12/12/2005 In Experiments / Ideas, Practice / Training by andy
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There are many ways to breathe. I feel that the exercises I will outline below can lead students to develop a better method of breathing for Taido. They lead to a very natural way of breathing while moving that is highly adaptable to Taido technique (adaptation being one of the five tenets of Taido’s philosophy). Because I want to encourage others to experiment with these exercises, I will first present my alternative method before attempting to write an analysis of other breathing methods.
I totally believe that experimentation with various methods leads to far greater mastery than blind acceptance of any established method. So please try the exercises below several times over the course of a couple of weeks. If, after giving them a shot, you can’t figure out how they may be applicable to your Taido practice, feel free to drop me a line.
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20/12/2005 In Experiments / Ideas, Knowledge Base by andy
The gojokun is the set of five statements that form the heart of Taido ’s philosophy. Through the years, several different English versions of these five statements have existed. I will present a few of them along with some analysis. With any luck, this article will get to the point of what can be a very frustrating mission statement.
The primary problem with the original 5jokun is typical of Japanese philosophy. It can’t be translated into English words that the western mind will readily “get” without taking a good deal of artistic license. Since English and Japanese operate on different operational principles, they convey different kinds of meaning in different ways. There have been three of four attempts to my knowledge at a literal translation of the 5jokun, but none of them have meant very much to people who weren’t already experts.
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28/02/2006 In Experiments / Ideas by andy
In light of the recent hokei assignment I gave the Tech Taido black belt candidates, I decided to post some notes on a couple of hokei that I have created. Though neither one would fulfill the requirements I set forth in the assignment (because they were designed for reasons to be outlined below), their presentation may prove beneficial to the candidates as an example of the kinds of thinking that may be useful in the creation of a new hokei.
Hen/Hen no Hokei (”double weird”)
Sometime around 2000ish, I got to the point that I had become competent in performaing every hokei in the American curriculum, and a couple of others that only a very few older instructors had ever seen. While I could have continued to practice them forever, continually discovering greater depth, our organization was in a very expansive mood at the time, in terms of technique. I thought some creative hokei interpretations would be a good idea.
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26/05/2006 In Check It Out by andy
Check out the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth from Bruce Mau Design. Most of these points are equally applicable to Taido as to design. None of it is really anything new, but by seeing it all in one place, it gives a different perspective, much of which relates to what i’m trying to do with this website.
Here are some of my favorites, with comments:
“… If process drives outcome, we may not know where we are going, but we will know we want to be there.”
The river is never wrong. Conscious practice will get us much further than all the theorizing in the world. First, we must begin, and only then can we make adjustments. It’s “ready, fire, aim.” If we aim first, we may never get around to firing because we can never be sure we’ll hit the target. By just firing, we will be certain to hit something. Then we aim again, and get a a little closer to what we want. Steering a parked car gets us no closer to our destination. Let’s get in gear and build our art around the process of quality practices and methods.
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