by Nick Lowry I have known teachers who over teach – they are helpful and giving — serve everything up on silver platters but who consequently have built very dependent students. Such are popular teachers; their students will love them and feel confident that they have “learned” and that they “know the subject”. But there…
by Nick Lowry Head to head in a competition-a real “technician” will probably get beat by a real “champion”- and a real champion will probably be able to repeat that amazing feat a few times in a given day–where the real technician excels is in wiping the floor with everyone else continuously and repeatedly all…
by Nick Lowry Sugino sensei once said that if you are seeing aiki for the first time and you can understand what you are seeing, then you are not seeing aiki. It’s interesting seeing the beautiful variety of “no touch work” throwing/control applications demonstrated by several sensei on YouTube and Google videos lately — and…
by Nick Lowry There is no such thing as a superior martial art—only superior artists. It is meaningless to say aikido is better than judo or krav maga is better that aikido or MMA is better than Gracie Jujitsu – such statements are ridiculous on the face of them. Each art has its relative strengths…
by Nick Lowry As an institutional device we can say that there is no such thing as rank in an absolute term– institutionally Rank is always based on a relative scale – some systems rank players/practitioners against each other – others systems grade your rank up or down with each performance- it is never absolute…
by Kyle Sloan Some folks might look at what we’re doing, and because it’s not a competition deal immediately dislike it. Well, let me try to change your mind. The method we use for the bulk of our teaching time is a non-resistive uke. This allows for the purest transmission of information between partners —…
by Nick Lowry If you have a lot of pendulums swinging in a room, over a short period of time they all tend to en-train toward synchronicity with the largest one. This works with people’s subtle emotional and energetic qualities as well. Folks tend to get in synchronicity with the person who has the strongest…
by Nick Lowry So much of what we do, if we do it well, is a matter of feel. Sensitivity, touch, and full body presence. Actions and reflexes all finely tuned to sensations. Lightness in the hands, like holding a baby or petting a cat or lighter, allows for high grade sensitivity with minimal interference…
by Nick Lowry Experiment: Read the following aloud A bird in thethe handis worth two inthe bush Almost everyone reads this as “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Almost no one catches the second “the.” But this error is not because of some lack of intellegence, it is rather caused…
by Nick Lowry Are there any such things as kata in aikido? Of course there are – it’s a silly question, but if you take it that aikido is the invention of M. Ueshiba, then originally, surprisingly No. Nor were there names of waza. That just knocked me over when I first learned of it….