation of what I had sensed: Aikido was a wholly different thing from what I knew.

I came from the world of Judo, with the images transmitted to us, for example, that of the cherry tree branch covered with snow which all of a sudden lets the snow slide down and the branch straightens up. I had already gone beyond the ideas that had been conveyed by the beginning of the century and the fifties, of a “Japanese Jiu Jitsu which turns a small thin man into a monster of efficacy”.Read more →

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Presentation of The Path of Less

6 December 2016 name

The magnificent Grechetto Hall of Palazzo Sormani, in Milan, which has hosted, on Friday, Feb. 12 at 18hrs, the presentation of the book The Path of Less by Itsuo Tsuda, published by Yume Editions.The event, organized by the Scuola della Respirazione in collaboration with the Central Municipal Library of Milan, took place in front of a large and attentive audience. After a short video presentation on the philosophy and thought of Master Tsuda, some practitioners of the Scuola della Respirazione read a selection of excerpts from The Path of Less.Later, Régis Soavi, host of the evening, by answering to the questions of the interested public, talked about his experience on the importance of the practice philosophy and Itsuo Tsuda books may have in everyday life.The organization of the evening has involved a lot of us and it was an interesting exchange with the library staff, who contributed to the unfolding of the evening with care and sensitivity.Click on photos to enlarge

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# 2 Breathing, living philosophy

27 March 2016 name

Here the second of the Six Interviews of Itsuo Tsuda “Breathing living philosophy” by André Libioulle broadcast published on France Culture in the 1980s.Broadcast # 2Q: During the second week we will talk more in dept about the books published by Itsuo Tsuda. All these works published by the “Courrier du Livre” in Paris, are currently six: “The Non-Doing”, “The Path of Less”, “The Science of the Particular “, a book with the title “One”, “The Dialogue of the Silence ” and recently “the Unstable Triangle”. They relate to breathing and the field of thought in relation to it. […]The concepts of soul and body has always been separated into clear-cut by the west. They have often talked about the elevation of the individual’s soul as much as underestimating the body, considered as related to temptation. If for Plato, the soul is cramped in its carnal envelope, a prisoner of the body, for a man like Itsuo Tsuda the body appears to be the captive of the soul. A soul who constantly manipulates abstractions and cuts the vital impulse.The man more and more lives in the brain. The hopes of the society is based on the intensive exploitation of intellectual capacity in which it is seen the privilege of the human being. But this hypertrophicity of the brain creates a gap that is the source of the imbalance between the sensations, the body as life, as energy, as momentum, and the world built, conceptualized cerebrated. Breathing is unification, return to self, if you release the separation body and soul, if the soul ceases to be an abstraction, then it is everywhere, it is in the body as well as outside.So… “ki”, the concept of which we gave already a hint during the previous broadcasting, introduces us to the idea of unity. This is what we will try to understand now. So, Itsuo Tsuda, it seems that the first step, towards the understanding of ki, it is whether we feel the sensation. That is to say not to abstract it, not to imagine about living a sensation but really and truly feeling it.I.t.: There is a principle we recognize in Chinese medicine, it is: cold head and warm feet. Currently it is exactly the other way around: hot head and cold feet. We do not even feel our feet. And the head heats up more and more. There is quite a contributing factor to it: this is Westernization. But we can not turn back. This is a trend that has been going on since long time already. But we also have the obvious benefits that come from Westernization. But if that is only on a material level it does not helps us, it places us in a precarious state as individuals. Individuals become increasingly prisoners of well-planned structures, they can not feel alive themselves anymore.Q: Europeans elsewhere, you write, need to understand before acting. They do not engage immediately in action.I.t.: What I am doing here, it is not precisely the same as what we would do in Japan. Often in Japan we do not explain, we found ourselves immediately into the experience path, it’s up to everyone to learn the lesson, isn’t it. Well, in the West this does not work. We need to understand first. But understanding is not enough. I have explained those people who were listening the explanation about swimming, but this does not allow people to be able to dive into the water. If we have not felt the first touch of the water, one can fill his head with all sorts of explanations, but it is useless.Q: But people will perhaps argue about this, “but why do I need to be able to feel? Why is that so important for me? “I.t.: Well, this is the concept of “Seitai” precisely that one that Noguchi created after the war. At the moment people think in a dualistic way: “here – that is good, that is bad. We must fight the evil. When we have fought the evil, we will have the good. ” But in fact, we do not search this: we nomalize the terrain. That’s what he called “Seitai”: a well harmonized body. In the West we keep on finding the cause, we try to exterminate the cause. But as soon as we finished with the cause, here there are other causes that arise. But that’s the method that complies with this mental structure. But Noguchi brought this view which is quite different, which transcends all. If your organism is normalized, the problem itself becomes less important. In the West we say: there is such a problem. That’s a way of defining it, it does not change volume, it’s still there. We must attack this way etc.Q. So there is in fact for the West an anatomical way of understanding, discursive kind, in which we distinguish cause and effect and in order to be able to act on a particular item. The concept introduced by the Seitai is a different concept. It is the notion of sensation. But this is the notion, if I understand, in which knowledge is not excluded. But it is another type of knowledge, intuitive knowledge, qualitative I would say, in relation to the Western notion of measure or quantification.I.t.: The same problem increases or decreases importance depending on sensation. A bottle is half empty or half full. But the quantity is exactly the same. But the sensation is different in both cases. So just a little nothing can change human behavior. If one says, “that’s it, I’m done,” from that moment on one can no longer move forward. While if I say “I have already made three steps forward,” then Iam ready to make a fourth step, isn’t it.Q. Do you not think that there is a notion that is brought by the West, which is about the total or the global but understood as an assembly of parts? With the quality we are also in something global, but without this assembly idea.I.t.: In Seitai, we do not look at a person as an assembly of various parts. That’s the basic idea. A person is an individual, total, isn’t it. But everyone is different, in its movement, in his breath, in his sensitivity. That’s what matters to us.Q. You talked about Master Noguchi repeatedly. Could we try to understand what the whole is, the unit in an individual through some examples of the practice of Master Noguchi, Noguchi was a therapist, wasn’t he. He is the creator of the Seitai method. So how is his job? What enabled him to understand those concrete things, spontaneously?I.t.: For example, each one has its own biological speed, which determines the behavior, actions, movements etc. It is viewed in a quite detached way, objective, as per minute etc., etc., but for Noguchi, well that’s something concrete. Everything comes from that biological speed that is inherent in the individual. Without this notion of speed he can do nothing. But thisQ: … so there, the notion of speed has nothing to do with the notion of rapidity, for example …I.t. … no, no …Q: … as we know it, it’s something else …I.t.: No. We need to create the contact with the biological speed of that particular person. No need to apply a general and objective speed. Well, for example, there is a kid who comes while crying, he is crying because he broke his arm. Parents say: “It is impossible to touch him, he keeps on crying and crying …”. But Noguchi has already touched him. “Ah, ah good then it is because he does not dare to cry in front of a master.” No it’s not that. He touched him at a , biological speed, the breathing speed of the child, which is peculiar to him. At that time, the kid does not feel the contact, it’s part of him, and that it’s so important.[Read extracts from books Itsuo Tsuda]Q. You wrote that Master Noguchi could identify the individual through observation and by touch, something like the notion of an unconscious movement.I.t.: Yes, for him, all the movements are unconscious hundred percent. We believe precisely the opposite. We believe we are the masters of ourselves, but we can not do much, and we try to hold us, to behave in front of others, etc. And then one day the brake is released, and then we wonder where it comes from. For Noguchi everything is unconscious, we are not masters of ourselves.Q. Did Mr. Noguchi made a distinction between the unconscious movement and posture …I.t. … but the posture is the realization of the unconscious movement.Q. So the posture, it is observable by everyone … from the outside, without preparation, while the unconscious movement itself, requires preparation.I.t.: Posture, if you think about the military way, for example, “Attention!” etc., so everybody tries to do pretty much the same. But when one is at rest, everyone is different.Q. What is the relationship there between breathing and unconscious movement?I.t.: There are some people who are breathless, for example. So when this happen, respiration rises higher and higher. So, people breathe from the top of the lungs and then finally when their breath weakens it goes through the nose. What we do it is to go lower, right, so we can breathe with our belly, or, if one’s wants, with the feet. Without the practice it is quite difficult to explain that.Q: The idea of ??breathing is a concept much broader than a simple biochemical deal. Breathing is life, it is ki …, the “souffle” , the soul …I.t.: yes …

