"Martial Relaxation"

Please read the linked article by Stanley Pranin Sensei on Martial Relaxation and other issues. It is his review of his experience teaching at a particular Aikido seminar. In my remarks following, I try to give my understanding of what he says, as influenced by my own experience, such as it is, and various teachers and other sources.

For me, the point about "martial relaxation" particularly strikes home because it is among my father's central basic teachings, though he hasn't used that particular term. As he put it, holding your muscles tensely in anticipation of action will delay and slow the action itself, and as Pranin Sensei says, that tension can also telegraph your intended movement to your partner or opponent.

Now, it is called "martial" relaxation because it is not the kind of relaxation that is limp and uncontrolled, but one in which you are aware, steady and in control. My father has sometimes described it as "poised", contrasting it to both "tensed" and limply relaxed.

So, it's very important to maintain this middle state between rigid tension and limpness. Both tension and limpness slow us down and delay reactions, but in the zone of martial relaxation we can find the best reaction and movement speed.

Observe a cat, and its speed of motion when striking. Cats appear to naturally maintain this state of martial relaxation, probably due to their nature as predators who also can be vulnerable to other predators.  (People who play with cats, thus, might be able to develop and measure their martial relaxation by their ability to, for example, evade a pounce or some "batting". ;))

In his article, Pranin Sensei mentions two other issues that he encountered among students: unbalancing the partner, and use of distracting strikes ("atemi" in Japanese).

Unbalancing is one of the most central and definitive things in the theory of Aikido. It's very much understandable that people sometimes forget in the heat of practice or combat, so it's all the more important for those who practice that art to keep in mind the basics of theory as well as of practice, and of course, put theory into practice. Aikido without using the aiki techniques of unbalancing is essentially simple judo or jujutsu. Aikido is born from jujutsu, in particular the Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu tradition, which is itself a specialty school that emphasizes aiki, as the name indicates. So, if we're training Aikido, we should give firm attention to breaking the partner's balance, when we are doing the nage/tori side of the equation. That is the key to making the resulting technique an Aikido technique.

As for atemi, it is an important method in achieving that all-important task of unbalancing the partner. It's a strike, a hit, that is meant to distract and unbalance... to break the concentration and poise of the other partner. It's not meant (in Aikido, that is!) to injure, nor more than briefly cause pain. As Pranin Sensei says in many places, Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba uses atemi in his filmed demonstrations and teachings.