Uniting wado groups

[kyudo]

If we are talking about evolution then I have to think there is a difference between mutation and transcendence which is why there is little enough of it about, certainly not enough to go around it seems.

Perhaps this is a matter of opinion. But even considering that evolution can make 2 steps forward, one step backward, isn't the process as a whole transcendent in nature?

[oneya]

If we are talking about evolution then I have to think there is a difference between mutation and transcendence which is why there is little enough of it about, certainly not enough to go around it seems.

Perhaps this is a matter of opinion. But even considering that evolution can make 2 steps forward, one step backward, isn't the process as a whole transcendent in nature?

Yes but today, being Sunday and I have a moment, I would like to argue that evolution is the transcendence part with the backward step perhaps being being antithetical or at least immanent. ?

oneya

[kyudo]

Yes but today, being Sunday and I have a moment, I would like to argue that evolution is the transcendence part with the backward step perhaps being being antithetical or at least immanent. ?

Well...
I guess all I'm trying to say in a perhaps circumlocutory way is that you can try to influence reality, but all attempts to reverse it are futile. And yes, we should demand that our influence be ethical.
(How's that for a Sunday's contribution?)

[Tim49]

I don't have any specific criteria in mind, but he's pushing 70, if that helps.

Thanks for that, so you mean ‘older’ in chronological years. So I guess you are saying something akin to ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’?

That’s a shame really. As has already been stated Wado is a complex entity, there is so much that we don’t know but fortunately there are still people around who had access to the creator of the system and can help to give us a more complete picture.

Tim

[oneya]

I don't have any specific criteria in mind, but he's pushing 70, if that helps.

Thanks for that, so you mean ‘older’ in chronological years. So I guess you are saying something akin to ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’?

That’s a shame really. As has already been stated Wado is a complex entity, there is so much that we don’t know but fortunately there are still people around who had access to the creator of the system and can help to give us a more complete picture.

Tim

Hi

I know a few practitioners in that age group who will swear wado is a living process and they learn something new everyday because of it.

oneya

[Mark]

As I feared, I think I have been misunderstood. I said my sesnsei would not like to be told what to do, but I didn't mean he doesn't like change. It was a throw-away comment on my part and I really didn't mean anything all that deep by it. Simply that he wouldn't like to have the change imposed on him if there is no good reason for it (not that I'm accusing anybody of trying to inflict change). We have in the past, in our dojo, incorporated muay thai knee kicks, played with Wing Chun chain punching, and some of the dan grades have even learnt katas from shotokan, shito-ryu and other styles which my sensei has knowledge of (that's only for the black belts who have a good grounding in wado - we wouldn't want to confuse beginners but I think it can be fun to compare katas from other styles). He has even invented a few katas of his own. Again, only for the black belts and just for fun. We're not trying to form a breakaway style.

I would also like to say that despite being independent of the main wado organisations, we do still benefit from and learn from Japanese instructors who are part of those organisations. Some of our instructors regularly travel to Japan to train and keep up to date with new developments. We are not trying to be isolationist, stuck in a bubble doing the same thing we have done for the last however many years. I did not mean to imply that.

If I may now leave the subject of my club and its instructor, which after all I was only using as an example, to bring the thread back to its original topic:

The only point I am trying to convey with all this is that it is possible to exist as a wado club without being in a big wado organisation, and that hopefully we are managing to do that while still maintaining contact with others in the wado world.

Lastly, I would like to say that I have no idea why my club belongs to one organisation and not another, what politics may have been behind it etc etc. All I know is that 7 or 8 years ago moved too a different part of the country, looked for a wado club to continue my training, and found my current instructor. Since he impressed me a lot, I have stayed with him, and after all, shouldn't that be the most important thing when choosing a club? What the instructor is like, not any political considerations?




factor in choosing a club

[Mark]

Apologies for the typos and misplaced text. I'm typing this on a mobile and it sometimes does odd things.

