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Reishiki: A Musical Score

3 January 2026 name

In our relationship with the dojo, we often deal with Reishiki (etiquette). From our first contact with martial arts, as soon as we enter a dojo, we see people bowing very respectfully at the entrance and then greeting each other, or sometimes heading towards the kamiza after picking up a weapon. Every school has its own rules of good conduct, just as it has its own savoir-faire. In the West, some of these rules are even posted next to the door, just waiting to be followed. However, this is not always the case, as many people are reluctant to follow them on the pretext of religiosity, modernity or even because they see an overly military or sectarian aspect to them. Nevertheless, our society has its own protocols and customs. Everyone stands up when the court enters the courtroom, actors and musicians bow to their audience, just as people stand up when the national anthem or the European anthem is played.

The respect that is demanded in a dojo is more than a custom of oriental origin, whether Japanese or Chinese. It is not a matter of playing a role, of “doing as they do in Japan”, of being strict and impeccable, even rigid in the scrupulous observance of the rules of good manners. Reishiki involves our whole being. Most of us have lost the habit of bowing to anyone or anything: the handshake, the good handshake, the kiss, or other more modern rituals have replaced what too often resembled a power relationship over inferiors, imposed by hierarchical superiors.

It took me a long time before I understood, as my master Tsuda Itsuo sensei taught me, that bowing between partners, whether standing or kneeling, is a way of uniting, coordinating the breath, and bowing to life in the other. If we accept it as a good practice, we are often far from understanding it through our senses. Reishiki, however, is the score of the marvellous piece of music that is the practice of aikido. The score gives us the rhythm, the tempo, the notes are written on the staff and are therefore easier to find, but everything remains to be played. Of course, you have to know the key: G? C? or F? And in what position? What instrument is it played on? How do we play it? Almost anything seems possible, but you cannot do just anything. An expert, a great master, is able to juggle with the notes, add improvisations, speed up the tempo in one part, slow it down in another. Insist on a cadence, delete one or shorten it. Just as an aikido master improvises in front of their partner, unifying the breath with them and moving in unconventional ways, creating a ballet that is both aesthetic and fearsome. Noro Masamichi sensei demonstrated this to us at every session in the 1970s, when I was still a very inexperienced young instructor.

Régis Soavi: recitation of the Norito, of Shintō origin, _Misogi No Harae_ which he recites every day during aikidō sessions. Calligraphy by Tsuda Itsuo sensei: 看脚下 (_Look under your feet_). Photo by Valentina Mele

Reishiki: just a ritual?

The ceremonial aspect gives us access to the sacred without condemning us to the religious, so that the profane itself is ennobled and becomes sacred as well.

A classical musician prepares before beginning to play by performing a certain number of times actions that could be described as rituals. They tune their instrument or simply check that it is in tune, do exercises to loosen up and memorize difficult passages, just as we take care of our posture and body, and check our outfit, keikogi, belt, hakama – all this attention is an integral part of the care we bring to the practice of our art.

Reishiki allows to structure the practice, through the various rituals and their repetition, so that attention can be focused thanks to the regular support they provide. Nowadays, at least in Europe, it is rare to find dojos where the practitioners take care of the daily housework, cleaning the toilets, tidying up the changing rooms, or the keikogi for lending to beginners, etc. In fact, they act like uchi deshi from another era. It has become difficult to convey this message to the younger generation, for whom learning has often become a chore that needs to be done away with as quickly as possible.

Reishiki: a moral code?

Reishiki is the gateway to a forgotten world, the world of inner sensation, a world that is immaterial and yet very real, very concrete. It is within everyone’s reach to find it, or to rediscover it when it is blocked by conventions or ideas inculcated by society to our detriment. Of course, the protocols that govern an art help us to avoid accidents through the order they require, but it is their fundamentally natural character that seems to me the most important. If this does not exist, or no longer exists, all that remains are customs deprived of their profound meaning. In a society in decline with respect to education, I believe it necessary to allow all those interested in martial arts to rediscover the basics, as indispensable as they are logical, of human functioning.

Reishiki obliges us to respect all human life and leads us to respect life has to other living beings. Through the moral code that will be applied to us too, if we apply it to others, we can rediscover a common ground between human beings. The values carried by Reishiki are also there to help us move forward in our daily lives. Women, for example, are respected by everyone for their quality as practitioners, not because they look good in the background, or out of condescension, or to respect parity – or they should be, because unfortunately this is not so often the case. A female musician who plays a wind instrument is not appreciated for her measurements or her lung capacity, but, like any other musician, for the quality of her playing, for the musicality of a piece that she is able to make us discover during a concert.

Reishiki: an impregnation

When we are able to feel the rituals, our everyday life takes on a different flavour. Reishiki is no longer a constraint, it is the path to our inner freedom and we are guided step by step by the ceremonial that has its origins in older rituals that are just waiting to be rediscovered. Modern sport¹ has its own rules and regulations, the roles of which seem identical a priori – safety, respect for others, respect for the referee, socialisation, etc. – and which we could easily confuse with reishiki, which is much older. It is easier for our Western view, we are used to it, we do not have to make any effort except to adapt to it, but as soon as we leave the tatami, the ring or the field, all these rules linked to the sport we practise disappear and other rules apply. These rules are often very different, sometimes simply good manners, sometimes the rulelessness of the street and its consequences. Reishiki remains in us like a presence, through a phenomenon that could be called imprinting, a kind of imprint, although not at the beginning, not in the first few years. Little by little, it shapes our mind and therefore our body, without deforming them; on the contrary, it allows them to develop harmoniously. The rules of sport are there to be respected for the time of the exercise, of the practice, Reishiki acts on the whole time of our life.

Reishiki: an artefact?

In my opinion, Reishiki should never be imposed; it is part of an understanding that must be developed by the most recent practitioners, while the older ones can help beginners to progress by their knowledge and example. Apart from the minimum good manners required everywhere, it is also, and above all, the atmosphere of the dojo that will guide newcomers. If we impose norms and conventions, we run the risk of everything becoming rigid and appearing as a new ideology to be applied and, yet, divorced from what is alive – as Matthew B. Crawford so aptly put it, ‘[l]ife then imitates theory: Ours is now a highly mediated existence in which, sure enough, we increasingly encounter the world through representations. These are manufactured for us. Human experience has become a highly engineered and therefore manipulable thing’². That our experience and our teaching become an artificial product, when it is precisely the opposite that we seek, is perhaps what awaits us. There is also the danger that it will go in exactly the opposite direction to what our art teaches or should teach: freedom of mind, intuition, life force and all that goes with it – flexibility, mobility, resistance, the ability to re-centre oneself in order not to sink after a fall or in the face of difficulty.

The salute in the Bushū-den Kiraku-ryū style, one of the arts at the origin of aikidō. Photo by Bas van Buuren

Creating the conditions

The gyms are adapted for sports, there are grandstands, a variety of activities can be practised, maintenance is managed by the venue’s administration, and there is a caretaker responsible for maintaining order in the corridors, the changing rooms, and so on. Managing to communicate Reishiki in a space of this nature is a challenge. Unfortunately, nothing predisposes you to respect the place, either as a public place – very few are respected today – or as a place, a space that you could make your own. A sports hall is for sport, a dojo is a place to practise Budō, Bujutsu, an art – whether martial or not. The vibe and atmosphere are different. Would you not find it strange to see someone baking by a swimming pool or watching a heavyweight boxing match in a tea house? To create a space, a place that was found not on the basis of future income, but on the basis of parameters of a completely different nature, which it is impossible for me to describe in a few lines, but which are decisive for the future dojo and its perpetuation if it is a martial arts school. To create a place of this kind is already to apply the spirit of Reishiki, because it will bring together people who will be its managers, its housemates as it were, for an indefinite period of time, and it will be the cradle of students already present as well as of future practitioners. They will learn to respect Reishiki and to ensure that it is respected, for they will be both the originators and the transformers of Reishiki according to the needs. They will be the continuators of a tradition that they feel is necessary and even indispensable, for the teaching and the practise their art.

Tokonoma, Tenshin dōjō, Paris. Calligraphy by Tsuda Itsuo sensei, 大仁不仁 (*Great kindness excludes small kindness*). Photo by Laurent Festaz

Reishiki is also about gratitude: knowing how to say thank you

How can I end an article on Reishiki without paying tribute to the masters I have been lucky enough to meet, sometimes to follow, always to respect. There are too many of them, and to list them all would be tedious for the reader, because it all began in my childhood, when I was barely twelve. But I would like to mention those who guided me at crucial moments, like my first Judo teacher, the Kawaishi method, who knew how to guide me and whose discipline as well as kindness marked me for life: Roland Maroteaux sensei, my initiator into aikido in the early seventies, thanks to whom I met Tsuda Itsuo sensei, that master in the shadows who was “my Master”. The same goes for Henry Plée sensei, who gave me my chance (“gave me a leg up” as they say) by allowing me to teach aikido in his dojo on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, when I was a brand-new black belt. I have not forgotten any of them (even those I do not mention here) because it was thanks to their firm simplicity and the guidance they were able to give me that I came to understand and appreciate Reishiki.

Régis Soavi

Article by Régis Soavi to be published in April 2025 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 21.

Notes

1
concept developed by Pierre Bourdieu in « Comment peut-on être sportif ? » [‘How to Be Sporty?’], Questions de sociologie [Topics in Sociology], 1984, Les Éditions de Minuit (Paris), p. 174 (‘It seems to me we should, first, ponder the historical and social conditions that make possible this social phenomenon we take too easily for granted: “modern sport”.’ – trans. Itsuo Tsuda School)
2
Matthew Bunker Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in the Age of Distraction, 2015, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York), Preface, pp. ix–x

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The Session of Katsugen Undô #6

30 November 2025 name

In this sixth part, Régis Soavi describes a session of Katsugen undō (translated as Regenerative Movement).

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

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Some additional information

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

Excerpts from the video on Yuki

It’s simplicity itself. We always want to add lots of things because when it’s too simple, we feel like it’s not working.

We’ll invite people to do two or three exercises. One exercise will relax the solar plexus area. Here, we exhale deeply. It’s like a kind of artificial yawn. So it’s a voluntary exercise. A kind of artificial yawn. We relax the solar plexus area.

One of the second exercises we do, for example to trigger individual movement, would be “spinal rotation.” Well, here it’s about regaining a little flexibility. I see people today with aging bodies, their spine is completely blocked, they can no longer turn around. They have to turn their whole body to look behind them. Whereas all they need to do is rotate their spine. But very often, even in people in their thirties, the spine is blocked. So this is an exercise that relaxes the body. That’s the second exercise.

