{"id":5305,"date":"2012-10-05T14:16:43","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T19:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/?p=5305"},"modified":"2012-10-05T14:23:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T19:23:14","slug":"koichi-tohei-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/koichi-tohei-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Koichi Tohei, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editors Note: This is the first in a three part series written by Pietro Ignacio, one of our students. \u00a0Pietro has a black belt awarded by the Ki Society.<\/em><\/p>\n

Early Years<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Ki-Hanja\"<\/p>\n

Koichi Tohei was born in 1920. He graduated from the Economics Department of Keiko Univeristy where he was heavily involved in Judo. There, he injured his chest during practice which caused him to suffer from pleurisy and made his breathing difficult. Doctors told him he would never\u00a0 be able to exert himself ever again.<\/p>\n

In order to regain his strength and health, he engaged in Zen meditation and Misogi breathing. Tohei enrolled himself in the Ichikukai at the Daitokuji Temple in Kyoto.<\/p>\n

After regaining his health, he returned to practice Judo but realized that after his Zen and Misogi training, he was no longer satisfied with just studying body movements without focusing on the movement of the mind.<\/p>\n

Finding Aikido<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1939, after slowly withdrawing from Judo, a senior Judo student gave Tohei a letter of introduction to Master Morihei Ueshiba.\u00a0 Tohei took the letter to Shinjuku where Ueshiba’s school, (then called Aiki Budo), was located.\u00a0 When he met Ueshiba, Tohei had several years of Judo under his belt and Ueshiba invited him to attack with all his might. He was thrown effortlessly.\u00a0 According to Tohei himself, he could not feel any force being applied to any part of his body so he could not even think of a defense. He just found himself on the ground with no idea how he had been thrown.\u00a0 From that point on, he became a student of Ueshiba.<\/p>\n

After only six months of studying Aiki Budo, Tohei began to accompany Ueshiba in his teaching trips.\u00a0 Sometimes, Ueshiba himself would ask Tohei to teach in his behalf.\u00a0 At this time, although Tohei had a black belt in Judo, he had no rank in Aiki Budo. Nonetheless, and by request of Ueshiba himself, Tohei was already teaching people with 3rd\u00a0or 4th\u00a0dan rank in Aiki Budo.<\/p>\n

War Interruption<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1942, Tohei was conscripted into the army and was later shipped out to China.\u00a0 His first taste of combat was being ambushed at night.\u00a0 During this experience, Tohei felt ashamed to have been so scared that he immediately fell back into his practice of Zen.\u00a0 It was at this moment in his life that he learned to concentrate on his one point and relax completely by surrendering in his belief that the Universe makes it’s own decisions on whether we live or die.<\/p>\n

During the war, Tohei also learned to perform Aikiatsu and how to extend his Ki.<\/p>\n

At the end of the war, Tohei returned to Japan and began farming.<\/p>\n

Resuming Training<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time of Toehi’s return to Japan, Ueshiba was also farming in Iwama where he also had a dojo.\u00a0 Tohei visited him there and subsequently resumed his Aiki Budo training.\u00a0 Tohei noted that at this time, Ueshiba’s techniqies had changed and matured.\u00a0 Ueshiba could perform techniques that none of his students could.\u00a0 It should be noted that during this time, when students practiced, they all resisted each other.<\/p>\n

While resuming his training with Ueshiba, Tohei was introduced to Tempu Nakamura who was teaching Shinshin Toitsu Do or Unification of Mind and Body at the Gokokuji Temple.<\/p>\n

It was during this study under Tempu Nakamura that Tohei first realized that \u201cthe mind moves the body\u201d\u00a0 Tohei started to re-examine O-Sensei’s techniques and realized that he was first leading his partner’s minds then throwing his body so the opponent could never resist.<\/p>\n

Tohei realized that they have all been trying to move their bodies without leading the mind.\u00a0From that moment on, no one in the dojo could throw Tohei except O-Sensei himself.\u00a0This was to become the cornerstone of Tohei’s study and understanding of Aiki Budo.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, Tohei was appointed Shihan Bucho or Chief Instructor and Master General of Aikikai by Morihei Ueshiba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editors Note: This is the first in a three part series written by Pietro Ignacio, one of our students. \u00a0Pietro has a black belt awarded by the Ki Society. Early Years Koichi Tohei was born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pietro","category-shihan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5305"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5331,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions\/5331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}