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Kokyu disclosure of the unity of being

24 January 2016 name

By Régis Soavi

In one of his books Itsuo Tsuda gives us his views on kokyu:

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 I was young, I saw a labourer working with his screwdriver on very rusty machinery. I tried to unscrew a piece of the machine, but in vain; it was too rusty. For the labourer, it posed no problem; he unscrewed it with ease, not because he was stronger but because he had kokyu.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.A martial arts master whom dogs bark at is not a good master, they say. The French know how to silence dogs by sliding a piece of sugar in their mouths. That’s the trick, that’s the thing, but it is not kokyu, respiration, which is something else entirely.

Itsuo Tsuda, The Path of less, Yume Editions, Paris, 2014, p. 33-34.

I discovered kokyu with my master Itsuo Tsuda.Previously, it was to me just the name of a technique, with Itsuo Tsuda this notion became much more concrete, firstly by the orientation of his practice. He said: “To me technique is simply a test of knowing whether I’ve evolved in my breathing.” Thus our attention was brought directly to kokyu. There couldn’t be aikido and breathing. Aikido is breathing. And then, from his first books on, Itsuo Tsuda illuminates us in terms I didn’t knew; almost too simple and yet so difficult to achieve.

When I attacked him it was crystal clear, regardless the strength I put in he remained both, relaxed and powerful.He made us use visualization to teach us kokyu. E.g. for kokyu ho he said: “It is the lotus flower opening.” Today few people have seen the lotus flower, so I speak of a daisy. Visualization should talk to us, directed to us. For it to act, it must be anchored in the concrete life of each person.

So sometimes to help someone to get beyond a partner that is holding the wrists to prevent him or her to move, I say, “You welcome a friend you haven’t seen for years, who steps out of the train, take him in your arms!” Then the person forgets the other and ki, instead of being coagulated, flows in the given direction, the person raises the arms without any effort. The power of visualization is colossal.

Sure, posture is essential, I would even say primordial. If the body stiffens to become an impeccable posture; it’s screwed. If it is too flabby; it’s screwed. If the third lumbar is wrongly positioned: it’s screwed. With the practice of aikido and katsugen undo I see that my students are gradually recovering. Ki begins to flow without blockage, without disruption, it is the discovery of unforced abdominal breathing, but clear and limpid, from the kokyu. In my view, without kokyu, all the work in aikido is only intended to strengthen the body, it is a work of hardening.

With the deepening of breath little by little the needlessness disappears, we do not need to work on flexibility or strength, stiffness and our ideas of strength and weakness are leaving. So ki circulates better.For this direction, the respiratory practice we do in the beginning of the sessions is important.You can not teach kokyu, but you can guide individuals to discover it.If we practice kokyu ho every morning at the end of each session, it is precisely to make people sensitive and also to improve our posture. As our posture and the way we behave refines and improves, we are able to help the normalization of the terrain of our partner. If you breathe deeply from the hara to the hara of the partner, you revitalize the channels through which ki flows, you enable these circuits to function better, and the other understands (feels) with his entire body what it is about.It is not about looking at the demonstration and working harder and harder, but rather about being pervaded with this kokyu feeling of the other. I often say: to work on the kokyu we must start by listening. We listen to the other, not with the ears but with the whole of our body, we feel the breathing, the ki, of the other. It’s like a perfume. We listen to the inner movement, so the feeling becomes more accurate and we can guide him or her to a better posture, towards a release of tension.

It is also the work of senior practitioners to encourage this discovery. By bathing the other in breath, they help them to feel it, by dint of being soaked with “something”.

In the practice of katsugen undo Tsuda Sensei introduced in Europe, first comes the awareness by the breathing, by the movement of ki. Tsuda wrote: “In the regenerating movement (katsugen undo), we do the opposite of the tradition: we begin with the supreme secret, straight off¹.”

Kokyu is no more magical than ki is an energy. As soon as we launch ourselves into an explanation, even if we let know that it will be approximately, big chance we blow it.The ancient tales, such as those recorded by the Brothers Grimm, can show us an aspect of kokyu powers. As in fairy tales, it can transform toads into a prince or princess and grow people more beautiful by the simple fact of transforming their posture. This posture, the result of many years of contraction, weakness, or attempts of correction. When the posture finds back something natural, it is the return to the source, to the root of being.

The discovery of kokyu leads us to different behaviors in everyday life. This respiration, far from being seen as in New Age, awakens in the individuals’ daily life forgotten qualities, lost simplicity, and intuition finally found. It is what can be admirable in the work of a craftsman and an artist, but it is also what surprises those who do not know it. Because we did not understand nor felt what is behind this entirety in the performed act: kokyu is a revelation of the unity of being.

Itsuo Tsuda has guided us in that direction, leaving us free to go further or stay put. This freedom was fundamental in his teaching.

It is said that sometimes when the posture, the breathing, the coordination was perfect, Ueshiba O Sensei exclaimed Kami Wasa. God-technique? Supreme realization? Couldn’t we talk about kokyu or Non-Doing in the greatest simplicity? Like a child who drops a toy to take another, in the same way as he aspires us to take him in our arms for protection.A small child has kokyu. The baby is as big as the universe, but treated poorly fades quickly², Tsuda Sensei wrote in his last book. Isn’t it our duty to enable him to preserve it? And to us adults, it to regain?

Aikido is not made for fighting, but to allow a better harmony between people.I breathe deeply, I listen to the body of the other, in his or her body I visualize the flow of ki, I hear and clearly understand it, so I let ki passing into the body of the other. This circulation brings us fullness, the feeling of being fully alive, everything disappears, there is nothing but the present moment with its sensations, its colors, its music.

Article written by Régis Soavi on the subject of kokyu, published in Dragon Magazine(Special Aikido No. 10) in October 2015.