And the third exercise, which is a little more complicated, involves putting your thumbs inside your closed fists and pulling everything back. Okay. It’s difficult to show you like this, you really need someone to show you more precisely. That’s why there are organized workshops. That’s for individual movement.

And then what do we do? Nothing! We do nothing. We let the body trigger the movement. If we do the individual movement, it’s very simple. You can do it anywhere. It can be very discreet. It’s not about starting to scream… It’s not something that’s very visible. It’s extremely discreet. There is no noise during a movement session. Sometimes there are slight noises, almost nothing. So that’s the individual movement.

And then in the dojos, during the week, that is, two or three times a week, depending on the dojo, we practice the mutual movement. So there we simply do the plexus exercise and add a few concentration exercises, such as breathing through the hands, Yuki, the activation chain, all of which allow the bodies to be ready to let the movement be triggered. However, the triggering itself will be done by activating the second points of the head. I can’t demonstrate it like that. By activating the second points of the head, in a way, the voluntary system will go into rest mode. And it is the involuntary system that will take over, that will lead.

So what does that mean? It doesn’t mean that suddenly we’re brainless and don’t understand anything anymore. When we eat, for example, it’s the digestive system that suddenly, when it was quiet and doing nothing, suddenly starts to activate. All kinds of gastric juices are produced, the stomach starts working, the intestines work harder, etc. That doesn’t mean we stop thinking. At most, we feel a little drowsy. The drowsiness that comes with digestion, or when we’ve eaten well, we feel a little… ah, there it is. Because the involuntary digestive system has been activated. It’s not because this digestive system has been activated that there is nothing else. Here too, when we do the regenerative movement, the voluntary movement is at rest, we don’t think about it anymore, we close our eyes, we let the body move according to its needs.

And then, because the body is in an involuntary state, it can do things that it doesn’t usually do, or that it has somewhat neglected. And so it starts to move. That’s why we do it in a dojo, because it does things that can sometimes seem incongruous. For example, if you do movements like this on the subway, people might think, “Oh dear, that guy’s a bit weird…” But in the dojo, we’re relaxed, our eyes are closed, no one is watching us, it’s a bit like being at home. The movement we practise in the dojo is a training. We often say it’s training for the extrapyramidal motor system, but it’s not just that. It’s training because our bodies have weakened, because we have trouble reacting, so we retrain ourselves. It’s a bit like someone who can no longer walk. At a certain point, even the smallest step is difficult: going from the kitchen to the bathroom is difficult for them. So from the moment they start walking again, their body will start to function better. It’s the same thing with involuntary movement.

And at some point, of course, since this is training, it’s within a given time frame. We also have to stop that time at some point. That is to say, during the session, we did the training, we let the movement be triggered, then we stop the movement. Here again, there is an exercise very similar to the first one to stop the individual movement. We stop the movement. Then we lie down for a few minutes. And we come back, we resume the voluntary system, which will act again.

So we let the individual movement act completely as it needed to, on its own, for a certain amount of time, and then we return to our normal daily life. And so, the body will now regain its involuntary abilities. We will allow the involuntary to work more than before in everyday life. Because the body will say, “Hey, I need this,” and it will trigger another type of work. So again, there are exercises that allow the involuntary system to be trained, and then there is everyday life. We are not in the involuntary state all the time. We work, we do a lot of things with the voluntary system. But since the involuntary system works underneath, the body remains normal.

Notes

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

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Itsuo Tsuda’s Calligraphies #2

27 November 2025 name

Continuation of the interview with Régis Soavi, who tells us about his discovery of Itsuo Tsuda‘s calligraphies.

Putting up a piece of calligraphy rather than a photo of a master has another advantage, which I understood later: it avoids a certain “cult of personality”. Instead of putting up a photo of Master Ueshiba, I could have put up one of my master, Itsuo Tsuda… but then that would imply something about “a Gr-ow-ate Maaaaaster” who IS, and that also goes in the direction of religions where there are saints, paintings of saints, statues of saints… We have this in Buddhism, and in Christianity too, of course…

But this way, we no longer have the same resonance, because these are photos of people, of “characters”.

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Ame no Ukihashi Ken, the Sword That Links Heaven and Earth

20 November 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

pousse_bokken_tsuda — Tsuda Itsuo, pushing of the bokken (uke : Régis Soavi & Jean-Marc Arnauve)

In the practice of aikido, I have always loved the ken. The sword, like kyūdō in the way Herrigel talks about it in his book on the art of archery, is an extension of the human body, a path to the realisation of our being. In our School, the first act at the beginning of the session is a salute with the bokken in front of the calligraphy. Every morning, after putting on my kimono and meditating for a few minutes in a corner of the dojo, I begin the respiratory practice with this salute towards the calligraphy. It is essential to harmonise with my surroundings, with the universe.

The simple fact of breathing deeply while raising the bokken in front of the tokonoma, with a calligraphy, an ikebana, changes the nature of the session.

For me, it is a matter of realising Ame no Ukihashi¹, the celestial floating bridge, which links the human and their surroundings, the conscious and the unconscious, the visible and the invisible.

Throughout the respiratory practice, the first part of the session, my bokken is by my side, the same bokken I have had for forty years. It is like a friend, an old acquaintance. A gift from a simple and generous woman who used to run the shop when I was a young aikido teacher at Master Plée’s dojo in the rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.

My study of the sword

Tsuda Itsuo never taught ken. Of course he did use it for the salute in front of the tokonoma at the beginning of the session, and then when we ran in a circle around him on the tatamis before lining up to watch the demonstration. Otherwise he used it mainly to demonstrate the pushing of the bokken with two partners, as he had seen Ueshiba Morihei O-sensei do.

In fact, I make no distinction between bare-handed aikido or aikido with bokken or jō aikido. The most important thing to me is the fusion with the partner’s breathing. This other person so different and yet so close, and also, at times, so dangerous.

My main roots in weapons come from what I learnt from Tatsuzawa sensei. He is the one who influenced me the most. In the 1970s I started practising Hakkō-ryū Jūjutsu with Master Maroteaux. Then I studied weapons at the Noro Institute where specific courses were held, and during workshops with Tamura sensei and Sugano sensei – this work was part of aikido. What Tatsuzawa sensei showed me was a koryū (ancient school), which is something else. In Paris for his studies, this young Japanese man (we were both in our twenties) turned up unexpectedly one evening in the dojo where I was teaching aikido. So we started an exchange: he practised aikido with me and showed me techniques from his family’s school, which we worked on for a certain number of hours a week, maybe four or five, for about two years.

We practised a lot of Iaijutsu and also Bōjutsu² The techniques he showed me impressed me by their extreme precision. He was the young master of his family’s school, Jigo-ryū. At that time, I did not even know the name of the school. Today, he is an important sensei, the 19^th master of Bushūden Kiraku-ryū, a school that is over four centuries old.

There is a reality in weapons that can be lacking in the practice of aikido as it is sometimes taught today and then risks becoming a kind of dance.

With Tatsuzawa sensei, there was a breathing. It was not the same breathing I found with Tsuda sensei, but there was something and I liked what he taught. It was something so fine, so precise, so beautiful that I wanted to share it with my students. And for years, when I gave workshops, I would say: ‘What I’ve just shown is a technique from the School of Tatsuzawa sensei’. Gradually these two skies, the teaching of Tatsuzawa sensei and the work on breathing with Tsuda sensei, led me to give this name to what I was discovering myself, Ame no Ukihashi Ken, the sword that links heaven and earth, the conscious and the unconscious, the voluntary and the involuntary.

Tatsuzawa sensei and I did not see each other for thirty years, and it was during a trip to Japan that we met again! For the last ten years, my students have been studying the art of Bushūden Kiraku-ryū with him and one of his students, Sai sensei. It is a way for us to better understand the origins of the techniques we use, and it is a historical research that allows us to discover the path walked by Ueshiba O-sensei.

regis_soavi_baton — Régis Soavi, uke nagashi

A principle of reality

For Tatsuzawa sensei training had to be real; during our training sessions in the seventies, he used an iaitō and he hit like hell! ‘Men, men, kote, tsuki, men, tsuki’. Of course, at some point I got tired and caught the sword in my shoulder – I still remember it. Because it was a metal sword, it went a few centimetres into my shoulder, three, maybe four. It woke me up. I was never asleep on dodges again. Never again. It was a wake-up call, because obviously he was not there to hurt me. His state of mind was to wake me up, to push me in a direction, so that I would not be some kind of clumsy sleeping lump. Well, it served me right. In that sense, the sword can wake you up. A good kick in the ass is sometimes better than a thousand caresses. I am still very grateful to my master for bringing reality into my body.

Today, when aikido seems to have become a pastime for some, I gently but firmly bring them back to reality.

I have too often seen people parodying the drawing of the katana with a bokken where they simply opened their hand to draw the sword (those who practise Iai will understand).

We must not confuse the Noble Art of the Sword with the way we use it in aikido.

I have always advised my daughter, who has practised aikido since she was a child and loves the sword, to go and see a real sword school. As well as aikido, she too has chosen to study Bushūden Kiraku-ryū with Tatsuzawa sensei and Iaijutsu with Matsuura sensei, who teach her what I could never have taught her.

Aikiken is not Kendō

Aikiken is not Kendō or Iaidō. Poetry is not the novel, and vice versa, each art has its specificities, but when we use a bokken we must not forget that it is a katana which also has a tsuba and a scabbard, even if they are invisible. We must use it with the same respect, the same rigour and the same attention.

Every bokken is unique, despite its often rather industrial production. It is up to us to make it a respectable, unique object, through our attention, the way we handle it and the way we move it. For example, when working with a bokken, if we visualise drawing the sword, we must also visualise sheathing it. Little by little, as it is getting charged, you may get the impression that it is getting heavier. Moreover, the students who have the opportunity to touch my bokken, to hold it, or sometimes to work with it, always find it very special, both easier to handle and at the same time more demanding, they say. It is not quite the same, it is not an ordinary bokken. That is why I advise my students to have their own bokken, their own jō. Weapons get charged. If you have a bokken or a jō that you have chosen well, that you have charged with ki, and that you have used for years, it will have a different nature, it will resemble you in some way. You will already be able to know exactly how big it is, the size of the jō, the size of the bokken, to the nearest millimetre. This will prevent accidents.

It will have a different consistency when we act in this way, it will be a reflection of who we are. The circulation of ki changes the bokken and we can begin to understand why the sword was the soul of the samurai.

We remember the legendary swords that reflected the soul of the samurai to such an extent that they could only be touched by their owner. I had the opportunity to discover this at a time when, to continue practising and support myself, I was working in the field of antiques. I specialised in the resale of Japanese swords: katana, wakizashi and tantō. Being around them – for I could never have afforded to buy them – allowed me not only to admire them, but also to discover something inexpressible.

