Another look at Isshinryu Alignment Theory

 
One of the most profound things I was taught was Tai Chi Chaun Alignment Theory.  The thing is it is nothing but what you were originally taught, however it really is the why behind everything.

I learnt it as a part of my Tai Chi studies. It also explained how to literally increases your power for Karate, Aikido and every practice involving movement.

We all mostly unknowingly make small mistakes, that lower our effectiveness. This provides a methodology to correct them and increase our power.

This is one of the explanations I wrote about this.




https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2022/10/isshinryu-alignment.html
Thursday, October 6, 2022

Isshinryu Alignment

The issue of what's contained in different styles isn't a simple one, IMO. Sometimes they are similar and sometimes there may  only be a surface similarity.

Take Yang Tai Chi Chaun use of the vertical punch, I find it has an entirely different shape to the energy of release than Isshinryu's use of the vertical punch. Fitting a different reason to  my studies. But it is vertical all the same.

As for ways of looking at arts, I can only respond for myself and my own studies. I don't have enough real knowledge what others do with their Isshinryu. But you raise an important question, do I consider alignment different in my Tai Chi studies from my Isshinryu studies and instruction?

First I have to answer that it was my Tai Chi instructor, Ernest Rothrock,  after 15 ears of practice began to explain tai chi in terms of alignment.

In part I didn't train with him for 15 years, after the first several I was pretty much on my own practice and effort, with maybe annual or longer spaces between instruction. He took the time when he felt I had progressed to the point that alignment theory would fit where I was in training, to expound on it (and of course pull my technique apart in infinite detail). I'm quite sure if I had been able to train with him more closely over the years, the points, etc. would have come much faster.

Now, when I came to see what he was showing, I saw the obvious implications to my Isshinryu instruction, and at some level the arts became intertwined on alignment.

What I immediately realized was the theories behind correct alignment were nothing more than the way I was originally taught each art, but the principles re-enforced how to use it more effectively for a student or ones' self. But once understanding how power was lost or gained in a concrete way by better or worse body alignment, so many of the practices I had developed and was using made even more sense.

I didn't begin Tai Chi to affect my Karate. In fact I was interested in Tai Chi long before I began karate instruction. But when I began the practice (as a new Isshinryu sho-dan), I had the chance look at something I was long interested in, and a vague suspicion that it would be useful when I was much older. It was only after quite a few years of study I found that Tai Chi was helping me understand my Isshinryu technique much better.

I've never maintained Tai Chi practice is necessary for great Isshinryu in the least. Yet, I do feel long term study of Tai Chi can be a helpful tool, if one is really ready to pay the price and practice for decades. Believe it or not, your prerogative.

Now beginning to understand the use of alignment in power and execution, It was just another tool in the students developing Isshinryu as we teach it.

When we train students we don't bother them with terms and theories they can't put into practice. Instead we show them how to do it correctly, reinforce their right actions and help them understand their incorrect actions.

In time we can show them more, as they gain more control of their actions. But it is our understanding of alignment (theirs) that guides our teaching approach to them.

The difference is after Dan we more openly discuss how to develop alignment more fully.

Some consider Isshinryu a steady state universe, as is their right. Once you get it you've got it. Others consider Isshinryu an open, expanding universe, and I freely confess I see things this way. For example this is how my Tai Chi instructor taught me.

Teach them correctly, reinforce them correctly, and as their skills advance, eventually open the student to more knowledge about the process.

As in the case with my daughter last Sunday, trying to move her arms and legs in the right direction is enough, explaining the underlying theory of correct alignment would be useless. And as a student develops, it is the instructors experience how and when to explain more. You can give anybody anything, such as beginners starting with SunNuSu kata, but the knowledge to be successful with that information you can't give them, they have to earn it with long study.

Now the underlying principle of alignment exists in all motion. It's not particular to Isshinryu or Tai Chi Chaun.

By way of example, when I get really gifted students at advancing levels of training they begin to watch Gene Kelly dancing in the movies. Take "Singing in the Rain" where Gene dances with Donald O'Conner. Both were extremely gifted and skilled dancers. But watch Gene's use of his alignment and centering, his bearing of his hips and abdomen and you find a much more advanced skill set than O'Conner, even though he is hitting the same steps as Gene.

This is a long way of saying, as a student becomes more and more advanced,  their work on those small details that has greater and greater value. But in our instruction approach, each step from day one is on that same path. The student by their efforts controls when and where their progress comes.

And to really open things up, there is more than one potential alignment for any technique, depending on how you can choose to sell it. More of the expanding universe approach.

I could try and wrap words around how we approach this, but as in many things they would be meaningless. I can't give you a 1,2,3 and you've got it. I can't run a clinic and the point springs forth. It's many, many layers working towards a goal.

For example Sherman Harrill Sensei could and did show tons of information at his clinics. What and how one retains that information is an individual effort. One person will remember 10 applications, another will write an encyclopedia of them.

Postscript:  Along my studies I found parallel affirmation in a Tai Chi masters text, in a unique hand formation discussed by a Chinese senior instructor written in Inside Tai Chi, In an initial discussion by Jim Keenan of the "5 bows theory", in my study with Ernest Rothrock on the Wu Tai Chi Chaun Teaching Form and many other places, Of course now I knew what to look for, I knew what I was looking at.

This is something useful for advancing Dan students, instructors and those seeking the underlying nature of our arts.

Isshin - Concentration the Art: Ice Chi in Frosty Derry-Air

 

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2024/04/basic-energy-point-allignment-as-used.html