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1) Itsuo Tsuda, The Path of less, Yume Editions, Paris, 2014, p. 332) Itsuo Tsuda, Face à la science, Éditions Le Courrier du livre, Paris, 1983, p. 152.

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Meeting the breathing.

23 October 2014 name

Born in 1914, Itsuo Tsuda would now be one hundred years old.This atypical character, fiercely independent, considered himself first and foremost a philosopher and he is a key figure of the Aikido in France. He is the one who introduced Katsugen * Undo in Europe in the early 70s.Direct student of O’Sensei Morihei Ueshiba during the last ten years of his life, Itsuo Tsuda did not consider important the sporty or martial art aspects of Aikido, but rather the chance to make use of this art for inner search, for personal search. He qualified this dimension as “solitary practice” and devoted himself to pass it on in his books and in his teaching.

By beginning Aikido at forty-five years of age, the ki and Non Doing were the two aspects that mainly attracted him. These aspects were particularly tangible in a series of exercises preceding, during O-Sensei Ueshiba sessions, the technique, which Itsuo Tsuda named after the expression “Respiratory Practice.”

O-Sensei Ueshiba gave a lot of importance to these exercises that meant to him something completely different then warming up. Itsuo Tsuda in an interview with France Culture said:”For me what is important is what I do at the beginning: I sit, breathe, I breathe with the heaven and the earth, that’s all. Many people love aikido as a technique, don’t they? For me, the technique is simply the test to find out if I have evolved through breathing. “In the technique that happens during the second part of the session there is no struggle, but an opportunity to develop sensitivity, the ability to fuse.The voice of Itsuo Tsuda, who died in 1984, still resonates today through the nine books published in French and through his students. One of them, Régis Soavi, he has dedicated more than thirty years to Aikido and katsugen undo teaching. He is the technical adviser for the Itsuo Tsuda School .

– Good morning, Mr. Soavi, when you met Itsuo Tsuda in the 70s you were already engaged in the practice of martial arts. What made you decide to consecrate to the Aikido of Itsuo Tsuda?

– I had just started Aikido when I met Itsuo Tsuda, my teacher was Roland Maroteaux. I met Tsuda during a workshop organized by this teacher. What struck me at first was his ability to dodge. During this workshop I saw my teacher, who was an actual budoka, attacking him with determination and at any time Tsuda was not there, he was dodging, he had created void in front of him. That was what shocked me. I had already experienced a lot of Judo, Jujitsu and weapons and then, more or less at the same time, during my training as a professional Aikido, I worked with other teachers like, Master Noro, Master Tamura, Master Noquet, as well as I took part of some workshops with Master K. Ueshiba, Yamaguchi Sensei, etc.. At the time we were all a bit like Ronin, we were going from a dojo to another trying to uncover the masters’ secrets. At first I was timidly interested of Master Tsuda, but the quality of this void, this emptiness that was moving around, it was very impressive and that was what made me decide: you have to go and see this master.

– What does represent for you the first part of the Aikido practice that Itsuo Tsuda called “Respiratory Practice”?

– Master Tsuda used to say that it was the essence of Aikido. At the beginning, when I was about twenty years old, I saw this part as a kind of respiratory warming up, not to mention muscle warming up. And then little by little I found out that it was something much more intimate! And after seven years, the Respiratory Practice had become the most important part of Aikido for me. The rest was, as Tsuda said very well, a way to verify to what extent I was getting with my breathing.

– You speak about Aikido proposing the translation “the way of the ki fusion”. How does this differ from the definition “the way of the harmony” that it is normally used?

– Now, “Aikido” is an ideogram, there are no words therefore in itself. What I try to pass on through “the way of the ki fusion” is the direction we take. In Aikido this fusion of feelings between people allows you to practice in another way. It completely differs from the idea of fighting. It is rather a complementary. I think Ueshiba had such a fusion capacity with the person who attacked, by anticipating his acts, his gestures. For me, harmony is insufficient as a translation, this may purely be aesthetic. The fusion turns into something deeper. When two metals come together into a fusion to become for example bronze, they become Bronze, it is not only harmonizing them, they become something different. And it is in this sense that I want to translate it with “the way of the ki fusion.” But this is purely ideograms interpretation.

– What role do you think the technique plays?

– It is essential. It is the base. For me, technique must be extremely precise. It is the technique that leads the breathing. The technique also means the body, the posture. If your posture is correct, if the positioning is right, then it is easy, breathing is better. when one is blocked, congested, closed or too open, too soft or too hard, nothing will really happen. The technique is there to allow through its precision to find the lines that help us breathing better, to get better into the fusion. It is also for this reason that I often ask to work slowly. It is no use doing something quickly and badly.

– Does the practice of Katsugen undo, you’ve discovered with Master Tsuda, affected your approach to Aikido?

– I think if I had not practiced Katsugen undo I would have not practice Aikido the way I do today. We should never forget that Katsugen undo is something that normalizes the ground, the body. And only now I see Aikido as a process of normalization of the body as well. The practice of katsugen undo allows you to practice Aikido in this way, it is for me a base, the basic. It develops in you the breathing, once we breathe better, we are more relaxed. Aspects like aggressiveness, competitiveness disappear, they fall by themselves. Instead of practicing by hurting the others, one goes towards the normalization of the body, for example I usually show how, by twisting the arm in a certain way, during the mobilization, you allow your ki to get up to the third lumbar in fact the person’s body twists slightly on that point.Well, it is a process of normalization of the body through Aikido, which I discovered because of the Katsugen undo practice. This applies to many other techniques, the way to get in, to reach the center, the hara, and so on. I’m not saying that you cannot find out if you only practice Aikido, but Katsugen undo was an open door, it has allowed me to feel better, to understand better, to be more in the spirit … I think this was very important for Tsuda as well. He practiced with Ueshiba for ten years. But when he started Aikido he had already been practicing for more than ten years Seitai and Katsugen undo. His terrain was thus in a certain condition, for example with regard to the flexibility – which is often lost when at forty-five years of age. And then the kind of spirit condition: for Tsuda was clear that we were not there to destroy ourselves, but rather to find a certain tone, and at the same time a balance. Aikido should lead to a balance. And katsugen undo task is the balance.

– you practice early in the morning, this may be surprising.

– Sessions during the week start at 6:45am while at the weekend they are at 8.00. I know we live in a society where you go to bed very late and you get up very late too. In my case I really love the morning. One can be tired in the evening, people after working hours are stressed. Sessions of martial arts then very easily turned into a relief valve, and so on. Rather in the morning, competitiveness does not have too much importance … you get up, you are in the dojo, you can easily breathe, you start your day. Furthermore we are very lucky to be in a permanent dojo. One comes and it is like being at home, in an association but at home, the dojo are used only for this reason. There are gyms with more or less clean changing rooms where you can not even leave your watch otherwise they might stole it, and so on. So you come here in the morning, take a little coffee, tea, and then practice. And so the day begins and starts well, it is a real pleasure. Every morning I have a great pleasure to see people getting there and taking their time, we are in a world where we do not take our time anymore…

– Your sessions are designed for all without distinction of age and levels, you talk about a school without grades.