Some of them had such a charge of ki, that was extremely impressive! Just by drawing the blade ten or fifteen centimetres, you could feel if the sword had an aggressive or generous soul, or whether it exuded great nobility, and so on. At first this seemed absurd to me, but the dealers I worked with confirmed the reality of these sensations and later discussions with Tsuda sensei gave them the reality they needed.

regis_soavi_bokken — Régis Soavi, during the circle run

A weapon without breath, without fusion, what is it? Nothing, a piece of wood, a piece of metal.

Zhuangzi does speak to us of fusion, of the extension of the being with the tool, the weapon, when he speaks of the butcher:

The fusion with the partner

‘When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now — now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and following things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. […] whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.’ ³

If there is no fusion with the partner, you cannot work with a weapon, otherwise it is nothing but brutality, fighting. Precisely because we use it by merging our breath with our partner, you can discover what great masters have discovered before us. All their efforts to show us the way, the path to follow, will be lost if we ourselves do not make the effort to work as they suggested. With a weapon in our hands, we can discover our sphere and make it visible. And thanks to that, we can extend our breathing to something greater, which will not be limited to our little personal sphere, but will go further. If we use weapons in this way, I think it makes sense, but if we use them to try to cut off other people’s heads, to hurt them, or to show that you are stronger, we have to look elsewhere, not in our school.

Weapons are extensions of our arms, which are extensions of our centre. There are lines of ki that run from our centre, from the hara. They act through the hands. If we put a weapon at the end, a bokken, a wakizashi, a stick, these lines of ki can converge. They have an extension. It may be easier when you work with your bare hands, but it starts to get more difficult with a weapon. However, it also becomes very interesting: you are no longer limited, you become “unlimited”. That is what is important, it is a logical progression in my teaching. At the beginning you work a little bit small, in a way limited, then you try to extend, to go beyond while starting from your centre. Sometimes there are interruptions, the ki does not go to the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, the fingers. Sometimes the bokken becomes like the stick of a puppet hitting the policeman, and then it makes no sense. That is why I show these lines, which everyone can see. This is something known in acupuncture. You can also see it in shiatsu and in many other arts. And there we go further. If we could materialise them as lines of light, it would be amazing to see. It is what binds us to others. It is what allows us to understand others. These are lines bound to the body, not just the material body, but the body as a whole, both physical and kokoro. It is the subtle, the immaterial that is bound, there is no difference.

Seitai-dō

In our School we practise the art of Seitai-Dō, the way of Seitai. This art, which includes Katsugen undō (Regenerative Movement in Tsuda Itsuo’s terminology), allows us to rediscover an unusual quality of response, both involuntary and intuitive.

It awakens the “animal” instinct in the good sense of the word, rather like when we were children, playful or even sometimes turbulent but without any real aggressivity, taking life as a game with all the seriousness that it implies.

It was thanks to this art that I discovered the breathing intermission, that space of time between inhaling and exhaling, and between exhaling and inhaling. That infinitesimal, almost imperceptible moment during which the body cannot react. It is in one of these moments that the seitai technique is applied. At first it is difficult to feel it, and even more difficult to act exactly in that moment, very precisely. Gradually, however, you get a very clear sense of this space – you get the impression that it is expanding, and in fact you get the impression that time is passing in a different way, as it sometimes does when you fall or during an accident. You may ask what this has to do with the use of weapons in aikido. Well, our research follows precisely this direction, and the following anecdote told by Tsuda sensei reveals us just how much:

Too high a level

Noguchi Haruchika sensei, the creator of Seitai, wanted to practise Kendo when he was young and enrolled in a dojo to learn this art. After the usual preparations, he was confronted by a kendoka. As soon as the other raised his shinai above his head, Noguchi sensei touched his throat, even though he did not know any of the techniques. The teacher sent him a more advanced practitioner, with the same result: he was given a sixth dan: no better. The master asked him if he had ever practised Kendo: ‘Not at all’, he replied, ‘I stab at the breathing intermission, that’s all’. ‘You’ve already reached too high a level, sensei’ he said. So Noguchi sensei could never learn Kendo.⁴

Whether you practise aikido with empty hands, Aikiken, Jō, Bō, Koryū or any other art, like Tsuda Itsuo himself who recited Nō, the essential thing is not in the technique, but in the art itself and its teaching, which must allow the realisation of the individual. Tsuda sensei told us, citing the various arts he had practised:

Master Ueshiba, Master Noguchi and Master Hosada⁵ dug ‘wells of exceptional depth […]. They have reached the streams of water, the source of life. […] However, these wells are not interconnected, although the water found in them is the same.’ ⁶

Régis Soavi

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Article by Régis Soavi published in April 2016 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 12.

Notes

1
see the Kojiki (古事記), a collection of myths about the origins of the islands that make up Japan and of the Kami
2
the bō is a long stick, 180 cm long, wielded with both hands
3
Zhuangzi, translated Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013, Columbia University Press, pp. 71–72
4
[this story seems to be told in Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. XII (end), 2014, Yume Editions (Paris)]
5
nō theatre: Kanze Kasetsu School
6
Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, 2023, Yume Editions, p. 12 (1^st ed. in French: 1973, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 10)

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At the Core of Movement – the Involuntary

18 November 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

‘If I have to give my Aikido a goal, it will be to learn to sit, stand up, move forward and backward.’¹ Tsuda I.

Movement: coordination, posture

To move correctly, you need to be stable, and stability issues cannot be resolved through learning. Stability must come from balance, which itself comes from the involuntary system. Human beings have the unique ability to stand upright with only the tiny surface area of their two feet as support. If it were just a matter of standing still, that would be fine, but we move around, and what is more, we are able to talk, think, move our arms in all directions, as well as our head and fingers, all while remaining perfectly stable. Involuntary muscle coordination takes care of everything. If we lose our balance without being able to hold on to anything, our body tries by all means to regain the lost balance, and often succeeds by shifting weight from one leg to the other, finding extremely precise points of support that we would have had difficulty finding using only our voluntary system. Tsuda Itsuo recounts a personal anecdote about his learning of Aikido that I find edifying in his book The Science of the Particular:Read more →

Notes

1
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. XVIII, 2014, Yume Editions, p. 174 (1^st ed. in French: 1975, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 166

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Memoirs of an Aikidoka

17 November 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

Talking to my students about the masters I have known is obviously part of my teaching. Some were so important that I cannot simply dismiss them and claim that I made it on my own. The masters I have known left their mark on me, shaping me and, above all, opening my mind to fields I knew nothing about, or which I sometimes suspected existed but could not reach.

Are the Masters of the past masters of life?

I have always felt it was important not to turn these masters into supermen, geniuses or gods. I have always considered these masters to be much better than that. Idols create an illusion, lulling us to sleep and impoverishing idolaters, preventing them from progressing and spreading their wings. In this regard, Tsuda sensei, now a master of the past, wrote in his eighth book, The Way of the Gods:

‘Mr Ueshiba planted signposts pointing the way, and I am very grateful to him. He left some excellent carrots to eat which I am trying to assimilate, to digest. Once digested, these carrots become Tsuda, who is far from excellent. That is inevitable. But it is necessary that carrots become something other than carrots, otherwise, on their own, they will rot, uselessly.

It is not for me to worship, deify or idolise Mr Ueshiba. Like everyone else, he had strengths and weaknesses. He had extraordinary abilities but he had weaknesses, especially vis-à-vis his students. He was fooled by them because of considerations that were a little too human.’¹Read more →

Notes

1
Tsuda Itsuo, The Way of the Gods, Chap. XVIII, 2021, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 144 (1^st ed. in French: 1982, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 156–7)

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Harmony or Coercion and Escape Route

12 November 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

Coercion: the act of compelling someone to act.

Escape route: a clever and indirect way of getting out of a difficult situation.

These are the definitions given by the [French] Larousse dictionary. Synonyms for escape route include: sidestep, exit, evasion, and even way out. Is this not the meaning we should give to ukemis, which, in fact, in Aikido, are simply intelligent responses to throws?

Ukemis, a way out

As we saw in a previous issue about ukemis, falling in our art is never considered a defeat but rather a way of surpassing oneself. It is also, sometimes, simply a means of escaping from a situation that in reality could be dangerous, even fatal if accompanied by certain atemis, or if there is a risk of hitting a vital spot at the end of the movement. Similarly, although throwing may seem like a constraint during a session, it always leaves a way out for Uke, a means for them to regain their integrity, which is what Ukemi is for. During the years of training, one of the essential requirements for everyone is to perfect their falls, as they will be used to improve their responses to Tori’s throwing techniques.

Training should not be confused with fighting; without controlled falls, it is dangerous to throw someone unless you are willing to risk an accident and its possible consequences, which is not at all the purpose of practising on the tatami mats. Whether the throws are short, as in Koshi-nage, or longer, as in Kokyū-nage, they always leave Uke the possibility of escaping the technique unharmed. Only throws with strict control, for example to the ground, leave no ambiguity as to the fact that there is no escape, but if we only work in this way, we might as well practice Jūjutsu, for which this is the rule, and which is perfectly suited to combat. In my opinion, Aikido is not about seeking efficiency but rather about deepening one’s physical, psycho-sensory, and human skills in order to rediscover the fullness of the body and its entire capabilities.

Projecting means distancing

When someone has the bad habit of “sticking” to others, of being so close during a conversation that you feel oppressed, you have only one desire: to distance them by any means necessary. Only our social side, or even propriety, sometimes prevents us from doing so. If we do not push them away, we try to distance ourselves from them, we create space. In the same way, projecting is distancing the other person, it is allowing ourselves to reclaim the space that has been invaded, or even stolen or destroyed during an incursion into our living sphere – all the more so during a confrontation. It is a matter of rediscovering Ma-ai, that perception of space-time whose understanding and, above all, physical sensation is the basis of our teaching and which is so essential to the exercise of our freedom of movement, our freedom to be. It is recovering your breath, perhaps breathing more calmly, possibly regaining a reorganised mind, a lucidity that may have been disturbed by an attack that triggered a response technique that has become instinctive and intuitive as a result of training. It also means, of course, the possibility of making the attacker aware of the futility and danger of continuing in the same direction.

nage waza

Treating the illness

Aikido leads us to have a different relationship with combat, which is more about clarity of mind in the situation than a violent and immediate reflex response to an attack. It is this attitude that can be described as wisdom, acquired through years of working on the body, which is the result.

The aggressor is seen in a way as someone who has lost control of themselves, often simply for social or educational reasons. A down-and-out, a misfit, an ill person in the psychological sense of the term as it were, who unfortunately can be harmful to society and those around them, who at best only disturbs the harmony of relationships between people, and at worst causes immeasurable damage to others. It is not a question of punishing the “ill” person, nor of excusing the illness on the grounds of societal contamination, but of finding a way out of the situation without becoming contaminated oneself. Aikido is a training for everyone, and its role is broader than many people generally think. It often brings relief, even peace, to our own psychological difficulties or habits. Through rigorous and enjoyable learning, it allows us to rediscover our inner strength and the right path, so that we can face these kinds of problems.

