If you are interested in training please read this essay.
Jigoro Kano, the founder of modern judo, was well educated in the Western manner of thought and this influenced his creation of judo. Kano realized that in order for an activity to become popular across modern industrial nations, its practice and goals had to be clearly laid out in a step by step manner. Judo techniques became simplified and the practice of kuzushi and ippon were clearly defined. The practice of judo became objective; that is, it could be measured by an outside observer/referee.
Daito ryu did not become a competitive sport, so there was not as much pressure on the art to become simplified or objectively measured. Even today, many daito ryu demonstrations are ridiculed online because people cannot see the clear reason why an uke is thrown or paralyzed. However, this confusion was a feature of how daito ryu was practiced in history. It was intended to be practiced indoors, in confined space and the techniques of aiki were designed to be difficult to understand. The key aiki principle was hidden in the technique.
Even prominent daito ryu practitioners like Sokaku Takeda and Yukiyoshi Sagawa acknowledged this. Takeda once did a demonstration for a journalist and after the demonstration he said to the journalist “it looks fake, doesn’t it?” The journalist agreed, and was only convinced of aiki when sokaku actually did a technique on him. Similarly, Sagawa stated that he would not make a video of his techniques because real aiki techniques look fake. Likewise, many observers of Kodo Horikawa’s techniques dismissed them because they looked fake and thought that Horikawa’s students had weak wills and were easily influenced by their teacher.
What this means is that you can only understand aiki by directly feeling it. All the explanations about how aiki works will not help you grasp the effect that aiki has on your body.
This is obvious to many Asian people, especially those who have learned an art through the traditional method of katageiko. I recently read an interview with Ritsuke Otake, the Shihan of Katori Shinto ryu swordsmanship. Otake sensei said that beginners just should practice the basic kata of the art for four to five years without thinking or analyzing how the kata work, or how they are effective. If they try to understand the kata with their minds at this stage, they cannot advance because they criticize the effectiveness of the kata. However, if they just keep repeatedly practicing the kata eventually their body internalizes the movements of the kata and they can then do the kata without thinking. After this basic practice, they can practice the kata at different speeds and with different levels of aggression. Also, at this stage, unusual or strange movements or positions in the kata start to make sense. Otake never asked to learn new kata. He just practiced what his teacher showed him. When his teacher saw he was ready, he would show him another kata.
Similarly, the teacher of bujutsu, Kuroda tetsuzan, strictly insisted that his students could only practice a kata after they learned it directly from him. He would not let overseas students learn new kata from branch instructors. They had to visit Kuroda sensei and receive the transmission of the kata directly from him. After this, they could continue to practice the kata under the supervision of the branch instructor in their country. Kuroda sensei’s opinion was that you had to be physically exposed to the kata in order for your body to absorb its many aspects. Even if your mind did not understand all these aspects at first, your body world ‘remember’ them. Then as you continued to practice the kata, these deeper aspects would ‘unfold’ and reveal themselves to you, a little like a a piece of origami looks simple, but when you begin to unfold it, you start to realise how many details and information is contained in the piece until finally you understand the whole thing as a unified piece of paper.
The key to grasping this level of understanding is the practice of katageiko, that is, practicing through the body first and then a certain type of understanding finally shapes your brain and thinking.
This type of learning is supported by modern findings in psychology and education. Science has revealed that when people learn something new, they first map what they are seeing or thinking onto a feeling or sensation in their body. They then use this feeling to link to what they have seen as a concept in their imagination.
However, in western culture, we do not think about learning with the body in this way. Traditionally, westerners learn by grasping a concept in their imagination first and then putting it into practice i.e. ‘inputting’ the new knowledge into their body as a secondary effect.
What this means is that westerners tend to think they ‘understand’ something when they grasp the concept, not when they can actually physically do the action. This has become more pronounced in the modern age, when one can see and read about anything online. Once they have seen something and read or heard an explanation about it, people think they ‘know’ it.
However, aiki must be experienced in the body. After you have felt aiki, when you see someone demonstrating a technique, you can tell if they are using aiki or not as you can map your feeling of aiki onto what you are looking at. But if you have not received this aiki feeling in your body, you will watch a demonstration of aiki techniques with different eyes. This is what I think Sagawa meant when he said you have to be reborn to enter the world or dimension of aiki. When you feel aiki it changes your orientation in the world. In the same way, no amount of explanation will make you understand the colour blue or the taste of sashimi. You must experience a blue sky or eat sashimi to gain this understanding.
In this way, learning aiki is not a step by step process. You can learn daito ryu jujutsu in a step by step process, but this will not help you to develop or grasp aiki. To develop aiki, you must first experience it directly and then you just practice the form over and over until eventually your body and mind changes and then aiki is infused into your movements.
Developing aiki is a little similar to grasping a zen koan. You cannot come up with the answer using logical thinking. You have to change so the koan emerges from you.
I have been practicing shakuhachi now for almost twenty years, with some breaks. I spent three years learning the basic pieces and breathing methods of traditional school of shakuhachi and after that I continued to practice the basic breathing and only played the 12 musical pieces (called honkyoku) that I learned directly from my shakuhachi teacher in the way I was taught. I didn’t try to change the rhythm or breathing methods of the honkyoku. In other words, I just practiced as kata geiko, without thinking whether what I was doing was ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Recently, while playing the honkyoku, my body just changed. My chest and shoulders relaxed and opened and my breathing seemed to emerge from my tanden. My breath just flowed from my body into my mouth and into the shakuhachi. I was not trying to make a nice sound, but the quality of the sound made by me on the shakuachi really changed. I finally understood what older teachers of shakuahachi meant when they said that you should just make a natural sound. If someone had explained all this to me I would not have been able to do it. In fact, I would have not developed this ability as I would have thought I had ‘understood’ natural breathing. But in reality, I would not have done natural breathing in my body.
So this this the challenge with explanations about aiki, especially with westerners. Ultimately, I think they only work when someone physically feels aiki and realizes that they have to stop analysing the art and just do it with their bodies.