– Master Tsuda said: “There is no black belt for mental emptiness.” With Ueshiba there was no national program for black belts. When Master Noguchi was teaching he was used to say “Forget, forget, when you will need it, it will come back naturally” It’s a little bit like this, the technique is important, but we do not repeat ten thousand times how to get attacked or some other staff. It makes no sense. Hierarchy, degrees, kyu, dan, and so on. For me this is not really important … And then in terms of age, why should we make a difference? Modern society created that difference, it has created the teenage (which by the way teenage is now up to forty years), the third and then the fourth age, and so on. All these categories do not correspond to anything. For me, when we talk about life within us we are all equal. Then, of course, it makes a difference, if I work with a six year old child it is not like when I work with a sixty years old person or somebody on their twenties.

– Other then passing on the bases, what can you really teach through Aikido?

– Ah, not much, actually, on a given moment people are going to start their own search by themselves. So, since I’m older, and my own search is also a long-term one, I can give them some information, and then I can help them to better understanding through visualizations. It’s my way of teaching people today. I suggest visualizations, for example by saying this movement looks like when you place a baby in bed. At the same time people search, there are a number of people who I consider companions they are no longer students. As sensei, as a good craftsman with a greater seniority, I can say, “Look further, that is it “, by looking further, the body opens and the person says, “Oh, okay It is fine.” It is very subtle. It is a kind of communication that I establish with my students. And then people go and search in that direction. We do not work on making the technique perfect, that does not exist. Aikido is not going to become more effective, more aesthetic, and so on. But we will be closer to ourselves, I think that this is the most important thing.

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* Katsugen undo translated as Regenerating Movement, the technique developed by Haruchika Noguchi, creator of Seitai.

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, Nô

Norito: resonance

27 September 2014 name

Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei used to recite the norito, a Shinto invocation, during his practice. Itsuo Tsuda recited it daily during the last few years and the tradition is still kept within the Itsuo Tsuda School.

‘The norito does not belong to the world of religion world but certainly to that of the sacred in the Animist sense. The vibrations and resonance flowing from the pronunciation of this text brings to each practice a feeling of calmness, fullness and sometimes something that goes beyond and remains inexpressible. The norito is a Misogi¹. In its essence, it is never perfect, it always changes and evolves. It is the reflection of a moment in our being.’ (Régis Soavi)

This norito is very popular in Japan, it is called Misogi no harae. The Norito version of Master Tsuda is in some way a short version. Itsuo Tsuda received this Norito from the hands of Nakanishi sensei, met during a trip to Japan. She also passed on the position of the hands, which, without being stiff, reflects high accuracy. It is a KI knot; all the fingers must touch each other and the position of the elbows has its own importance too. Nakanishi sensei was the Kotodama teacher of Morihei Ueshiba.’ (from an interview with Régis Soavi)

Itsuo Tsuda himself wrote: ‘At one point in his life, Mr Ueshiba felt stuck in the pursuit of the Way and faced a dead end. He was very strong physically, but he felt that something was missing. He was extremely strong physically, but he felt he was lacking something. It was then that he got to know the Nakanishis. He was fifty-six or seven years old, and Mrs Nakanishi, twenty-something years old.’²

In his book The Way of the Gods, Itsuo Tsuda attempts to clarify Shinto and Kotodama, some difficult subjects to access. We will publish some extracts as part of the listening of the Norito recitation by Itsuo Tsuda.

‘It is very difficult to define that which is called “Shintoism” – translated word for word: the way of the gods. It is a name adopted due to the necessity of comparison with other forms of “belief” that have been introduced to Japan over the centuries.’³

‘If I have to say what Shinto is, in a word, I will quote a French proverb:

“Eau qui court ne porte point d’ordure – flowing water carries no filth”. (fifteenth century).

What matters is not dogma, but an immediate feeling of serenity.

Is it possible to constantly maintain the feeling of serenity, under any circumstance? If you can do it, I have nothing more to say. I tend to agree that most of the time we experience a precarious serenity, under certain specific conditions. We try to keep hold of this serenity by tensing up. It is a maintaining of appearances. Not to admit that we have weaknesses and flaws is blindness.

This proverb is almost unknown today.’⁴

Kotodama (vibration)

‘The whole Universe is conceived as filled with sensations of vibrations.

These vibrations already exist before they become noticeable.

So, Master Ueshiba often spoke of kotodama of the vowel “u”, for example, which is a vibration that springs from the belly. He explained the functions of all the vocalism, which were basically very simple but it was very difficult for me to understand them because these are things to which I was not accustomed.’⁵

‘According to Mrs Nakanishi, the defining quality of budo, martial arts, lies in the inclination to respond to different resonances. This is where martial arts unite with kototama. This is also where they differ from sports.

Indeed, the martial arts were born in times when one was exposed to fate at every moment, without warning. It was not about showing off physical technique in front of spectators who admire you, as in a circus. You had to foresee the approach of danger before any data of perception could confirm it. The moment of confirmation is already too late because it does not determine scores, but life or death.’⁶

‘Aikido, conceived as a sacred movement by Mr Ueshiba, is disappearing to make way for athletic Aikido, a combat sport, more in accordance with the demands of civilised people.

“True budo must be like a kind of mai,” says Mrs Nakanishi,” the others are circling around you, but the master does not move.”

In Shinto, there is no opposition between God and man, as there is in Christianity. It is about finding God in yourself.

This is called chinkon kishin, calming the soul and returning to God. In fact, one can neither calm nor agitate the soul. We purify the ki that attaches to us to keep us alive, but at the same time exposes us to constant agitation.

[…]

“Miracles – you don’t need them,” she said, “the hard part is being natural, being normal.”

The beautiful sea reflects the moon in its round shape. The rough sea gives only burst reflections.’ ⁷

‘Mrs Nakanishi’s teaching revealed to me a new dimension of the universe. The Shinto universe does not correspond in any way to the geocentric conception that existed before Copernicus, nor to the heliocentric conception consolidated by Newton.

The universe she talks about is not located anywhere. It creates itself from the original Void, when and where it is needed, and disappears as soon as the matter is finished.

From the Void, Nothingness is created and Nothingness creates Existence. And Existence ends in Nothingness which returns to the Void.

Therefore, there is no creation that takes place at the beginning of the world, once and for all. Every moment can be the moment of creation. Anyone who tries can create the Universe, wherever he or she is.

So we don’t have to argue with Gagarin to deny or affirm the existence of God in space.