During training, if the throw comes at the end of the technique, it is never an end in itself. It could sometimes be considered a signature move, and a release for both Tori and Uke.

A good throw requires excellent technique, but above all, good coordination of breathing between partners. It is important never to force a practitioner to fall at all costs. Even at the last moment, we must be able to sense whether our partner is capable of performing a correct fall or not, otherwise an accident will occur and we will be responsible for it. It all depends on the partner’s level and their state “here and now”; if the slightest tension or fear manifests itself at the very last moment, it is imperative to sense it, feel it, and allow our Uke to relax so that they can fall safely. Sometimes it is better to abandon the idea of throwing and instead offer an effective yet gentle grounding technique, even if the ego of some will always remain unsatisfied at not having been able to show off as brilliantly as they would have liked. But it is by doing so that we will have enabled beginners to continue without fear. It is thanks to the confidence they will have gained with their partners that they will be encouraged to persevere. They will have realised that they are valued for their true worth, that their difficulties and their level are respected, and that their fear is not a handicap to practice. On the contrary, it allows them to overcome what they believed to be their incapacities and limitations. They are pleased to see that they are not guinea pigs at the service of the more advanced, but that with a little effort, they will be able to catch up with them or even surpass them if they so desire.

The most experienced members must be there to show the newer ones that falling is enjoyable when the projection is performed by someone who is technically capable of doing so in a way that combines gentleness and harmony, and therefore safety. Tsuda sensei recounts how O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei acted during the sessions he led:

‘If, when he was over eighty, Master Ueshiba, who was small of stature, would throw a band of robust young assailants as easily as if they were packets of cigarettes, this extraordinary force was in no way physical strength but respiration. Stroking his white beard he would lean over them anxiously and ask if he had not hurt them. The attackers did not realize what had happened to them. Suddenly they were lifted up as if on a cushion of air, and they saw the ground above them and the sky below before they landed. People trusted him absolutely knowing that he would never harm anybody.’¹

O-sensei’s behaviour towards his students should serve as an example to everyone, regardless of their level, because it leads us not towards renunciation or self-effacement, but towards wisdom, as expressed by Lao Tzu:

‘the sage is square but not cutting […], // Sharp but not injurious, // Straight but not overreaching, // Bright […] but not dazzling.’²

nage waza régis soavi ukemis

Projection or brutality

Today’s Aikido seems to oscillate between two main trends, one leaning towards competition and a sporting vision, the other seeking ways to strengthen itself, drawing on ancient combat techniques such as Jūjutsu for an effectiveness that is no longer recognised.

Why turn Aikido dojos into places for training in street fighting, where effectiveness becomes the ultimate benchmark? The dojo is another world that must be entered as if it were a completely different dimension, because that is what it is, even if few students are aware of it. If throws have become nothing more than constraints, where is the harmony emphasised by the founder and his closest students, and which we still claim to uphold today? I have too often seen practitioners asserting their ego by crushing Uke at the end of a technique, even though their partner had offered almost no resistance up to that point. Or others, putting up ultimate resistance when the technique is already finished from a tactical point of view, in terms of the positioning and posture of both partners, forcing Tori to apply a severe and unnecessary throw, which therefore becomes very risky for Uke if they are not at a sufficient level.

What about demonstrations prepared under the auspices of self-proclaimed masters, which the internet bombards us with, complete with contortions and somersaults, all accompanied by viewers’ comments?

Whereas the project supported by the practice of Aikido is of a completely different nature, living under the daily constraints imposed by the behaviours generated by the type of society we live in, and practising martial arts to learn to “endure them without complaint,” or learning how to coerce others in order to recover the few crumbs of power left to us – is this not completely absurd?

nage waza régis soavi ukemis

A champagne cork

As he often does in his books, Tsuda sensei recounts his experience and practice with O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei. Here is another excerpt:

‘There is an exercise that involves letting your wrist get caught by the opponent, who grabs and blocks it with both hands. And then you flip the opponent backwards, breathing from the belly. When the wrist is blocked by someone very strong, it is impossible to move. This exercise is designed to increase the power of respiration.

One day Mr Ueshiba, smiling, presented me with two fingers of his left hand to do this exercise. I had never seen anyone do it with two fingers. I seized them with all my ability. And then oof! I was thrown into the air like a champagne cork. It was not strength, because I felt no physical resistance. I was simply carried away by a gust of air. It was really pleasant and nothing about it could be compared with what the other practitioners did.

[…]

Another time when he was standing, he beckoned me to come. I went and stood in front of him but he continued talking to everyone. This went on for quite some time, and I was wondering if I should stay or withdraw, when suddenly I was swept away by a cushion of air and found myself on the ground in a tremendous fall. All I was aware of was his powerful kiai and his right hand, after tracing a circle, heading for my face. I had not been touched. We could offer any psychological or parapsychological explanation for this, but all would be false. Before I had time to react with any reflex whatsoever, I had already been thrown. The famous air cushion is the only explanation.’³

‘Talking about decontraction when one is talking about Aikido seems to confuse many people. They are sufficiently tense and need to be even more so in order to feel good. What they seek is physical exertion and nothing else.

My Aikido is classified as soft Aikido. There are those who love it. There are those who prefer hard Aikido. I’ve heard people’s reflections. Someone said: “The real Aikido is hard Aikido.” He had a broken wrist and as a result was blocked for a month. To each his own.

Personally, I stop right away when I feel that an opponent is too stiff to be able to fall properly. I know how to repair broken wrists, and even broken ribs. I know how to repair because I have respect for the living organism. I avoid breakage. Those who prefer breakage will easily find teachers.’⁴

Is the power of breathing comparable to the force of coercion? Which direction should we take? It is up to each individual to decide which direction to follow; no one should force us, regardless of the good reasons given.

Régis Soavi

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Article by Régis Soavi published in July 2021 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n°6.

Notes

1
Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Chap. I, 2013, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 21 (1^st ed. in French: 1977, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 18)
2
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chap. 58, trans. Ellen Marie Chen
3
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. XV, 2014, Yume Editions, p. 148–9 (1^st ed. in French: 1975, Le Courrier du Livre, p. 140)
4
ibid., Chap. XVI, p.156 (1^st ed. in French: p. 148)

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Ki, a Dimension in its Own Right

28 October 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

‘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

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Fear

21 October 2025 name

It all started on an ordinary afternoon in my neighbourhood of Blanc-Mesnil in the “93” département¹. It was an altercation like many others, but that day, I found myself pinned down by a boy who was banging my head against the pavement and saying, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you.’ I do not even remember how it ended. But the following week, I was registered in a Jūdō Jū-jutsu Self-Defense class in the neighbouring town of Le Bourget.

I was twelve years old, and in my head there was this recurring thought: ‘Never again, never again.’

Two years later, at the middle school’s end-of-year party, the judo club was scheduled to give a demonstration. Everything was going very well when suddenly, a teenager wearing a black leather jacket jumped out of the front row and shouted at our group: ‘Your stuff is fake, you’re losers…’ Before anyone could react, he jumped onto the stage, pulled out a flick knife, and in a magnificent tsuki attempted to “stab” me. I dodged and executed a technique (I think it was a kind of oo-soto-gari). The audience was shocked and shouted! Then my attacker and I bowed to each other. The result: a lecture from the school principal, who made my friend Jean-Michel (the attacker) and me swear never to do anything like that again, because he had almost had a heart attack.

In addition to karate lessons for him and jūdō lessons for me, we trained as often as possible and for hours on end in my “personal dojo”.

Since we had moved into a detached house, located as we entered a small inner city where my mother had found a job as a concierge, I had converted the basement into a dojo, using pallets covered with recycled foam as tatami mats, and it was there that we had prepared our coup, he the karateka and I the jūdōka.

At the time, in the early sixties, we knew nothing about weapons such as katana, bokken, jō, or others. Apart from fencing, which was a sport, and Robin Hood’s stick, thanks to Errol Flynn, the only weapon we knew in everyday life was the knife.

When practising Aikido, there is always the possibility of imagining oneself as someone else. Cinema and special effects lend themselves well to inspiring dreams in teenagers and young adults of the new generations. In our industrialised countries, death has become virtual and often asepticised; spectacular fashion has distanced it. The screens everyone has today have enabled this psychological and physical distancing.

The work that can be done with a bokken, a jō, or even an iai is hugely important from a physical and psychological point of view. But I have never seen my students react in the same way as they do with a tantō.

As long as it is a wooden tantō, it is fine, but as soon as we offer a metal tantō, even if the blade is not sharp, there is a recognisable gleam in the practitioners’ eyes. With all kinds of nuances, from dread to panic to astonishment, in any case, fear – because we must call it by its name – is there. Whatever the denials, whatever the justifications.

We are often so far removed from this kind of reality.

Look under your feet

The calligraphy for our 2016 summer workshop was Look under your feet, written by my master Tsuda Itsuo. This phrase, which was displayed at the entrance to Zen monasteries, clearly resonates like a Koan. It is one of the many pieces of calligraphy he left behind and that intrigue us. A subliminal message? A message for posterity.

During our workshop, Look under your feet meant: “See and feel reality. Come out of your dream, your illusion, and become a true human being.”

The tantō is part of a principle of reality. Beyond the dexterity that training can bring, what is decisive and must be considered is precisely fear: fear of injury, which is already a lesser evil, and fear of death.

First, the people who will take turns being uke need to learn how to use the tantō: although the striking and cutting techniques are fairly simple, even rudimentary, they require what I would describe as rigorous training. The way to hold the weapon in the palm of the hand and the supports to be discovered for a good grip must be taught carefully and must be easy to understand, because if the tantō is held incorrectly, it can be more dangerous for uke themselves than for tori. In our school, very few people have ever held a weapon of this type in their hands when they arrive.

The simple fact of the blade’s direction, how it is held in the hand, the cutting angles. All of this determines a good attack.

Very often, people are reluctant to use metal tantō, which is too close to reality. They already visualise themselves as barbarians, their hands dripping with their partner’s blood!

No matter how much I explain and take the necessary precautions, these visions prevent them from making a real attack and block them. They stand there, waiting for I do not know what, or they attack weakly and, although the attacks are conventional, they warn, “call”, the moment of their attack. But if everything, absolutely everything, is planned, there is nothing left that is alive. If we protect and overprotect, life disappears. Breathing becomes shorter, gasping, inconsistent.

Instinct cannot be developed. All that remains is repetitive and tedious training.

