Daito Ryu Roppokai

The Daito Ryu Roppokai Study Group at Aikido Eastside just completed its second weekend seminar of the year with Howard Popkin Sensei,direct student of Okamoto Seigo, head of the system.

The thing that has most struck me about the Roppokai training method is the way they use exercises that are very precisely targeted to elucidate specific principles and ingrain the proper body connections to use those principles in waza. This was quite different from the way I learned Aikido. When I started Aikido class back in 1976, I simply joined in and tried to do what the other students were doing. I think the first technique I tried was shiho-nage. The amount of complex body skills required to actually do that technique effectively made it virtually impossible to do anything but fall back on some basic body mechanics and muscle power.

The Roppokai methodology really stays away form applied waza in favor of paired exercises which allow the student to identify and practice very specific skills. One can practice achieving a balance break forwards, backwards, sideways, angles, etc without the distraction of worrying about the various applications that might come off that balance break. This focus on what I would call the "entry" keeps the stress of practice down and associates the motor skills with a relaxed mind.

Execution of these various balance breaks ranges from extreme slow motion in which one can examine every minute detail, fell the result of each change on angle of the hand, every movement of the hip or bend of the knee, to faster execution in which flow becomes most important. Popkin Sensei consistently reminds one to not be attached to the success of a technique but rather to choose one or two specific principles and be very mindful of just those elements. I find this approach incredibly effective. It is virtually impossible to keep all of the elements, even the essential ones, in ones mind simultaneously. In our Roppokai training we might do a certain exercise one day focusing on one or two elements, then turn around the next day and do the same exercise putting attention on a different set of elements.

Instruction is totally body centered. Do this with your elbow and that happens with your partner, move your hip this way and your partner tips that way. I have this discussion with Aikido friends who were trained as I was... we were expected on some level to "steal the technique". Our teacher would do something completely incomprehensible and we were supposed to figure it out by seeing it or feeling it. The problem with this is that when you start talking about so-called internal power, the movements are, well, internal. If no one teaches you what to look for and what that feels like, you'll simply miss it. Our brains largely filter out things we don't have names for or things which don't fit the dominant paradigm under which we are currently functioning.

It's rather like the experiment they did with the bouncing ball and the gorilla. A group of folks was asked to watch a guy bouncing a basketball on a TV screen. They were instructed to count the number of bounces until told to stop. At one point a man in a gorilla suit ran across the screen. Most of the participants failed to even notice him.

So in Aikido waza, if you do not already have an idea what to be looking for, you will most likely not see or feel it, even when it is being done on you. One teacher of aiki, whose name I can't remember, said "If you understand what was just done to you, it wasn't aiki." With principles functioning on such a subtle level, only the most extraordinary person would be likely to both perceive the essential principles of high level technique and be able to translate them into specific muscle movements, joint alignments, or energetic shifts.

This is, more than anything else, the most important thing I have gotten out of training in the Roppokai system thus far. You are not taking anything away from the student by providing very specific instruction. You are training them to be able to see. By ingraining an understanding of the various principles functioning into both the conscious mind and the body you create a student who can look at almost any teacher's technique and see the essential elements functioning. Rather than coming in Friday night and leaving Sunday night no wiser, a properly trained seminar attendee should be able to take full advantage of exposure to a high level instructor. Even when a teacher has a different style or approach, the student who understands principle based practice should be able to see what principles are functioning. The principles are universal even though the outer form may be different.

Anyway, every time I train with Popkin Sensei, I come away tangibly improved and with a greater understanding, not just of the Roppokai techniques on which we are working, but of what I am trying to do with my Aikido waza. I am increasingly basing my Aikido instruction on a methodology which strives to accomplish the same thing.

So, once again, I find my head swimming with technique, principle, body connections, etc. I doubt I will have digested more then a small portion of it all before Popkin Sensei returns in December. I'm already looking forward to that return.