Shinto is too fluid to freeze, to become ossified. Each day is the first day of creation. Each day is perhaps the last day of returning to the Void.’⁸

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Notes

1
Misogi, translated as “purification”
2
Itsuo Tsuda, The Way of the Gods, Chap. XVI, 2021, Yume Editions, p. 125 (1^st ed. in French, 1982, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris))
3
ibid., Chap. XIII, p. 99
4
ibid., Chap. XVIII, p. 141
5
ibid., Chap. XIII, p. 101
6
ibid., Chap. XVIII, p. 142
7
ibid., Chap. XVII, p. 133
8
ibid., Chap. XVIII, p. 144

Articles_Blog, FR

Itsuo Tsuda at the Sorbonne

10 September 2014 name

80 years later, Itsuo Tsuda is back at the Sorbonne

A bridge between the East and the West, Reading-Meeting

Marking a profound consideration on the major developments in human thought, Itsuo Tsuda rosses East and West and places the ki in the center of his research

Itsuo Tsuda came to France in 1934 and studied at the Sorbonne with the sinologist Marcel Granet and sociologist Marcel Mauss. In 1940, back in Japan, he then became interested in the cultural aspects of his country,like the recitation of Noh, the Seitai technique and Aikido. In the 70s, he starts spreading his ideas on the ki in Europe and publishes new books in French.

Creating a bridge between East and West, he was able to develop and present the knowledge he was given by his teachers. A challenge where the human being is considered beyond time, place and tradition. The human being as such. Life in its many aspects. Itsuo Tsuda offers a way to awaken the sensitivity and to find inner freedom.

This meeting/reading, hosted by Regis Soavi, speaker and aikido teacher, direct student of Itsuo Tsuda, and by Yan Allegret, writer and actor, will be the occasion to discover this path.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at 19:30 at the Amphitheatre Guizot

17, rue de la Sorbonne Paris 75005

Free admission by reservation request via cultural services: agenda-culturel@paris-sorbonne.fr.

Articles_Blog, EN, Katsugen undo

Listen to Itsuo Tsuda books # 2

4 September 2014 name

Part #2 : Katsugen UndoThe actor, writer, Yan Allegret has read some extracts from Itsuo Tsuda books, live Saturday, February 8 2014, in a tea-library in Blois, le Liberthé.

The regenerating movement is not something we acquire from the exterior. It points the way to a deeper discovery of oneself. This way is not a straight way leading to paradise, but a twisting path.

Articles_Blog, Articles_Blog > entretiens, entretiens

Unpublished letters # 1

18 May 2014 name

The correspondence of a writer, a philosopher, often reveals itself beyond peculiar general views. Such is the case with this correspondence of Itsuo Tsuda from which we publish a few letters, courtesy of Andréine and Bernard Bel. It reveals answers given by Itsuo Tsuda, between 1972 and 1979, to this young couple as they began practicing the regenerating movement. Through these letters we will follow their desire to make this discovery widely known.

Articles_Blog, EN

Geneva, Katsugen Kai

7 May 2014 name

This article tells the story of the dojo of Geneva (Katsugen Kai, the regenerating movement group), in it we find the watermark of Itsuo Tsuda’s journey from his early years in Europe. It was published in “Journal du dojo” April, 1987. Written by a co-responsible of the dojo, Sven Kunz, reproduced with the kind permission of the author. The article is preceded by an extract of letters Itsuo Tsuda sent to Geneva in 1975.

Work, this is what allows us to have two feet on the ground.

I do not preach to escape, to resignation. Utopia doesn’t exist anywhere except where one is. If you know to wait, interior changement will be made and you will not see things the same way.

Read more →

Articles_Blog, Articles_Blog > entretiens, EN, entretiens

At the philosopher of Ki #2

17 March 2014 name

Continuation and end of the article published in the journal “Question de” in 1975, written by Claudine Brelet (anthropologist, international expert and woman of French letters) and student of Itsuo Tsuda.Part #2Can one ‘fusion’ respiration and visualization?– Indeed, visualization is one of the aspects of ki. Visualization plays an important and vital role in aikido. It is a mental act that produces physical effects. Visualization is part of the aspect of ‘attention’ of ki. When attention is localized, for example it stops at the wrist, breathing becomes shallow, disrupted… we forget the rest of the body.Read more →

Articles_Blog, Articles_Blog > entretiens, EN, entretiens

At the philosopher of Ki #1

3 March 2014 name

This coverage was published in the journal ‘Question de’ in 1975. Claudine Brelet (anthropologist, international expert and a woman of French letters) who wrote this press coverage and did the interview and was one of the first students of Itsuo Tsuda.

First part

At the fringes of Bois de Vincennes, in the rear of a garden in the suburbs of Paris, there is a particular dojo. Dojo, meaning, a place for practicing the Art of breathing and martial arts. It is not a gym. It rather is a sacred place where ‘space-time’ is different from that of a profane place.We salute when we enter to sanctify ourselves and when we leave to desacralize.Read more →