And here I must say: this is not just about martial arts, because all attacks are planned, which is normal and necessary in order to acquire the correct posture. It is even important to work slowly for a certain amount of time in order to get a good feel for the movements, as when practising a Jū-jutsu kata, for example. But from a certain level onwards, the timing and intensity must remain random and you have to give your all. Free movement – a kind of randori at the end of each session – is precisely the moment when you can work on your reactions, while respecting everyone’s level.

What sets the great masters of the past apart is not their exceptional technique but their presence, the quality of their presence. What still makes the difference today is the quality of being, not the quantity of technique.

When practising with a sword or a stick, one can take refuge in the art, the style, the beauty of the movement, the rules, the etiquette. With the tantō, it is more difficult because it is closer to our reality. Knives and daggers are, unfortunately, weapons that are still used too often today. Aggression is frightening, and transforming ourselves into aggressors for a few minutes is intimidating. This constraint is extremely unpleasant and sometimes even impossible for some people to overcome. My job is to help them break out of this immobility, this blockage in their bodies, to go to the end of this fear, to reveal it, to show that it is what prevents us from living fully. The tantō reveals what is going on inside us. And here, two main paths are possible: the path of reinforcement or the path of less.

In the first case: the fight against fear and its corollary – the fight against oneself, which is an illusion, because in the end, who is the loser? It is a path of desensitisation, of stiffening the body, of hardening the muscles, and its consequence: the risk of atrophy of our humanity.

Or it is about overcoming fear by accepting it for what it is, and by promoting the flow of ki that made it incapacitating. Fear, which is initially a natural sensation, stems from our instinct. It is merely the blockage of our vital energy when it cannot find an outlet. It transforms into stimulation, attention, realisation, and even creation when it finds the right path.

That is why our School offers Regenerative Movement (one of the practices of Seitai taught by Noguchi Haruchika sensei) as a way to normalise the terrain by activating the extrapyramidal motor system. This normalisation of the body involves developing our involuntary system, which, instead of functioning reflexively as a result of hours and hours of training, regains its original abilities, liveliness, and intuition. Little by little, we will discover that many of our fears, our inability to live fully, to react flexibly and quickly in the face of difficulties, and even more so in the face of physical or verbal aggression, as well as our slowness, are due to our body’s lack of reaction. To the blockages of our energy in a body that is too heavy or to a “mentalisation” that is too rapid and ineffective. When the imagination is focused on the negative and develops excessively, it is often the source of many difficulties in daily life and can be dramatically debilitating in exceptional circumstances.

External flexibility and internal firmness

Tsuda Itsuo gives a striking example from the life of the samurai Kōzumi Isenokami, as recounted in Kurosawa Akira’s famous film Seven Samurai:

‘A murderer took refuge in the attic of a private home, taking a child with him as a hostage. Alerted by the locals, Kōzumi, who was passing through the village, asked a Buddhist monk to lend him his black robe and disguised himself as a monk, shaving his head. He brings two rice balls, gives one to the child and the other to the murderer to calm him down. The instant he reaches for the ball of rice, Kōzumi seizes him and takes him prisoner.

If Kōzumi had acted as a warrior, the bandit would have killed the child. If he had been just a monk, he would have had no other recourse but to plead with the bandit, who would have refused to listen to him.

Kōzumi was reputed to be a very reserved and humble man, and lacked the arrogance common among warriors. An example of his calligraphy has been preserved, dated 1565, when he was about age 58, and it is said to indicate extraordinary maturity, flexibility and serenity. It is this flexibility that enabled him to accomplish the instant transformation of warrior-bonze-warrior.

When I think of this personality of external flexibility and internal firmness, compared to how we are, we civilised people of today, with our external stiffness and internal fragility, I think I must be dreaming.’²

tanto regis soavi

External flexibility and internal firmness

If I insist on the path of Seitai, which is unfortunately so little known in Europe, or sometimes so misrepresented, it is because it seems to me to be truly the path of guidance that a great many martial arts practitioners are seeking.

It is an individual path that can be followed without ever practising anything else, because it is a path in its own right. But when practising Aikido, I think it would be healthy to practice Regenerating Movement regardless of the level one has reached and even, or especially, from the very beginning. For example, it could prevent many inconveniences and minor accidents, and prepare you for the time when, as you are no longer young, you will need to rely on resources other than strength, speed of execution, or reputation, etc. to continue practising.

The Regenerative Movement is precisely what Germain Chamot refers to as ‘a regular personal health practice’ in his latest article³. It is a path that requires neither funding nor physical fitness, but simply continuity and an open mind. I can only agree with his reflections on the difficulties in our society of offering a regular, long-term practice, as well as on the cost of weekly sessions with a Shiatsuki, etc. As the therapist treats the patient on an individual basis, they also have an obligation to achieve results, and the fact that they are consulted on an ad hoc basis for problems they are supposed to resolve as quickly as possible makes this difficult.

Seitai is not a therapy but a philosophical orientation, recognized by the Japanese Ministry of Education⁴.

Noguchi sensei wanted to develop the practice of Regenerative Movement (Katsugen undo in Japanese). His aim was to “seitai-ise” (normalise) 100 million Japanese people, which is why he supported Tsuda Itsuo sensei in his desire to create Regenerative Movement groups (Katsugen kai), first in Japan and then in Europe. It was this, along with Tsuda Itsuo Sensei’s immense work, organising numerous workshops and conferences in France, Switzerland, Spain, etc., that made Regenerative Movement known and enabled the development of this invaluable approach to health.

His work continues today.

Régis Soavi

Article by Régis Soavi published in October 2016 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 14.

Notes

1
[number of French département Seine-Saint-Denis, colloquially referred to as “nine three” to emphasize the social difficulties in its working-class suburbs]
2
Tsuda Itsuo, The Way of the Gods, Chap. IX, 2021, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 70–71 (1^st ed. in French, 1982)
3
Germain Chamot, « Aïkijo : une histoire de contexte » [‘Aikijō: a matter of context’] (last paragraph, about Shiatsu), Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 13, p. 12–14
4
[cf. Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Chap. XI, 2023, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 120–121: ‘It was at the beginning of the 1950s, if I am not mistaken, that the department of physical education in the Japanese Ministry of Education chose the Regenerating Movement, after having studied many different worldwide known methods of relaxation, and of its own volition gave its support to the Seitai Society.’]

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)

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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

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Mysticism or Mystification

1 January 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

Mystification is the result obtained by someone who uses mystery to deceive others.

Mystique or mysticism has to do with mysteries, hidden or secret things. The term is mainly used in the spiritual domain, to describe inner experiences of contact or communication with a transcendent reality that cannot be discerned by the common sense.

O-sensei, a mystic!

No one can deny that O-sensei was a mystic; even so, was he a mystifier? His life, his fame during his lifetime, his now historic fights – notably against a Sumotori or against martial arts masters –, his teaching, the testimony of his students, all tend to prove the opposite. Many uchi deshi recounted how O-sensei managed to squeeze through the crowds in the middle of Japan’s overcrowded train stations, such as in Tokyo during rush hours. What was his secret, despite his advanced age? Practising an art like ours does not just give you strength and endurance, that is what you get after a few years of effort, and I would even say that it only lasts for a while, because as you get older it becomes difficult to rely on that alone. However, there is one area that I think is important to understand and to experiment with, and that is working through what is directly experienced and felt, from the very beginning.

The space, the Ma, must become something tangible, because it is a reality that is not theoretical, technical or mental. Rather it is like a protective sphere that adapts to all circumstances, far from being a cloak of invisibility or an indestructible armour, it moves with us, it is both fluid and very resistant, it contracts, expands or retracts as needed and independently of our conscious or voluntary capacity. It is not an infallible safety, but in many cases it can save our lives or at least prevent the worst. Too often, it has been turned into a mystical value, when it is only the result of a passionate and enthusiastic captivating work. It is a reality that we must never give up on, right from the start, no matter how unattainable it may seem. If there is one essential guideline that Aikido teaches us, it is not to oppose others head-on, to avoid direct confrontation whenever possible, and to use it only as a last resort.

Mysticisme ou mystification — The work that needs to be done is up to each of us, whether physical or philosophical.

Is Yin and Yang a trickery?

The Tao is not just an Eastern understanding of the world, but much rather an ancestral intuitive intelligence. It is intimately known to many people, and artists, poets, painters and others have sometimes been able to communicate to us in their own way the essence of the forces that animate it. Painter Kandinsky, although a modern European artist, was able to find the words that, even though referring to a work of art, speak to us as practitioners and allow us to visualise Yin and Yang:

‘As everything external also contains an inner meaning (more or less noticeable), every form also has its inner substance^[…].

Form, therefore, is the outward expression of its inner meaning. […]

Therefore, it is evident that forms of harmony reflect in a corresponding vibration on the human soul.’ ¹

It is through understanding Yin and Yang that we can see certain functions of the body and its movement more clearly, to put it simply, understand how it all works. Here is an approach that might help to clarify what I am talking about: the outer envelope of our body as a whole is Yang, and therefore the inside is Yin, as a whole as well. The physical aspect, the luminous side of people, their social aspect as well as the way they present themselves, communicate and relate to others, all tend to be Yang if there are no distortions. The inside, understood not only from an organic point of view but also from a psychic and energetic point of view, is Yin. There is, of course, no real separation between the two, but the complementary aspect leads to observe that it is Yin that feeds Yang, just as it is breathing in that allows breathing out and therefore action. Yin supports Yang, giving it its fullness; the strength of the body comes from the strength of Yin and is manifested through Yang.

All the strength of Yin needs an envelope, however malleable it may be from within, this envelope must also be able to harden in order to contain this force and at the same time prepare it to react, to act. If the power of the Yin is not contained, if it has no way of centering itself – because it would then be boundless and therefore without reference points – it runs the risk of dispersing without bearing any fruit. If the Yang is undernourished because of the poverty of the Yin, which is struggling to regenerate itself, or because of a separation between Yin and Yang caused by the internal hardening of the “wall” which both separates and unites them, then action becomes impossible.

As always, it is the balance between the two that makes them a single force. An imbalance in favour of one or the other creates the conditions for a general imbalance, which is the origin of numerous pathologies of varying degrees of severity, and of the inability to provide correct and rapid responses to all physical, psychological or simply energetic and therefore functional problems.

regis soavi yin yang — ‘Every form also has its inner substance^[…]. Form, therefore, is the outward expression of its inner meaning.’ (Kandinsky)

A healthy mind in a healthy body

An organism that reacts with flexibility and efficiency in all circumstances, whether in the face of human or microbial aggression, is an ideal to which we can adhere, or at any rate which deserves to be pursued. Aikido in our School, through the quality of its preparation at the beginning of the session based on breathing, as well as the way in which things happen during the session, helps to awaken the body as a whole.

