Читать книгу Traditions. Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways онлайн

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Some budoka might doubt their balance can be upset, particularly when they are prepared for an attempt to do it, particularly when the push isn’t going to be a surprise, particularly among those who have come to believe their stances are immovable. But try it somewhere in the radius of pushes, even a very moderate force will break down your stance. Don’t worry. Your failure to maintain your balance has nothing to do with any flaws in your practice or in the stance. It has to do with the shikaku that is inherent in any stance and in any human’s posture.

At its most basic level, shikaku maybe thought of as the angle (or angles, to be more exact) where an upright human is vulnerable in terms of balance. It is, in a kinesiological sense, his blind side. In a left front stance as one might take in karate, your partner can slam his sweeping left foot against your left foot all day long in a lateral motion, to no avail. But if he hooks his foot slightly and sweeps at a shallow angle to his right rear corner, you’ll go down like you have been hit with a cattle prod. In that stance, that direction, your own left front, is the angle of your shikaku. In aikido against a wrist grab you rotate your seized hand as if you were going to strike your attacker in his face with your tegatana, or “hand sword.” Doing so causes his upper body to twist away. You are able to pin his arm in the basic aikido technique of ikkyo. But it isn’t until the aikidoka learns to shift his body center slightly at the onset, to readjust his extension of power against the opponent’s dead zone, that ikkyo and every other aikido technique really work.