Ground contact

Yoshi Shibata
Portsmouth Aikido
August, 2016

[@TimothySamJolly]

Extraordinary demonstration ! Superb!

[@RosssRoyce]

Whom do i see as uke? good Ol Charlie broe :) The sensei guy makes a great point. What he shows is a very common practice in true taoist disciplines: on one hand the power of Intent is used to send roots into the ground, on the other, uke's strength is absorbed and channeled into the ground, no matter if it comes to us in a horizontal vector! This is greatly facilitated by (as on this video) accommodating uke to come from a frontal position infront of us to a position above us (shorter people's lower center is advantage to this). Like this uke pushes us from above INTO the ground (stabilizing us even further) instead of backwards from the front. On physical level this is accommodated by Saito's favorite arm pivotings but on the other, and in parallel, there is (or can be) the purely magical (and scientifically proven) power of intent: i have seen a 80lbs man being lifted like a feather by a muscle builder, then the same man could not be lifted by the same no matter how hard he tried--the tiny man intended roots and weight center in the ground. Tohei teaches several tricks of intent to immediately have the weight center shifted from up into the lower body. Cheers and thanks for vid!

[@TheMoodyedge]

ailido is too hard...im sick of it!

[@andrewrodriguez7310]

No retreat, no surrender!