To start with, the simple fact of breathing more deeply, concentrating our breath in the lower abdomen, and allowing this natural ability to develop at its own pace, increases the oxygenation of the brain and therefore improves the functioning of the cells and the communication between them. From there to saying that we become more intelligent is a step I do not want to take, because intelligence depends on many factors and is difficult to measure, even with today’s scientific methods. I would prefer to classify intelligence as a quality of the human brain, the use of which is sometimes surprising. But if each of us simply notices that they move better, think better and faster, that it becomes more difficult to deceive or trick them with tempting proposals or arguments based on fallacious reasoning due to lack of reflection, that is already a big step. It can also be in part a way out, even a relative one, from the world of stupidity and falsehood that rules our planet.

Discovering for ourselves; experience rather than belief

When it comes to strength, we tend to talk and see things in terms of quantity, rather than quality. As a martial arts enthusiast, I remember that at the very beginning of the craze in the late 1960s and in the 1970s, we eagerly consulted articles explaining how to achieve maximum effectiveness with minimum muscular strength. How, thanks to speed, positioning, posture, technicality, and also muscular strength, which was not the most important thing, but had to be present and, above all, well directed, we could achieve results that could be astonishing. In Karate, Kung-fu, Jiu-jitsu or any other martial art, there were plenty of examples.

These magazines mentioned all sorts of oriental meditations that could give incredible abilities to those who practised them. Although very often grossly exaggerated, the core truth of techniques, postures or meditations is now being recognised, analysed and theorised by researchers in mathematics, the humanities and cognitive sciences. This recognition, even if in the interest of doing justice to these practices, remains purely intellectual. Instead of leading to concrete physical research and allowing everyone to benefit from it, it provokes weariness or a mental over-heating, which risks rendering useless the efforts made by some practitioners to follow a slightly different path with the help of able and wise teachers.

It is through experience in practice that we discover what no text could have given us. Ancient texts, and sometimes even more recent ones, have an undeniable value, and often serve as a guide or reveal our discoveries afterwards. Their ability to put into words, to explain what we have felt, to reveal an experience that “speaks” to us, can be a precious help. What would I have done had I not been guided by the books and calligraphies, kinds of koans, of my master Tsuda Itsuo?

regis soavi — Making “ONE” with the utmost simplicity.

Promoting quality rather than quantity

We live in a world where the accumulation of goods, commodities, knowledge and security is the rule. Thanks to artificial intelligence (A. I.), we are presented with an “augmented human”, as in the transhumanist project. Is it because today’s human beings can no longer find their way, because values have changed? Or because, disillusioned with their immediate and global environment, they no longer have a taste for anything but the superficial and have lost both the sense of and interest in the slow and the profound? Already at the end of the last century, in the 1980s, conductor Sergiu Celibidache, during a conducting course in Paris that I was fortunate enough to attend, complained that there were no longer any great symphonic movements written in a “largo” tempo: ‘everything has become faster’, he said.

Aikido has preserved from the past the values of humanity, respect for others and sensitivity, making it a quality tool for rediscovering what makes human beings sensitive and not robots. However perfected it may be, this “augmented human” will at best be a pale imitation, a substitute for what each of us can be and above all of what we can become.

Rebellion is not denial

Rebellion is an act of health both for our physical body and for our mind. Its salutary importance should not be overlooked. If we practise an art like ours, it is not by chance. If the intelligence of this “discipline” has appeared to us, it is because something in us was ready, even if we did not know it – by which I mean: even if we were not aware of it. If we trust the reactions of our physical body instead of being afraid of them, we can start again to understand the logic of its reactions. Again, this is not about old wives’ beliefs, about going backwards, about obscurantism. It is a question of another kind of knowledge, one that is known to everyone, but not recognised in its fullness because it is disturbing.

When there is an infection, an illness, or any other dysfunction that obviously bothers us, our body spontaneously rebels, trying in every way to solve the problem, to regain the lost balance. It raises its temperature, calls on its reserve weapons such as antibodies of all kinds, as well as on its friends with whom it is in symbiosis – antibiotic-producing bacteria, macrophage viruses, and so on. This healthy revolt can sometimes turn out to be violent and rapid, but in reality most of the time it starts very gently, slowly, we may not even notice it at first. Other times it is resolved before we are aware of the reaction, and here again it all depends on the state of the body, and despite everything it may be necessary to support the nature that is working within us. Here, everyone takes responsibility. If you have been capable of taking care of your body, letting it work on all the little problems without forcing it, leaving it free to express itself as it wishes, not much will be needed to give it a helping hand; sometimes all you need is a bit of rest, or the occasional help of competent people. It is upstream that we need to consider what is going on in our bodies; a healthy reflection on life, its movements and its nature can only do good.

mysticisme — O-sensei. Norito, invoking the gods. Photo published in The Path of Less by Tsuda Itsuo.

Follow the trails

What is fascinating about Aikido is to rediscover the traces left by our old masters, to see how each of them made this art their own, to create their own life. There is no point in copying them, it is better to learn from their postures and their writings. Find companions who can help you practise in a healthy way, where your intuition is awakened, where your body becomes as supple, agile and fearless as it was in childhood, and where you regain what you should never have lost: a certain valour.

Aikido is not a trampoline on which one exhausts oneself jumping, constantly perfecting one’s technique, but always falling back to the same spot due to gravity. It is a formidable path where the difficulties are proportioned by the very nature of the path, by our abilities at the time, by our perseverance and our sincerity. Doors open which lead us to a finer awareness and sometimes even to a jubilant state when the sensations that run through us become “ONE”² with our physical performance devoid of all pretension but close to the maximum simplicity. As I saw the joy and ease with which certain teachers practised, and the results of the research and simplicity of many of the masters I knew, my desire to reach their level, or at least to come close to it in this life, grew.

The old masters, each with their own method, guided us towards what we are deep within ourselves. But the work that needs to be done is up to each of us, be it physical or philosophical. Everything always depends on us, even if we have been deceived by false prophets or boastful charlatans who are ready to do anything for the crumbs of power they can get from their deceptions. If we look at the achievements left by our predecessors on this path, if we know how to use their teachings, if we know how to recognise them without making idols or saints of them, we will see that the path, however arduous and obscure, is not so difficult. A lifetime is not enough to discover it, but life is enough by itself if you live it to the full.

Régis Soavi

Article by Régis Soavi published in July 2022 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 10.

Notes :

1. Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art (Germ. OV, 1912), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1946, p. 47 (available online)
2. [see also Tsuda Itsuo, One, Chap. I, II & III, 2016, Yume Editions (Editor’s note)]

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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, FR, IT

Transcending space and time

1 January 2025 name

by Régis Soavi

All aikidoka have heard of Ma ai, because it is one of the foundations of our practice. Unfortunately, talking about it and living it are two very different things. As it is known in all martial arts, it is easy to find numerous references to it.You can conceive this idea intellectually, you can write about it and develop a whole discourse about it, but “nothing beats experience”, as my master Tsuda Itsuo used to tell us.¹

I will try, therefore, to explain the inexplicable through concrete examples or situations.Read more →

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Fudôshin: the immutable mind

27 June 2024 name

by Régis Soavi

There are several ways of considering at Jiyūwaza work and each school has its own way of seeing and practising it. As far as the Itsuo Tsuda School is concerned, it has undoubtedly made it one of the basis of its teaching and pedagogy.

Jiyūwaza: “Free movement”

Although Tsuda sensei was Japanese, he rarely used technical terms from his mother tongue. An intellectual of great subtlety, writer and philosopher, lecturer and Seitai technician, he attached great importance to being understood, if possible, at all times. Therefore, as he had a perfect command of the French language, during Aikido sessions he spoke only French. For me, who followed all the sensei who came to France at the time, it was quite strange to hear him explain or show a technique without even saying its name in Japanese. On the other hand, some students who only knew his Aikido were used to it and were not at all shocked. Personally, I have maintained the practice of using Japanese names as a means of communication in my teaching, only when it is indispensable, and this has become a tradition in our dojos. That is why in our school, what we call “free movement” at the end of each session, just before doing the kokyu ho, is an exercise that could be called “Jiyūwaza”. It is a kind of light randori, and it is a very important moment, because the spaces between people are reduced by the fact that everyone is moving in all directions at the same time, and everyone acts as they please following their inspiration, depending on their partner, or the angle at which they are in relation to the other. Sometimes, without transition, while continuing the exercise and without anyone going to sit down, I make people change partners. Then, after a few minutes, I say “change” again, and finally, I announce with a smile “general brawl!” and there is a joyful scrum, in which everyone is both Uke and Tori, in turn and at the same time, it is a bit of a mess but in a light way, so that no one gets hurt, and yet it is important that everyone gives their best according to their level. This is an important exercise that I often use in workshops where there are a lot of people, because it shows what we are capable of doing in a chaotic situation. It is essential that the attacks made are not violent, that they do not cause fear, but that they are firm enough to feel the continuity of ki in the gesture. If they are superficial or hesitant, you are wasting your time or deluding yourself about your abilities. It is a difficult learning process that takes years, but it is of great pedagogical importance, which is why we practise “free movement” in pairs every day at the end of each session.

Once again the sphere

mormyridae — Mormyridae: by transforming electrical impulses into sound and then into lines, we have an image of the sphere of these fish

While watching a documentary on evolution that one of my students had sent me during the lockdown, I was astonished, like him, to discover the visual representation of the sphere surrounding a very special fish belonging to the Mormyridae group. Although they have been known since ancient times – curiously, they were often depicted in the frescoes and bas-reliefs that adorned the tombs of the pharaohs – we have just discovered some remarkable qualities about them. They are fish with a bony skeleton, which is already quite rare, and furthermore have unique abilities. They hunt and communicate by means of electrical impulses, emitting small electrical discharges (between 5 and 20 V), extremely short, less than a millisecond, which are repeated at a variable rate without interruption for more than a second. A special organ produces this electric field that surrounds the fish. By converting the electrical impulses into sound and then into lines, we get an image like the one in this article, and we can thus visualise the sphere of these fish, which they can also use as a defence system. Thanks to this field, they can distinguish a predator from a prey or from one of their own kind. When a predator enters this field, it distorts it, and this information is immediately transmitted to the cerebellum. Their cerebellum is considerably larger than the rest of their brain. This ability to generate and analyse a weak electric current is useful for orientation in space, and enables them to locate obstacles and detect prey, even in murky water or in the absence of light.