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, Dojo Tenshin, EN, FR

On the watch for the right moment

4 February 2014 name

The writer and director Yan Allégret is interested in aikido and traditional Japanese culture since 20 years. He practiced in France and Japan and became interested in the concept of a dojo: what makes a space at a time “the place where we practice the way.”Chronicle of Tenshin dojo of the school Itsuo Tsuda.6 am. People leave home and head for a place. On foot, by car, by subway. Outside, the streets of Paris are still sleepy, almost deserted. Dawn is near. Those outside have not put on the armor needed for the working day ahead. There is something in the wind. At the break of dawn it feels like walking in a twilight zone. It is in this gap we find dojo Tenshin of the Itsuo Tsuda school.In this place dedicated to aikido and katsugen undo, the sessions are daily. Every weekday morning, a session at 6:45 am, on weekends at 8am, regardless the weather or holidays, except January 1, the day of the ceremony of purification of the dojo.Dawn influence practice. At all times this porosity was considered in the Japanese tradition. Just read the “Fushi Kaden” from Zeami”, creator of the Noh theater, to understand how the traditional arts were on the lookout for the “right moment” (taking into account time, weather, temperature, the quality of silence, etc.) to perfect their art.Walking towards the dojo at 6:30, we will realize, practicing in the morning creates a relief. The mental capacity is not yet assailed by concerns of family and social life. The mind has not yet taken control. We come as a white sheet at 120, rue des Grands Champs in the 20th arrondissement. The association Tenshin is established here since 1992. It was founded by a group of people wishing to follow the teaching of Itsuo Tsuda, transmitted by Régis Soavi. Itsuo Tsuda was a student of Morihei Ueshiba and Haruchika Noguchi (founder of aikido and katsugen undo). Concerning Régis Soavi the current Sensei, he was a direct student of Master Tsuda. The dojo is not affiliated to any federation. He follows his path, independent and autonomous, with continuity and patience. When passing the doorstep, we feel that we enter “into something. A mixed form of density and simplicity emerges from the place. In Japanese, one would say, the “ki” of the place is palpable, the space is silent. People are gathered around a cup of coffee, accompanied by the Sensei. On the other side the space with the tatamis, yet at sleep.A void at workThe dojo is vast. All the walls are white. The central tokonoma includes a calligraphy of master Tsuda. Portraits of founders (Ueshiba for Aikido, Noguchi for Katsugen Undo and Tsuda for the dojo) are located on the opposite wall.It is 6:45. The session will begin. The mats were left to rest since the previous day. The space is not rented for other courses because of profitability. One begins to understand what this “something” is we felt entering. A void is at work. Another crucial element in the Japanese tradition: the importance of a linked emptiness.Between sessions, the space is left to recharge, to relax, like a human body. You should have seen the place, naked and silent like a beast at rest, to understand the reality of this fact. Practitioners sit in seiza, silence falls and the session begins. The person conducting faces the calligraphy, a bokken in hand, then sits. We salute a first time.Then comes the recitation of the norito, a Shinto invocation, by the person conducting. Master Ueshiba began each session accordingly. Mr. Tsuda, customary of Western mentality, did not deem it necessary to translate this invocation. He insisted only on the vibration that emanates from it by the work of the breathing. Of course, the sacred dimension is present. But no religion so far, no mystical “Japanese style” Westerners are sometimes fond of. No. Here it is much simpler.Beyond the combatHearing the norito, we feel resonating something in the space that facilitates concentration, the return towards oneself. As one can be touched by a song without the need to understand the words.Thereupon follows the “breathing exercises,” a series of movements done alone. Master Tsuda kept this part of the work of Master Ueshiba that wrongly could be considered as a warming up. The term warming up is restrictive. It engages the body only and assumes that true practice begins after. In both cases, this is false. One movement can infinitely be deepened and involves, if you work in this direction, the totality of our being.Then comes the work in couple. We choose a partner, one day a beginner, the next day a black belt. Any form of hierarchy predominates. We work around four to five aikido techniques per session. The Sensei demonstrates a technique, then everyone tries it with his or her partner.What emerges from practice, is the importance of breathing and attention to what circulates between the partner and yourself. A circulation, when taking the premise of a fight as a starting point, that leads beyond. A beyond the combat. It isn’t no doubt by chance that Régis Soavi uses the term “fusion sensitivity” to speak about aikido. “The way of fusion of ki”.The art of unite and separateOn the tatami, no brutal confrontation. But no weak condescension either. The aikido practiced is flexible, clear, fluid. We see hakamas describing arabesques in the air, we hear laughter, sounds of falls, we see very slow movements, then suddenly without a word, partners accelerate and seem drawn into a dance until the fall frees. We think back to the words of Morihei Ueshiba: “Aikido is the art of uniting and separating.” There is no passing grade. No examination. No dan or kyu. Instead, wearing hakama and black belt. Beginners, meanwhile, are in white kimonos and white belt. The time just to wear the hakama is decided by the practitioners theirselves, after talking with elders or the Sensei. To choose to wear the hakama involves to assume freedom, but also responsibility. Because we know that beginners take more easily as a model those who wear the traditional black skirt. The issue of grade is turned inside out. The key is not outside. It is our own feeling we must sharpen, to recognize the right moment. Of course, mistakes can be made, the hakama is put on too early or too late. But the work has begun. It is obvious that we must seek inside. As for the black belt, the Sensei gives it to the practitioner the day he thinks the person is ready to wear it, the latter never being informed of this decision. And that’s all. The person wears the black belt. No blah-blah. The symbol is taken for what it is: a symbol and nothing more. The path has no end.A special atmosphereSeeing the Sensei demonstrating the free movements, in which techniques are linked spontaneously we think again about a term often used in the literature and the teaching of Itsuo Tsuda: “The non-doing”. And this is what probably brings this special atmosphere in the dojo at dawn, the smell of flowers at the tokonoma and the emptiness. A path of non-doing.The session ends. Silence returns. We greet the calligraphy and the Sensei. He leaves. The practitioners leave the space or fold their hakama on the tatami.Around 8:30, we find ourselves around breakfast. We seek to learn more about how the dojo functions. For this lively place is both alive and financially independent, considerable energy is invested by practitioners. Some have chosen to dedicate much of their lives to it. They are a bit like Japanese Uchi Deshi, internal students. In addition to the practice, they manage the spine of the dojo, then taken in turns by the other practitioners that could be involved as external students. Everyone involved is encouraged to take initiatives and to take responsibility.Work with lessAn elder summarizes the instructions received: “Aikido. Katsugen undo. And the dojo.” The life of a dojo is a job in itself, an unique opportunity to practice out of the tatamis what one learns on the tatamis. Rather than a refuge, a greenhouse, the picture is rather that of an open field in the middle of the city, in which we lay fallow at dawn, where we clear weeds to allow gradually its place to other blooms.Before leaving we look at the empty space with tatamis one last time. It seems to breathe. The day dawned and the city is now in a fast and noisy rhythm. It awaits us. We leave the dojo and walk away with a wisp of a smile. In a world of unbridled accumulation and filling up, there are places where you can work with less. This one makes part of it.

Yann Allegret

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Articles_Blog, Calligraphies, EN

The calligraphy of Itsuo Tsuda #1

19 January 2014 name

Régis Soavi tells us his discovery of calligraphy of Itsuo Tsuda.When I began to teach aikido, like many people, I had a photo of Master Ueshiba in the tokonoma. That was the way I had been taught, bowing in the direction of the master. When I went to Master Tsuda’s dojo for the first time, there was a calligraphy, printed by a friend of his who was an artist, after an ancient stone engraving. It was « Bodaï ». This calligraphy was there, when I had expected to see a photo of Master Ueshiba… Moreover the lines were thick… – 8 cm, that’s very thick! – And it resonated in a different way, it had another respiration…It is another dimension. And seeing the calligraphy at each session… makes things change completely.Read more →

Articles_Blog, EN, Nô

When Tsuda recited Noh #1

21 December 2013 name

To help us find out what the Nō represented for Master Itsuo Tsuda, and also for his students, these moments of recitation that took place certain nights during workshops, we asked Régis Soavi (student of Master Tsuda and aikido teacher for over thirty years) to tell us about it…

‘Master Tsuda used to recite the Nō during workshops and if I remember correctly, he did it twice during the workshop – sometimes once, sometimes twice – after the evening session of the regenerating movement. There were people who were leaving, and then as we knew there was a Nō, because someone had said that, we would start to organize: We would place the rope – a white braided rope – that would define the scene. Meanwhile, Tsuda was in his room, and we would settled on the tatami a meter far from the rope more or less, and we waited for those last to leave- all those people who were not interested to the Nō or those who found it too long; at the end there was a small group staying. In general there were a lot of people leaving. Because it was in Japanese; Tsuda was not always telling stories properly, sometimes he would just say a few words:Read more →

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, Katsugen undo

Discovering Aïkido and Katsugen Undo, the Art of the Non-doing

3 May 2013 name

What are Aïkido and the Regenerating Movement? How can we use them to live in daily life? Those are the sujects dealt with by Régis Soavi who was a direct disciple of Master Itsuo Tsuda,himself a student of Master Ueshiba and Master Noguchi. Article of Francesca Giomo.

About the Aïkido the only thing I knew was the name, before I was invited to take part in four sessions of practise of this « non-martial » art at the Scuola della Respirazione, Fioravanti Street in Milano.

The sessions for beginners were on mondays evenings at seven, with no theory at all, only practise. First one watched the technique being demonstrated by the more experienced students, then one « performed » it directly.

The Aïkido we’re going to talk about, the Aïkido I was introduced to, is that of Master Itsuo Tsuda, a student of the founder, Morihei Ueshiba. Régis Soavi is presently continuing the research started by Master Tsuda, teaching in several dojos in Europe, for example at the Scuola della Respirazione in Milano.Tsuda’s work, during his life-time, also included the Regenerating Movement ( Katsugen undo ), devised by Haruchika Noguchi, which is also practised, besides Aïkido, at the dojo in Milano.Those are the two practises Régis Soavi tells us about in the interview that follows.

