Category Archives: 01-Kamae

 – – – “…your overall kamae should arise from following the energy flow of the [myriad] kami, according to time, location…”

– – – Budo paragraph 1

On Sunday,  September 15,  Kimbal Anderson Sensei taught a workshop on Kamae – using paragraph 1 of the 1938 manual Budo as a reference point. We explored the interaction of ki, and aiki-inyo at a very basic level, exercises allowing the body freely to follow the guidance of Great Nature, where the motion comes from aiki-inyo.

  “When you see that every technique comes from that – and when you have that feeling – you can understand. When you look at a picture you will not see the same black and white, static ‘ok, put your foot here, your hand does this…’ – and if someone describes it this way you can see that that is not aiki – it’s a description of a picture.

“O’Sensei described aiki really well, when he talked about hooking up to Dai-Shizen and letting this move you – basically, when he was saying, ‘follow the guidance of the Kami,’  really that’s the the forces of nature for us. And not to resist this intuitive understanding, and to get a body that is built to surf that thing, so the rigidity has to go, the violence and the preconceptions – – – that’s really the whole thing. When you get the feeling of it – then you can perform any kata from that place and it just naturally happens. You end up with Nature correcting you and not me or yourself. Nature does it perfectly…”
– – – Kimbal Anderson Sensei