A mental representation or a function of the cerebellum

The human sphere may be no more than a mental representation of people’s unconscious capacities – we will perhaps know in several years or centuries – but that in no way diminishes its reality, as felt by the practitioner of martial arts, or its effectiveness. Ki, that mysterious feeling of our own energy, our observation, the atmosphere, which all peoples have known and passed on in their cultures without being able to give it a precise definition, could well be the answer, although considered unscientific, it has an empirical reality which is attested by the experience of many masters, shamans or mystics. If we look to cognitive sciences for answers, we can find elements that, taken together, give substance to this research.

The cerebellum plays an important role in all vertebrates. In humans, its role is absolutely essential for motor control, which is the ability to make dynamic postural adjustments and direct the body and limbs to perform a precise movement. It is also a determining factor in certain cognitive functions and is moreover involved in attention and the regulation of fear and pleasure responses. It contributes to the coordination and synchronisation of gestures, and to the precision of movements. In case of a simultaneous attack by several people, martial arts – and Aikido in particular – must have prepared the individual, through repetition and scenography in kata or free movements, to provide the necessary responses to get out of such a situation. When it comes to survival, the “organs” that are the cerebellum, the thalamus and the extra-pyramidal motor system must be ready. The learning must have been of a high quality, including surprise, attention and even a kind of anxiety, so that the involuntary system can draw on these experiences to make the right gestures.

Like a fish in water

Jiyūwaza is like a dance where the involuntary is king. It is not about being the all-powerful leader over subordinates or minions, but rather about entering a subtle world where perception and sensation lead us. Like the fish mentioned above, it is about feeling the movement of the other the moment it unfolds and touches our sphere. Above all, we must not start in advance, with the risk of the attack changing as we go, but rather be in a position, a posture, that elicits a certain type of gesture and therefore response. The technique must not be predictable or foreseeable, but adaptable and adapted to the form that is trying to reach us. A rereading of Sun Tzu offers us some choice quotations, such as: ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.’ ¹. Knowing, while not knowing what is going to happen: how is this possible? It is through the fusion of sensitivity with our partner that we can discover how to behave, how to act, how to react without prior thinking, without hesitation. Little by little, this kind of exercise creates a kind of trust in which all answers are possible. This is the time to go further, to ask our partner to be more subtle, and also more persistent. Whenever possible, he should reverse roles and present himself as if he were Tori instead of Uke.

regis soavi aikido fudoshin — It is a matter of feeling the movement of the other the moment it unfolds and touches our sphere

Fudōshin

When practising with different partners, or when it comes to stepping out of the comfort of everyday practice with people we know, in order to express what some call our potential, various reactions of tension occur, the body, fearing this different encounter, stiffens and becomes rigid. Tsuda Itsuo sensei provides us with an answer, or rather deciphers the situation through a text by Takuan which he quotes, while developing two or three concepts for us Westerners that shed light on the behaviour and resources that we need to find deep within ourselves.

‘How to get out of this state of numbness is the major problem of those who practise the professions of arms.

On this subject, a text, Fudōchi Shimmyō roku, The Twelve Rules of the Sword, written by Takuan (1573-1645), a Zen monk who is giving advice to one of the descendants of the Yagyū family, in charge of the teaching of the sword to the Tokugawa shogunate, remains famous to this day.

“Fudō means immobile,” he said, “but this immobility is not the kind which consists of being insensitive, like stone or wood. It has to do with not letting the mind become fixed, while moving forward, left and right, moving freely, as desired, in all directions.”

Therefore immobility, according to Takuan, is to be unruffled in one’s mind; it is not at all about lifeless immobility. It is a matter of not remaining in a state of stagnation, of being able to act freely, like flowing water.

When we remain frozen because of fixation on an object, our mind, our kokoro is disturbed, under the influence of this object. Rigid stillness is a breeding ground for distraction.

“Even if ten enemies attack you, each striking out with a sword,” he says, “let them pass without blocking your attention each time. This is how you can do your job without the pressure of one against ten.”

[…]

Takuan’s formula is to live the present to the fullest, without being hindered by the fleeting past.’ ²

For each of us, mastery, however relative it may be, is always the result of a lifetime of work and practice, regardless of our abilities, difficulties, or sometimes even our ease. Frédéric Chopin, having just played fourteen preludes and fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach by heart, said to one of his pupils during a private lesson: ‘The final triumph is simplicity. When you have exhausted all the difficulties, and have played an immense quantity of notes, simplicity emerges in all its charm, as the final seal of art. Anyone who expects to achieve it at the outset will never succeed in so doing; you cannot begin at the end.’ ³

Whether you are a musician, a craftsman, a Zen monk or a martial arts sensei, it is the sincerity of your work and the joy of sharing that lead us to simplicity, to Fudōshin, the immutable mind.

Régis Soavi

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‘Fudōshin: the immutable mind’, an article by Régis Soavi published in October 2020 in Self et Dragon Spécial n° 3.

Notes:

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 2002, Dover Publications, p. 81
Tsuda Itsuo, The Way of the Gods, 2021, Yume Editions, Chap. 10, pp. 76–77 (1^st ed. in French, 1982, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), pp. 72–73)
Guy de Pourtalès, Frederick Chopin: a man of solitude, 1927, pub. Thornton Butterworth Limited (London), p. 156 (original quote in French, reproduced in the 1946 Gallimard edition (Paris), p. 150)

Photos credits: Bas van Buuren, Quinn Berentson (image extracted from La fabuleuse histoire de l’évolution: le Rift Albertin [The fabulous story of evolution: the Albertine Rift], available online)

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

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 O-sensei, 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, Manon Soavi, Non classé

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

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

To Live Seitai

1 February 2024 name

by Régis Soavi

Seitai: philosophy or therapy?

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

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

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

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

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

Noguchi Haruchika 野口晴哉 sensei

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

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

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

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

Seitai: a global view

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

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

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

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

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

A dream

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

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

The symptom

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

The body has its reasons that reason does not know

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

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

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

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

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

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

To live Seitai

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

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

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

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

The notion of individual in Seitai

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

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

Notes

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

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN

Transmission

6 August 2022 name

by Régis Soavi

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

A vocation?

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

Pedagogy

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

The path I have been following

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

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

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

Continuity

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

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

Freedom

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

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

A reciprocal and asymmetric relationship

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

The mnemonic that consists of forgetting²

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

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

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

The role of the sensei

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

Régis Soavi

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

Notes:

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

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

Fear: An Acquired Congenital Origin?

3 May 2022 name

by Régis Soavi

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

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

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

Breathing, its mechanism

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

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

Régis Soavi - La peur - être instinctif — Being instinctive

Prior to birth

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

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

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

Taiheki, a tool for understanding

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

‘These are the 12 types of taiheki:

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

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

3. digestive active 7. urinary active 11. hypersensitive

4. digestive passive 8. urinary passive 12. obtuse

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

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

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

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

The vertical group

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

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

Régis Soavi - La posture est essentielle — Posture is key

The lateral group

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

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

The forwards-backwards group

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

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

The twisted group

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

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

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

The pelvic group

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

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

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

Type eleven, known as “hypersensitive”

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

Type twelve, known as “apathetic”

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

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

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

Aikido, a prospect

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

Régis Soavi

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

Notes:

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

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

A Liberating Immobilisation

4 August 2021 name

by Régis Soavi

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

Regaining flexibility

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

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

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

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

Circulate the ki

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

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

Mindset

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

Posture

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

Feel the other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

[…]

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

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

Seitai

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

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

Photo credits: Paul Bernas, Bas van Buuren

Notes:

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

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

Aikido, A Way of the Normalisation of the Terrain

5 January 2021 name

by Régis Soavi

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

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

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

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

R. S.: Aikido: Is the way a highway?²

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

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

Cross Immunity

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

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

Fear, a Banality

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

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

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

R. S.: “The myth of old age.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

Notes

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

Aïkido, Articles_Blog, EN, FR, IT

Violence, a “Social Fact”

4 November 2020 name

By Régis Soavi.

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

Émile Durkheim: definition of ‘the social fact’

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

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

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

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

The situation creates the conditions, the conditions create the situation

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

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

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

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

I

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

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

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

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

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

A preliminary, the normalization of the terrain

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

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

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

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

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

The knightly art of archery

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

Notes:

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

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

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Zanshin, a Natural State of the Body

2 June 2020 name

by Régis Soavi

If we translate Zanshin by ‘sustaining attention after a fight or after a technique’, even if we remain within the martial tradition we remain short of its profound meaning.

Tenshin: the heart of heaven

In the term Zanshin there are two Kanji: 残 (càn or zan), what remains, the residue, and 心 (Shin or Kokoro). If the meaning of the latter is known by all Aikidokas, it still seems to me necessary to specify its value because it corresponds to what we can rely upon to find the path towards fullness in life. For Tsuda Itsuo sensei, a phrase reflected and animated the practices he proposed, both Aikido and Katsugen undo. This phrase – Tenshin – he had translated it by ‘heart of pure sky’. He writes:

‘The word kokoro that I have translated as “heart” is etymologically identical to the word for the central organ of the circulatory system. However, the meaning is quite different. The “heart” in French, cœur, is more related to feeling, while the kokoro in Japanese is not entirely feeling, nor the spirit, nor thought. It’s something that we feel inside of us, it’s more like the English mind¹. If we translate it with the words “mental” or “psychic”, it will be something different again.

The search for a kokoro which remains unperturbed in the face of imminent danger, which remains calm in all circumstances, is the primary goal imposed on those who try to reach perfection in the profession of arms.’²

‘Your mind must be clear of all thoughts, good or bad. This state of mind is compared to Pure Sky – Tenshin.’³

Zanshin, that state of concentration that lasts beyond the act itself

Aikido: re-learning freedom

As soon as we step upon the Tatami floor, concentration arises. A simple salute towards the Tokonoma suffices for our body to react, to leave this state that could be described as day-to-day to enter the very particular state of Zanshin. It is fundamentally a natural state, a state where our biological animality (in the best sense of the word) arises again. All the tradition that we have been given by O-sensei and that has been transmitted to us by his direct student Tsuda sensei is essential to understand this. It is in the way we perform exercises such as the vibration of the soul, the rowing exercise and many others – often wrongly equated with a warm-up – that we become aware of their importance. It is all the attention given to breathing that allows us to sense, at the physiological level, the circulation of Ki and that summons us back towards this state of concentration that Zanshin is. All this first part of an ordinary session in our school has been designed to bring us, to take us beyond ourselves, beyond what we have quite often become – an ordinary fellow of our society. Immediately, if we are attentive enough, we can feel its effects. We move on the Tatamis in a profoundly different way, what we feel, our perception of the other, of others, becomes at the same time sharper and more pronounced, wider and lighter. It is day after day, by immersing into this atmosphere, that we can both relearn the freedom of moving, a first step towards inner freedom, and feel our space, our spaces. Recovering the sensation of how the forces that surround us are positioned, discovering or rediscovering that nothing is finished, nor concluded, but that everything is connected, that Zanshin is a moment of an eternity that runs its course in all directions.

