(no subject)

Had an interesting insight in aikido this evening. As an engineer, I’m used to focusing on the details of how things work, and had been trying to get individual pieces of techniques right in aikido in a similar way (the footwork is like this, the hands go like that, and you move thusly...). What occurred to me is that this is the wrong place to start: you need to pay attention to how you use hands and feet and posture, but all of that should come from moving the whole body.

The net result is that I have yet one more thing to focus on until I manage to internalize techniques enough that they’re mostly automatic (like breakfalls and rolls are slowly becoming for me). :-)