– What is Aïkido? Can it be defined as a martial art?

L’Aïkido is a non-martial art. The origin of Aïkido is in fact a martial art called Ju Jitsu. Master Ueshiba’s vision transformed this martial art into an art of harmony and fusion between persons. That is why we no longer have a martial art as was originally the case, but a non-martial art.

– So, it was Master Ueshiba who created Aïkido?

Yes, it was Ueshiba, who died in 1969. But an important fact to be aware of is that at the basis of Aïkido there was Ju Jitsu, because then you understand how Ueshiba changed the spirit of it, with Aïkido. Aï-ki-do means way (do) of the harmony (aï) of Ki, way of the fusion of Ki. The direction he took in fact transformed a martial art into something else. In Aïkido, one cannot, for example, talk about defending oneself, but rather about fusing.

– Ueshiba is the founder of Aïkido, but the teaching at the Scuola della Respirazione refers to Master Tsuda.

Yes, Tsuda died in 1984. Through his books, he passed on Ueshiba’s message: Ueshiba was Tsuda’s master for ten years, just as Tsuda was mine later.After Ueshiba’s death, different Aïkido schools developed. Some of them chose to go back to a Ju Jitsu type of martial art, others have turned Aïkido into a sport. We are seeking to understand what Ueshiba actually said.

– Master Tsuda met Master Ueshiba rather late in life. Did he practise any martial arts before that?

Tsuda was an intellectual. He had never practised any martial arts. He had studied in France with Marcel Granet and Marcel Mauss, he was interested in Ki. He started his research in that direction and first discovered Katsugen Undo, then later Aïkido. Thanks to Ueshiba, Tsuda saw how one could use Ki in a martial art. He was forty-five when he started, without ever having done any karate or judo or any other martial art before.

– It is not easy for a westerner to understand what Ki is

Everybody talks about it nowadays. Just think of Taï Chi Chuan, Qi Qong… Everybody knows about it from a mental point of view, yet very few people have a physical experience of it. But that is something you cannot explain. It’s up to everyone to feel it, there is no explanation for it. We are not interested in explaining what Ki is, what we’re interested in is only the way to use it. It’s a bit like explaining what love is. Nowadays, one can analyse the smell of women, that of men etc… But that isn’t enough, otherwise it means we’re only animals… One cannot explain love, love is the meeting of two human beings and it doesn’t happen because the man has a beard, etc…etc… It is also like that with Ki.

– Since we’re talking about the practise of Aïkido, what are the different moments of a session?

An Aïkido session is a special moment in the day. I practise everyday, there is a sacred aspect one can retrieve in that. At the beginning of the session, there are ritual gestures: it is not important to know what they mean, but it is essential to make them, it brings about something. Also there is the norito (a text of shintoist origin recited in Japanese) which is a recitation of purification. Nobody knows what the words mean, but when the recitation is good, there is a vibration in it which is active.This may seem very mystical. But if someone listens to lieder by Schubert, for example, sung by a good singer, and doesn’t know German, he doesn’t understand anything, but as he listens to the singing, something sad or something cheerful happens, it produces an effect. It is the same if you attend a No theatre performance, you don’t understand anything, it’s in Japanese, but the gestures and the movements create effects. And this is not mystical but real.

– When we watched the part of the session towards the end, when free movement is done, the succession of attacks and « fusions » made me feel as if we were watching an improvisation.

Yes, it was in fact an improvisation.

– Does one need a particular technique to do the free movement?

Even though it is an improvisation, there are gestures which are a bit like a ritual. You cannot attack at random, but, in a way, it depends on your partner’s posture, let us put it that way.The « attacker’ »s gestures correspond with the posture of the person he is « attacking ». But in the case of an improvisation, as when musicians improvise together, there is always a harmony, otherwise it generates chaos. So one goes beyond technique and one creates harmony. Everybody can do it. Everyone does it at his own level. One does it more slowly at the beginning, with a technique one knows. One doesn’t invent anything completely new.

– What is the significance of respiration in Aïkido?

When talking about respiration in this context, it is Ki we’re talking about. One mustn’t think in terms of respiration through the lungs. It’s a respiration of the body that enables you to be more in harmony. When one is acting it’s expiration, when one is receiving it’s inspiration. When one starts practising, the pulmonary respiration becomes more ample. The whole body is breathing and becomes more elastic and supple, Ki flows more easily. In that sense, respiration helps making people more supple, it helps finding a rythm in the practise, because if someone is not breathing correctly, after five minutes he has no strength left. That is why one practises slowly at the beginning of sessions, to allow for the harmonization of gestures through respiration. So gestures become harmonized through respiration.

-At the beginning of the session, the master breathes in a very particular, very strong way, what does this correspond to exactly?

This type of respiration is done to breathe out completely, to empty. There is a very common and widespread deformation as far as respiration is concerned. In fact people nowadays have a tendency always to retain a little air, they don’t breathe fully. They hold their breath so as to be always ready to defend themselves, to act in reply. In the end, as they are never really empty, their respiration cannot be deep and their breath is short. So at the beginning of the session one first lets out all the air, in that way thoughts also come out. They become empty, new.

-On what does Aïkido have an action from a physical point of view? What sort of muscular response does it require from the body?

It’s the same as in daily life, normally you use all your muscles, in Aïkido also. It is true, though, that some Aïkido schools have been trying to make the body become stronger. Our School doesn’t want to do that. We do not want to become stronger, only less weak. The muscles don’t have to become stronger to do something special. In Aïkido, one moves normally and one makes everyday life movements such as running, turning, normal gestures which, however, are done with a special attention.

-Is it possible to transfer this « special attention » to one’s own daily life?

Of course, otherwise Aïkido is useless. Some people come here to become stronger, to defend themselves, but no. Aïkido is there to make people more sensitive, and therefore it is useful in daily life. One regains a certain suppleness. If the respiration was too short and high before, it gradually becomes calmer. Something that helps you in your relationships with children, at work… That is where Aïkido really is useful, in daily life.

– You always practise very early in the morning, why is that?

As far as I am concerned, in the Itsuo Tsuda School, I practise early in the morning but not all those who practise Aïkido do the same. I like the morning best because then one is more in the dimension of the involuntary, in a condition which enables the body to wake up and to prepare for the day.

– At the Scuola della Respirazione one also practises Katsugen Undo, the Regenerating Movement. What are its origins?

It was a discovery Master Noguchi made. At the beginning, Noguchi was a healer. He used to pass on Ki to people so that they would get better. But at one time he discovered that the human being’s capacity to cure itself was something inborn, which, however, wasn’t functioning any more, or not so well. It was Noguchi who discovered that when one does Yuki, that is to say one passes on Ki through the hands, people’s bodies move all by themselves and this enables the body to restore its balance. Noguchi therefore found that some movements enable the body to awaken its capacity to cure itself. This discovery gave birth to the Regenerating Movement or Katsugen Undo, an exercise which enables the body to rouse capacities it doesn’t know it has.Tsuda introduced the Regenerating Movement in France and I took an interest in it because I found the connection there is between Aïkido and the Regenerating Movement. I realized the existence of such links, by the fact that when the body is healthy and retrieves its capacities, Aïkido cannot go in the direction of fighting other people any longer, on the contrary the desire to act in such a way disappears. So, the Regenerating Movement is very important, in my opinion it is difficult to practise Aïkido in our school without knowing it.