Daily life: an eye-opener

Without us being aware of it, without us acting in a voluntary manner, our body constantly reacts to the many aggressions from our environment that we undergo everyday. Whether these attacks come from bacteria, viruses or more simply the quality of our nutrition, our body responds in an adequate manner thanks to its immune system, its digestive system or any other system according to the dysfunction at stake. The body’s response, if the terrain is good, if our immune system is well awake for instance, is not limited to a few skirmishes here and there, the mobilization of the body is total and the fight can sometimes be of great violence. Once the fight is over the body does not put itself at rest immediately, it does not go back to sleep once the danger has gone (something our mental, on the contrary, would have perfectly admitted). Our involuntary system does not loosen its attention, eliminating up to the last bacterium, to the last virus or immobilizing, blocking them so that they become harmless. And even then it is not over yet, the body remains vigilant, keeping an eye on everything that happens, serene but attentive to the least movement of the aggressors, whatever and whoever they are. This spirit is the state of the natural and involuntary Zanshin of a body that reacts healthily and therefore the state of the exact opposite of an apathetic body. When all is really over, life somehow resumes its natural course. It is essential to facilitate that this work inside our body can be done with complete peace of mind without being frightened by the slightest pain or disturbing reaction.

For who approaches for the first time a martial art – and in particular Aikido –, the aims are often many, and range from the need of moving to that of defending oneself, through all possible variants, real or fantasized. The discovery of Zanshin constitutes an integral part of Aikido teaching, and its deep understanding as well as its extension to our entire life sphere brings a greater tranquility when facing unpredictable events and allows one to live every day more fully. For it is eventually in day-to-day life that the usefulness of the practice can be experienced and appraised. Without being utilitarian it is always pleasant to see and verify what it brings us in our daily life. There cannot be real attention, concentration, nor pleasure in the achievement of some work without – even though we are not aware of it – the state of presence that we call Zanshin.

Zanshin est un moment d'éternité — Zanshin is a moment of eternity

Circles in water

When the child throws a stone into the so peaceful water of a little pond, s/he stays watching the concentric circles s/he has created that spread and extend from the center. If s/he has kept her/his profound nature, if it has not been destroyed by adults, parents, educators or teachers, who attempt to explain her/him the scientific rationale beyond the phenomenon or who, pressed for their so precious time, give little importance indeed to this little insignificant game, then, immobile, contemplative but deeply concentrated, the child waits until the circles fade away, until their initial liveliness, while lessening more and more, becomes no longer recognizable, becomes one with the natural movement of the simmering water, slightly nudged by the wind. This so precious moment is also Zanshin, it is an instant that could even be considered as sacred, where the child’s Kokoro quietens down, when s/he recovers her/his primordial nature, her/his true nature.

School, or how to break this natural state

The entire school education aims to equip children with weapons for the future. Though the idea looks nice on paper, reality is completely different. The grading system, whether with figures⁴ or letters such as in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, generates fear, indeed anguish – always concern – and produces, in fact, more damage than benefits. In this case we do not work for the pleasure of discovering nor even for a concrete result but for a grade, an assessment, that are supposed to reflect our level in the system. Yet, for a century, countless pedagogy experts have denounced the harm done by this type of schooling system and mode of education. At the total opposite of the state of Zanshin one is waiting for the verdict, the result of the written exercise, test, or exam. Instead of developing the physical or intellectual capacities of the child, we transform her/him into a scared being or later a rebel who only aspires to get out of the system in which s/he is trapped, to breathe if only a little more freely. The damage is however not irremediable, this is also what our practice is for, reviving what should never have been abandoned nor destroyed.

Une présence à soi-même ainsi qu'a l'autre, sans agressivité. — being present to oneself and to others, without aggressivity

Graduate first!⁵

Who has never heard this sentence, that has now become a parental leitmotiv? Which parents have let their children follow the direction they had decided to take on their own, supporting them despite the general condemnation from their family or close circles? In France the new law⁶ making instruction mandatory from three to eighteen years old compels the parents, who sometimes chose home instruction because they became aware of the damage they have undergone in their own childhood, to still remain within the national education framework. To force their children to undergo exams and tests they have to pass, failing which they would have to be reintegrated in a state-approved school. How can we allow the child, the teenager, to discover, rediscover or preserve what s/he has always had and should never have lost: Zanshin, this state of concentration that remains beyond the act, this instinctive state that gives us pleasure, satisfaction, and strengthens our capacities by allowing them to benefit from the experience acquired in this moment thanks to this slight standstill where something remains suspended? The child, boy or girl, during this uncertain time, where anything can play out, escapes the world of social conventions, becomes strong, of this strength that no one will ever be able to deprive her/him of, s/he opens her/himself to an intelligence that only belongs to her/him and that is created by no doctrine or ideology.

Ai-uchi, ai-nuke

From Zanshin a world can be rebuilt if it was destroyed or simply damaged. In the Zen practice it is the spirit that remains or the spirit of the gesture that allows one to recover what has been lost, in Aikido it is not the fighting spirit that allows us to live in harmony but rather what is behind, in depth, and that breathes life into our action. Tsuda Itsuo sensei tells us the story of this great 17^th century master Sekiun Harigaya who had found inner peace:

‘After having been tormented for a long time by the kind of uncertainty which reigns when we are in an extreme situation, where we cannot resort to a precedent to justify ourselves, he found:

“Defeating the weak, being beaten by the strong, and destroying each other as equals are all dead ends.”

Even if we win one victory after another, according to him, it is nothing but a kind of bestiality. It is nothing but wolves or tigers fighting each other. We always remain in a position of relativity, of opposition. You have to leave that behind in order to find the real path.

How is one to get free of bestiality to find the real way? Especially in a situation where the result is not measured by scores. The accepted formula used until then was “ai-uchi”, mutual annihilation. When you want to beat the other, while trying to keep your own integrity, you lose everything, because at the last moment you are overcome by fear, which paralyses you. In order to get ourselves out of this duality that torments us, we decide to die, giving up everything we have. “When you have my skin, I will have your meat. When you have my meat, I will have your bones”, goes the bravado formula. We still remain in a state of bestiality.

After many years of meditation, Sekiun found his formula “ai-nuke”, which means for each go beyond. The basis of this formula is the discovery of the unchanging, eternal kokoro, in which there is no annihilation of the adversary, but only respect for the other.

Ai-nuke reflects a position fairly close to that of Mr Ueshiba’s Aikido. If we face the other without any aggressiveness, it’s ainuke, but if we retain the slightest aggressiveness, it’s ai-uchi.

But how can we eliminate all aggression when, in fact, we are in a situation of aggressiveness in which we risk losing everything?

This non-aggressiveness, if it does not come from a religious moralist or pacifist, but from someone who lived through 52 real combats up until the age of 50, may be of quite a different value.’⁷

Zanshin lies at the heart of the problem, because it is about a presence to oneself as well as the other, without aggressivity, without expectation, without any search for any result. Zanshin is neither the end nor the beginning of a movement, it does not illustrate the power of one over an opponent, it is a time, an undefined space-time, but which gets concretely realized. Recovering the Kokoro from childhood, recovering concentration, the simple joy of feeling fully alive, no longer being satisfied with the superficial aspect of the survival that is imposed to us by society, this is the path that is proposed to us in Aikido. Even if this path demands from us rigor and determination, continuity and introspection, I have always felt and experienced it as easier than resignation, renunciation and hence disillusion or passivity.

Régis Soavi

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

Photos credits: Bas van Buuren, Sara Rossetti

Notes

1
[in English in the text]
2
Tsuda Itsuo, The Way of the Gods, Chap. VIII, Yume Editions, 2021, p. 64
3
Tsuda Itsuo, Heart of Pure Sky, ‘Katsugen-kai – note n°1’, ’PERSPECTIVE’, Yume Editions, 2025
4
[In France, grades range from 0 to 10 or 20, letters are not in use.]
5
[The French sentence is: « Passe ton bac d’abord ! » [Take your Baccalaureate exam first!]. In France, the Baccalauréat is a national exam taken by 18-year-old pupils ending high school. It is required to enter the University and to apply many jobs.]
6
[law promulgated on 26 July 2019]
7
The Way of the Gods (op. cit.), pp. 66–7

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Life Force

4 April 2020 name

By Régis Soavi

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

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

The spectacular

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

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

A society issue

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

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

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

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

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

Human Ecology

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

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

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

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

Life force

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Seitai technique: an orientation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aikido: an art to awaken life force

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

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

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The unity of the body #5

3 September 2019 name

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

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

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Some additional information

Excerpts from the video on Yuki

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

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

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

Notes

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

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Seizing, an Art of Detachment

1 July 2019 name

by Régis Soavi

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

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

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

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

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

Grabbing, appropriating

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

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

Assuming power

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

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

Prisoner

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

Respiration, an answer to a specific situation

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

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

Sensibility, instinct

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

Discovering the direction taken by Ki

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

Discovering the Non-doing

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

But maybe I am behind and it already exists.

Seizing with Ki

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

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

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

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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

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Taiheki, The Revelator

1 May 2019 name

By Régis Soavi.

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

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

Kamae, the body’s instinct

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

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

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

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

The Kamae depend on the Taiheki

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

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

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

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

Taiheki, the revelator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concentration and attention must not be relaxed under any circumstances.

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

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

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

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

Kamae and rigidification

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

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

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

Régis Soavi

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

Notes:

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

Photos credits: Régis Sirvent, Sara Rossetti

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

Reishiki: just a ritual?

Reishiki: a moral code?

Reishiki: an impregnation

Reishiki: an artefact?

Creating the conditions

Reishiki is also about gratitude: knowing how to say thank you

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Some additional information

Excerpts from the video on Yuki

Notes

My study of the sword

A principle of reality

Aikiken is not Kendō

The fusion with the partner

Seitai-dō

Too high a level

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Notes

Movement: coordination, posture

Notes

Are the Masters of the past masters of life?

Notes

Ukemis, a way out

Projecting means distancing

Treating the illness

Projection or brutality

A champagne cork

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Notes

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

Look under your feet

External flexibility and internal firmness

External flexibility and internal firmness

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Notes

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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O-sensei, a mystic!

Is Yin and Yang a trickery?

A healthy mind in a healthy body

Discovering for ourselves; experience rather than belief

Promoting quality rather than quantity

Rebellion is not denial

Follow the trails

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Jiyūwaza: “Free movement”

Once again the sphere

A mental representation or a function of the cerebellum

Like a fish in water

Fudōshin

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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

Noguchi Haruchika 野口晴哉 sensei

The mnemonic that consists of forgetting²