Aikido Techiques: Kiatsu – Ki Extention and the Body’s Power to Heal Part 3
Aikido Techniques: Kokyu Nage
At the training camp I learned Aikido techniques, I was injured, and was eventually helped through the technique of kiatsu by B. J. Carslile Sensei. Watching the swelling in my toe go down in almost no time at all convinced me that there is something to the martial art of Aikido that I needed to learn about.
Fortunately, we were only into day two of a four day camp and there would be more kiatsu training on the schedule. When I got to the room, there was Carslile Sensei, and there was the girl that went to get him the day that I was injured. As I thought back, I realized that while we were waiting for him, she had laid her hand gently on top of my toe joint and I was feeling something other than the throbbing sensation.
Aikido Techniques: Kiatsu – Seeing Ki in a Different Way
As Sensei spoke, his words created a mental picture that I still “see” to this day even though he is gone. He talked about ki extension in a way that I had never heard before. While the overall concept of ki energy was the same as what I had learned in the past, but the added dimension stressed the fact that in a healthy body, ki is flowing throughout in a natural, unrestricted manner and that an injury or illness caused key to stop flowing. My way of visualizing this is to observe a street with water flowing along a curb. If leaves accumulate, the flow of water is restricted causing it to back up. We can now imagine that any injury or illness causes ki to stop flowing in one or more areas.
Heal Yourself through Kiatu: A New Twist on Aikido Techniques
Sensei indicated that the Aikido Technique of kiatsu can then be throught of as ki extension into a part of the body of an individual that has some malady. He stressed that kiatsu is not our developing the power to “heal” someone – rather, it is the extension of ki energy into the body in an effort to stimulate ki flow and thereby promote the body’s ability to heal itself. Part 4 in this series will discuss how we might develop this ki flow and the forms of ki extension.
