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| Master Tohei | What is Ki | What is Ki-Aikido | Ki Development | International Ki Society Directory | |
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I studied Aikido from
Morihei Ueshiba, here again doing everything first and questioning later.
Ueshiba Sensei was a master of Ki, as well as the founder of Aikido. However
he was also a devoted follower of the Omotokyo Religion, and this influenced
the way he taught Aikido. Often it was impossible to make any sense of his
esoteric explanations. I rigorously trained in all of the exercises he had us
do, though many came from the Omotokyo Religion, and made no sense to us. For
example, we were expected to recite the alphabet in a different order. Rather
than saying the vowels of Japanese as ''AIUEO'' we were made to repeat them
over and over as ''AOUEI,'' as if this new sequence had a deeper meaning. He
would tell us that we should become one with the Ki of Heaven, but not how we
were to do this. You could learn much more by watching him do Aikido than you
could by listening to him explain it. The one essential thing I learned from
Ueshiba Sensei was how to relax. He was always relaxed in the face of
conflict, which is why his Aikido was so strong. He would do this himself,
but he encouraged his young students to hold with as much strength as
possible. In Aikido if you are not relaxed you cannot throw a person. It
seemed a mystery to us that Ueshiba Sensei could always throw, could always
get out of a hold. He would lead your Ki, and could always throw his opponent
in the direction he was already going. I began to make rapid progress after I
started copying what he did, and paid less attention to what he said. I ended
up only keeping about 30% of the techniques I learned from Ueshiba Sensei,
changing or dropping the rest. What I really learned from him was not
technique, but the true secret of Aikido, non-dissension; not to resist your
opponent's strength but to use it. After the War I learned from Tempu Nakamura, a well-known yoga master and psychologist who taught that the mind leads the body. I had seen this often on the battlefield. When we were under fire no one complained of stomach problems; yet once we reached safe ground people began to take it easy and everyone got sick. The mental state of being careless can actually bring on illness. Nakamura Sensei's teaching that mind moves the body helped me to understand the essential principle of Aikido, which is why I called my form of the art, Aikido with Mind and Body Coordination (Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido), now popularly known in the West as Ki-Aikido. I diligently tried everything that Nakumura Sensei taught. As a result, from experience I learned that some of it worked and some of it didn't. One technique that did not work was a meditation technique he taught from Yoga called Kumbahaka. This involved tightening the anus, putting strength into the lower abdomen, softening the solar plexus, letting the shoulders drop down, holding your ears in line with your shoulders, and keeping your lips pressed against your teeth. This was actually an exaggerated and awkward way of trying to explain what natural posture was. Nakamura Sensei himself did not do this, but this is how he explained it. Many ancient oriental methods use exaggerated expressions to explain a natural state, and end up producing completely the wrong results. But I tested everything thoroughly in order to learn from experience. I found that if I did Kumbahaka while farming I would get a sore back, if I did it while walking I would become exhausted, and if I did it while doing Aikido none of the techniques would work at all! The most important thing is ''how to do,'' not how to say. By following natural principles, and doing as Nakamura Sensei did, rather than as he taught, I learned how to do it correctly and consistently. He noticed this and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was doing Kumbahaka. He knew that and wanted to know how I was doing it. I showed him that even his senior students were easily pushed over because of the tension created in their bodies by trying to follow those complicated instructions. In his later years he changed the way he explained it, but after he died his students went back to old explanation, and it is no better now than it was then.
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