In an internal document for future instructors evoking the relaxation, it’s stated: “the places you need to place under tension or relax is a process of personal discovery.”

You’ll say, “that’s not bad, but right now, what can I do?” This questioning has gone on for a while in the French Aunkai practitioners and a rough consensus has emerged around the model of the body devised by A. de Sambucy.

Dr. A. de Sambucy developed a method of correcting back problems through precise movements. Even if the object of Aunkai is not to correct such problems, by a coincidence (which is to say: not one) many of the students in my classes find their back problems are relieved. No surprise when one considers that the principle of Aunkai is to stretch the spine and move to reduce the sometimes excessive curvatures, source of various pathologies.

Dr. Sambucy’s method interests us less than the theoretical model that underpins it, the soft segments and hard segments, illustrated by the famous “Sambucy Snowman”:

The author describes his model as follows: “Man is a pile of hard and soft segments placed on each other and the hard-deformable bone belts, the soft roll of muscle surrounding organs – these segments slide some in front of others – they tend to collapse upon each other. They are all strung on a flexible common axis: the spine. “(A. Sambucy., Spinal corrective gymnastics, 1966, Paris, Editions Dangles)

In plain language the human body is composed of hard bony segments: head, thorax, pelvis) in which alternating soft segments (neck, trunk). The soft segments are held around the spine through a number of muscles.

At the back of the neck, the scalene muscles.

In front, the sternocleidomastoids.

The trunk is often the object of all my attention, because it’s often here that the problem is. The trunk is no more nor less than a “meat bag,” an unflattering expression but which clearly illustrates the biomechanics of this region of the body: a set aof viscera kept at the spine by a sheath of muscle.

Above, the diaphragm.

Below, the perineum.

In front, the transverse abdominals.

From which a cross extends to the thoraco-lumbar fascia to enclose the whole area.

We now know that the biomechanics of the body are not homogeneous; all levels of the body do not behave the same way. Beyond the concept of relaxation, it seems more pertinent to speak of equalizing tension: making soft what is hard and hard what is soft.

Concretely, practice of the Aunkai exercises should include relaxing the shoulders and pelvis, but especially by putting tension in the neck and trunk. If the relaxing the hard segments is “relatively” easy, tensing the soft segments is less obvious because it revolves around the work of involuntary muscles (involuntary like the heart or intestines).

One of the methods I prefer for helping the work of equalizing tensions is the practice of “sheathing” (gainage) exercises, which I will explain in a future article.

(he hasn’t circled back to this yet)

Stick vs unarmed:

The truth is that Ueshiba’s spiritual path is so utterly a product of his time and culture, any attempt to imitate his journey will make you a fool — and not even a “holy fool.” Perhaps you should eliminate the… preliminary steps. Ueshiba did not “follow” a path, he was thrown into each period of his life, passionate and desperate to be other than he was. He was driven rather than led. Rather than retrace his steps, should you not be similarly thrown? Should you not try to find what he pursued, rather than what he did? Could you not replicate those initial steps through a path that encompasses putting up drywall in small-towns in sub-Arctic Canada, tango lessons in Buenos Aires, and painting in a garret in Montparnasse?

Let us ratchet it back, then. Let us talk only about the technology of kokyu and ki…

Ellis Amdur’s Hidden In Plain Sight is a pretty good book.

“The things referred to in Internal Martial Arts as energies are really skills you develop from experience. If they are mastered you will be able to use them in fights. As soon as you touch your opponent you will be able to ride their movement and control their flow. Energy is a misnomer that leads the mind down labyrinthine Quagmires that some get lost in and never find the truth. Although the energetic stuff is real it is to be pursued after you can fight unless you are just studying the healing side of the arts…

The Tai Chi classics warn of “abandoning the near to chase the far” & “training hard to no avail even after years of painstaking practice”. “The slightest diversion from the true path takes one far off target”. Heed these statements above all else when training in IMA.
In other words don’t BS yourself and pay close attention to detail.”

– Sifu Rudy Ray Curry

The body must be inside the mind. Do not put the mind inside the body!

– Scott Phillips

“The motor skill involved in even a very simple and monotonous movement cannot be a motor formula or a motor cliche, as it was wrongly thought by many, including those who equated motor skill and conditioned reflex.  Therefore, it is wrong to consider a motors skill as an imprint or a trace somewhere in the brain’s motor areas.

“On the other hand, the brain’s sensory areas, which take care of sensory corrections, also do not elaborate some unchangeable cliches of corrections.  External forces and perturbations are volatile, and so corrections, which reflect the influence of these factors, likewise cannot be permanent.

“Finally, the movements of a skill must also have in reserve a degree of adaptive variability, which increases from the lower to the higher levels.  Therefore, the brain sensory systems also accumlate and store, not a permanent cliche, but a peculiar, specific maneuverability.  The brain sensory systems gradually learn to be more and more skillful in making an instantaneous translation from the language of incoming sensations and perceptions reflecting the movement process into the language of corrective motor impulses that need to be sent to one or another muscle.  We shall call this translation from the language of sensations to the language of corrections reciphering of neural impulses.

“…We can observe how a craftsman performs seemingly clear and simple movements, but we cannot see from outside the concealed corrections and recipherings that take place in his brain. The difference [is that] the novice decides how the movements involved in a motor skill look from the outside; [later] the novice learns how these movements and their sensory corrections feel inside.”

from Dexterity and Its Development