– The only way to start practising the Regenerating Movement is to come to one of the seminars you hold every other month?

During seminars, I give talks, I explain and I show the « techniques » which allow one to get into the state where the movement may occur. I come again every other month so that the persons who practise regularly may continue on the « right path ». A lot of people may very easily deviate, perhaps because in the Regenerating Movement there is in fact nothing to do, just be there, close your eyes, empty your head. Some people think it’s better to have music during sessions etc, etc… But the path is what is the most simple.

– Is the Regenerating Movement something we already have, but have forgotten about?

Not really. The Regenerating Movement is a normal human activity, what we have forgotten is letting our body live all by itself. We have lost faith in our own body, in our capacities, as if after a traumatic experience. The Regenerating Movement enables one to retrieve all that: if before there were things I couldn’t do, now I can do them. I have only trained my capacity for action, nothing else. It’s a capacity of the extrapyramidal motor system, the involuntary system. When trained, it regains its ability to restore its own balance. That is the capacity we already have. Even people who don’t practise the Regenerating Movement know how to regain their own balance: someone who is tired goes to bed, and while he is asleep, his body moves, that is the body’s capacity to restore its balance. The Regenerating Movement is something everybody still has a little, but the capacity to let the movement occur weakens and, by training the extrapyramidal, one retrieves it.

– What is the extrapyramidal motor system?

It is the involuntary system, which allows the body to restore its balance. But the Regenerating Movement also has an action on the immune system, which does not depend on the extrapyramidal system but is also an involuntary faculty of the body.Our body’s movement isn’t something we can learn, we can only discover it and accept it. The Regenerating Movement has an action on many things, for example the capacity to maintain body temperature, but it’s different for each person, no movement is identical to another, no reaction to another, because each person is different.

-Dealing with people he doen’t know, the master needs to have a special sensibility to understand which movement each participant needs to do?

No, because the master cannot do the movement for the « student », the movement is something spontaneous, so everybody has to find his own movement. The training of the involuntary system must, to start with, give a free hand to the involuntary. So, during the seminar, I explain, I show exercises, I just do « Yuki ». I may sometimes help someone empty his head thanks to a few technique, but then the movement occurs all by itself. It’s the same thing as when a person is scratching, she knows where and how to do it, without anybody telling her anything.

– What does Yuki and doing Yuki mean?

Yuki means « joyful Ki » and to do Yuki is « to pass on joyful Ki », but that is an interpretation… To do it, you lay your hands on the other person’s body.

– We are talking about restoring the body’s balance, but the Regenerating Movement isn’t a therapy, but exercises which allow for something to wake up…

Yes, because a therapy implies that one is concerned with the symptom of the illness and that one is taking a responsability regarding that. It isn’t the case here. Here we just let the body do what it has to do. If people have problems and need something, one can do yuki and this rouses the capacity of the rest of the body. So it isn’t a therapy. There are therapeutic consequences, we can say that.

– Can anybody practise the Regenerating Movement?

No. It is not recommended to people who have had transplants, because if a person has had transplants, it means she has in her body a part coming from somebody else. With the practise of the Regenerating Movement, her body will tend to reject that part which doesn’t belong to it. In fact, people with transplants must take medicines so that their bodies accept the foreign element. The Regenerating Movement activates the body’s capacities to restore its balance, so it works in the direction of expelling any foreign element. It may be allright, though, if the transplant comes from the person’s own body, for example if skin has been taken from one part of a person’s body to another. We also refuse people taking very strong medicines, like cortisone etc… because this type of medicine goes towards desensibilizing the persons, whereas the Regenerating Movement makes them retrieve a more vivid sensitivity.

– How many years do you need to practise to conduct a Regenerating Movement session?

Talking about years doesn’t mean anything. It is the practitioners themselves who conduct the sessions. One year of practise is enough. Of course the respiration of the person who conducts the session must be calm enough, and she must be in the right state of mind, warm, simple, not disturbing for the others. In fact, it is only the practitioners’ involuntary which is at work.

-Aren’t there things that may happen during a session, on an emotive level, coming from the most fragile persons?

Nothing of the sort happens, because one finds out that the Regenerating Movement is really something natural. It would be like saying that someone who is scratching an itch is making himself bleed. People have tensions inside themselves but the Regenerating Movement doesn’t make them come out, it makes them melt. If something has no reason to be there any more, it just melts.

-To allow the Regenerating Movement to occur, one must first free one’s head from thoughts, have a blank mind, but how does that come about?

To empty your head, you first drop the thoughts that come into your mind. An empty mind means that if there are thoughts, they go away. The mind needs to be active in any case, but the thoughts are not important. At the beginning it’s a bit difficult, but after some time, you don’t worry about that any more and gradually everything goes without saying.

Article of Francesca Giomo, published in the webzine “Terranauta” on 04/01/2006.

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Is ki an Eastern philosophy?

Ki in the West

Reconnecting, rediscovering the links with what already exists deep within us

Atmosphere

Women’s natural sensitivity to ki

Some examples by Tsuda Itsuo, taken from The Non-Doing

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Notes

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The Respiratory Practice: a Musubi practice

Awase: practising with the same partner can help you harmonise with the other person.

The Non-Doing

Working with weapons: Ame-no-uki-hashi ken

Kokyū Hō: breathing

Musubi and awase: the beginning

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Imagination or visualisation

Ki no nagare: an ocean of interactions

The Art of Non-Acting

Conscious visualisation

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The vision of Seitai

An athletic body

Sumotoris

Twisting for winning

An archetype of the human being

Sensitivity and intuition

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Mas-d’Azil, the meeting

A transformation

The summer workshop: the irreversible ephemeral

The spectacular

A society issue

Human Ecology

Life force

The Seitai technique: an orientation

Aikido: an art to awaken life force

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Like water, Aikido is a way to achieve Misogi

Ki, a driving force

Bathing in a sea of Ki

The dojo, an essential place

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Notes

The meeting with Haruchika Noguchi: the individual as a whole

Illness as a balance factor

A path towards autonomy

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Notes

Breathing during the fall

Training the old way!

Dualism

Imbalance serving the purpose of balance

To project in order to harmonize

The involuntary

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Aikijutsu has become a dō

A School without grades

A School with its own specificity

Yin the feminine: understanding

Yang the masculine: fighting

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

A means: the respiratory practice

Education

A practical philosophy, or rather, a philosophical practice

What lies beyond, what lies behind

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The spirit of Aikido cannot be taught

The spirit of Aikido cannot be learnt

A hymn to joy

The transmission of the spirit

Awakening the inner force

The spirit of Aikido is Aikido

An art to normalize the individual

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Kotodama (vibration)

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