Dear Paul:
Its hard to respond in detail to your thoughts, but I think that Michael gave the best general response overall. There is a point at which, if one wants to progress with their Hapkido art (and this is regardless of organizational affiliation) that what is required is to simply experience the movement kinesthetically. This is a huge part of what I was trying to convey on another string when I made such a big thing about my experience in Korea. The amount of Kinesthetic information I received truly exceeded anything that I have had in the last few years. That doesn't mean that it would be impossible to find such an experience in the US, or that there is not the potential for people to do this if they are not doing it already. What I mean is that without focus a person could experience, say, 100 techniques before beginning to realize something new about the technique, whereas with the correct focus a person might have the same experience with, say, 10 repetitions. Many times what I have found in the US is more of a focus on WHAT a person is trying to do rather than HOW a person is doing it. And to pursue investigation along these lines Michael is completely correct. The technique must be experienced for all of the subtlties. Now if a person is only interested in dropping someone on their butt, well gross motor skills can be picked up just about anywhere including books, tapes and in the backyard with friends.
Now as far as being in a rut, or looking for exposure to new ideas, well thats what people join groups for. In traditional Korean MA the kwan serves this purpose. Here in the West joining an organization is suppose to be the remedy. The problem I have seen is that once a person joins an organization there starts to be a kind of "us" and "them" spirit that takes over and people start talking about who has THE inside information, or is teaching the most "authentic" art. ( I can report that I had a very uncomfortable experience with my own private students exactly along this line.) Having heard this processed a number of different ways in Korea I can honestly report that things only got as far as someone identifying another people as "different". I know that a lot of people make a big deal about why folks can't simply get together and train and exchange ideas and so forth. Unfortunately ego is a fact of life and most folks simply won't let it go.
As far as the shift from static to dynamic attacks, there are certain things that seem to uniformly get in the way. The biggest thing is that people are instructed in such a way that they will always take the long way to competence in training. By this I mean that most folks who use the Confucian Model for learning simply have TOO much to think about all at once and it DOES take a long time before the mind can sort out what is important and what isn't. I don't know why people continue to use this teaching model as unless a person WANTS to spend their lives to learn an art and keep it vital it doesn't make a lot of sense. When I use the Academic Approach I work to keep things as uniform and simply as possible. In this way I want to help the student to find those all important patterns, make it easier for them to retain information, and find an overall logic as we move from point A to point B. In this way, when its time to do a static technique under dynamic circumstances the person has only a small bit to add, subtract or modify and not a "whole new technique" to learn. Hope this last paragraph made sense.
Best Wishes,
Bruce
