Monday, January 25, 2010

意識 "ishiki' - part 1

I just came back from "Kangeiko", a 6 days course at a Dojo in the South of Germany.
At the end of the course, we were exhausted from intensive trainings but we were all happy and enjoyed the week!

I mentioned this word, 意識 "ishiki', during the training.
I just looked it up in my dictionary and it says: conscious, aware...
We all know these words and have learned it from Karate training...
We all understand it is important to be conscious what we are doing and to be aware.

We have repeatedly practiced to focus on one thing, every day, every lesson and every so often during the week...

I was asking the students to do their techniques with consciousness and to pay attention to the specific points in order to realize something very important, to improve techniques or to change bad habits... In the end, after many repetitions, everybody managed to do well.
Afterwards, I asked the students to do a different thing, and again after many repetitions, everyone managed to do it. But: Most of them have forgotten the previous point...

I was asking simple things - something about the arms, the back, the feet...
For example,
position of hands, elbows and shoulders...
angle of hips, knees and the posture...
feeling the connection between the sole and the floor...
something about the mind..., and so on.

If I list up points of techniques, there are hundreds of things to consider which all need to work together in order to correctly perform just one simple technique.
How can we learn and do hundreds of things together at once...? Almost impossible! even two or three things are sometimes difficult...
We have to focus and work on one thing at the time with 意識 "ishiki".

This is very difficult but very important! Not only once, you have to continue and remind yourself all the time!!

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1 comment:

  1. I am just a first Dan in Karate Do Shotokan, so a student in Karate. I had the privilege of attending a course with Shinji Akita Sensei in Gières near Grenoble (France). This is exactly what I understood: practising simple things with consienciousness. In the life it is exactly the same way: to reach happiness, we have to be fully conscious of simple things of the life, such as walking, looking nature, hearing sounds. We normally do that without any conscious and probably we miss this part of happiness. Always improve by training and the spirit must drive the body (and not the opposite)...Thanks for your advises, sensei.

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