[claas]

Hi,

It would be his loss. The Wadokai would be good for him but only if he wanted to get better. Or Wadoryu. You can't get better if you don't have an open mind and listen to people who are accomplished in the art. I see this many times when Japanese Wadokai instructors go back to Japan for some function and when they get on the floor they mentally shut down and refuse to assimilate what they are being shown by Arakawa/Hakoishi/Takagi. They end up failing their examination and they take refuge in idiotic rationalization/reasoning.
'I can't help it, I was taught that way decades ago'... 'I'm too old to change'.. stupid stuff like that. Their loss.

The point here is something that I try to stress as often as possible. Many times one cannot have a clue what he is missing if he doesn't try something out that he doesn't yet understand. Many times the trial period is also longer than just a few repetitions. Then again, many times it is surprisingly short if one really wants to try something out. Things can get easy if the practitioner allows them.

If you don't do what the teacher says, then why go and train under him/her? What we see is often first unclear and contradicts what we have learned so far. Trying out, however, usually actually even strengthens what we have learned previously and we see that there are no contradictions.

[oneya]

As I feared, I think I have been misunderstood. I said my sesnsei would not like to be told what to do, but I didn't mean he doesn't like change. It was a throw-away comment on my part and I really didn't mean anything all that deep by it. Simply that he wouldn't like to have the change imposed on him if there is no good reason for it (not that I'm accusing anybody of trying to inflict change). We have in the past, in our dojo, incorporated muay thai knee kicks, played with Wing Chun chain punching, and some of the dan grades have even learnt katas from shotokan, shito-ryu and other styles which my sensei has knowledge of (that's only for the black belts who have a good grounding in wado - we wouldn't want to confuse beginners but I think it can be fun to compare katas from other styles). He has even invented a few katas of his own. Again, only for the black belts and just for fun. We're not trying to form a breakaway style.

With such a varied program though I'd be interested in how you can separate the different concepts and or principles well enough to know when you are practicing wado ryu.?

oneya

[Mark]

With such a varied program though I'd be interested in how you can separate the different concepts and or principles well enough to know when you are practicing wado ryu.?

I think a lot of instructors have a few "special" techniques which are not strictly traditional wado ryu. I think it's a question of being careful about to whom one teaches these things, and at what stage in their development, and then making it very clear which things are wado and which are not. Also, of course, many of the things I mentioned are always very much in a minority compared to the wado things we do, and by no means taught every lesson.

As an example, we will sometimes do an alternative kind of back kick, where when turning the body the back foot is twisted before the front. (It's not unique to us - I've seen it in other clubs a few times too). But we would always start with the traditional back kick a few times up and down the dojo before the higher grades would be allowed to use the alternative, and then we would be told explicitly that this is not the wado way to do it. Or, perhaps the instructor might tell us our punches are too "stiff" and not flowing very well, and then show us how punches are done in Wing Chun to demonstrate what he means. As for katas from alternative styles - well that's really only for 2nd dan and above, and by that stage it should be clear what is wado and what is not. It can be interesting to look at these things - to look at another way of doing things. It makes me think about what the differences are and why we do some things a different way in wado. Even leaving aside the matter of stylistic differences and just looking at the sequences of techniques: for example, if you learn kanku sho or kanku dai from Shotokan, and notice some sequences which are almost, but not quite, the same as some sequences in Kushanku, it makes you think about why those differences exist, or what they are trying to tell us. Maybe you will never find the answer, or the answer may just be historical accident. It doesn't matter, you still learn something by thinking about it.

One other thing just sprang to mind. When teaching a muy thai way of doing knee kicks once, after the traditional wado version, and warning us that these are not strictly wado, Sensei mentioned in an aside that one of the Japanese instructors (I'm afraid I can't remember which one - it may have been Takamizawa) had once said on the subject of "alien" techniques, something like "well, if I teach it in a wado class, then it is wado, and who's to say it isn't?" There's probably a whole debate just in that.