Rene Hunt
BC, Canada
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Hello Peter,
I am a practitioner of Shotokan karate. It has been brought to my attention that a high ranking master in our style has a posture of moving with leading hips or tilted hips while walking and probably at all times. Do you know what the benefit of this would be? Does it have to do with lowering the attention to the center? or movement?
Thank you for any input.
Rene Hunt
Rene,
Perhaps. When we engage some body practice our attention does go there, and our movement is affected, but there are many ways to produce those effects without contorting the body. Tilted hips sounds bad. Distorting the body is rarely good. There are many martial and other arts that tend to disfigure the body for some purpose. A ballerina for example will have stubby and crushed toes and feet, and a tendency to walk like a duck. These side-effects may be necessary to the practice of her art, but it is a disfigurement of the body. We should question the necessity of any distortion. Perhaps some reshaping of the body is required to practice our brand of martial pursuit, but be wary of obsolete or irrelevant methods of body conditioning.
Leading with the hip may just be another way of coordinating body movement, perhaps to unify top and bottom in motion. If movement is initiated from the hips or center then the hip will move first, but if the body is to be unified the rest should move at the same time. Such movement may appear as different than what one is used to seeing since usually people aren't unified and don't move from the center. Hope this helps.
Good luck.
Peter Ralston
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