Common steps and sub-activities
Furube
Reido/Furube is the Japanese/Shinto equivalent of the Quaker’s quaking, the Shaker’s shaking, and all the other variants found in Hindu and African cultures in particular.
The name I have put this technique under is approximate, because translation from Japanese to English is always very problematic. If you look up either term in any Japanese Shinto text book, you will probably not find it, but the names cover a technique that owes its existence to practises that are deeply spiritual and are very old. Reido, for example, can be loosely translated as 'Spirit Movement' - involuntary bodily movement (eg. rocking or swaying). Furube is similar, being a form of shaking movement and it is here that you find the approximate definition of this technique.
Within Shinto are a number of what are loosely called ‘regenerating techniques’ – these are techniques specifically designed to give you a spiritual experience. There are any number of names for these various techniques and furube is but one.
Haruchika Noguchi, the founder of the Seitai movement incorporated these techniques within his practices and gave them a secular twist. He renamed them katsugen udon and it this technique which is described in books such as his Order, Spontaneity and the Body [Tokyo:Zensei, 1985].
Look up any book of katsugen, watch the video on youtube of katsugen, however, and what you will be watching is a shadow of what actually takes place or took place during Kishi’s experience and a shadow of what should be done. Look at the youtube video and it all looks very dignified, lots of gentle swirling and hand movements, all very restrained and good for the back muscles.
But unlikely to ever provoke a spiritual experience – not in a month of Sundays.
In the true Shinto technique you shake and shake and jitter and lose yourself in a wild release of energy – a form of cathartic response, and something not dissimilar to a rave dance – with the exception that you do this for hours and hours and hours until you are utterly ‘gone’.
Observations
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