Wado vs universal teaching and learning

General discussions on Wado Ryu karate and associated martial arts.
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claas
Posts: 186
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 4:39 pm

Wado vs universal teaching and learning

Post by claas »

From the Body Mechanics thread:
oneya wrote:As you wrote somewhere else and I agree with you Bob, Inoue sensei is terrific, his forte is certainly his charm. What I find remarkable is in these seminar vids he is only ‘teaching fundamentals'.

This thread started with some pretty appalling karate lite vids under the banner of Wado ryu and has followed on with positive mention of Akuzawa, Kuroda, Taoism and Inoue sensei. All great but all really beyond the wado pale.

A broken wado ryu connection from Heiwado and the ‘why’ of it is evident from Hirano’s history but it is the dearth of wado ‘suchness’ relieved only by a couple of warm voices for the Toru Takamizawa and Shiomitsu Masafumi connection that made me wonder if people find something missing in their wado practice..??

oneya
This is an important topic, if I'm getting it right...
When should the label change from Wado to something else and how much should a Wado-practitioner keep his/her eyes open towards other arts?

My opinion is that Wado is a curriculum for studying the universal stuff. More than that it is a way. The interesting thing is that this way many times parallell others and recognizing this can be of some value. Looking into the stuff that others do can also improve our consciousness about ourselves. Of course the flipside is that we might get lost or in some other way divert from our Wado training.

In my opinion the responsibility is a lot bigger to us as instructors than as learners. An instructor should hesitate incorporating drills or terminology. Especially if the content changes because of this. Another point is that while some drills might be totally in line with the wado training, they could be a loss in time for our training methods. Wado is not only what we should learn but also how, so there should be an effort to follow both the "what" and the "how".




The reason for taking this Akuzawa thing up in the other thread was that at that time in the forum Kuroda's name kept popping up in different threads and there were some other masters also. The reasons for our members to take these up were almost always something that had to do with body mechanics. The "internal power phase" on this forum started a lot later than opening that thread. I felt that it is in a way a mess if we practically discuss masters from other arts as masters of our own. I guess some people already got mixed up with what Wado is and what Wado isn't. (The mixup happens even easier for westerners if something Japanese is shown.) So maybe it is safer to label the universal stuff as something really universal as "body mechanics". If only the writers could see the forum, then we didn't have to think about how this looks and how much we might confuse some reader.
Lasse Candé
Helsinki, Finland
Gusei21
Posts: 403
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 1:43 am

Re: Wado vs universal teaching and learning

Post by Gusei21 »

Lasse,

Can you try to summarize that again?
I got lost in your words... :)

Bob
Bob Nash
claas
Posts: 186
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 4:39 pm

Re: Wado vs universal teaching and learning

Post by claas »

:)

It has to do with cross-training, its hazards and strengths. Also about looking into what others do, to include a lighter version of getting to know other arts than actual cross-training is.

Of course I cannot be too certain either if something like this was oneya's point, but to me it looked that way.

Maybe as a "provocation" for discussions sake, it could be said that most of the good people have cross-trained.
Lasse Candé
Helsinki, Finland
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