January 2010
12 posts
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Great Trip, Happy to be Home
Long time, no blog post! After the recent seminar, circumstances promptly dumped me back into my normal life. Work was busy. The weather was insane, with the most dramatic storms we’ve seen in years. The power was unreliable for days. Rainy the horse, and the donkeys, have needed extra tending with all the rain and muck. And after one 6-hour power failure our refrigerator broke for good,...
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Aikido Bridge - Saturday
Another amazing day. I’m learning a lot about attending seminars. Sit in the middle, so you can hear. Drink more water than you think you need to. Eat something at each break. And now I know that if you throw the morning’s sweaty gi in your car at lunch, all the windows will be fogged up when you go to leave in the evening.
There are a lot of levels of understanding at work. There are...
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WatchWhat a long day! I’m exhausted. A hot bath and a good night sleep (and some ice packs on my knee) are at the top of the priority list, so just a quick post tonight. I need to sit down with my notebook and try to remember what we did today. It’s all in there somewhere, but describing much of it is beyond me at this point.
The guest instructor this evening was Wilco Vriesman Sensei from...
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It's Seminar Time!
Starting this evening I’m off to the Aikido Bridge Friendship Seminar (14-18 January, 2010, at Jiai Aikido, in San Diego). For anyone who’s curious, here are some videos (by others, from other events) of the three featured instructors:
Christian Tissier Shihan
“Christian Tissier 7th dan Aikikai Shihan, Austria, Vienna, Matsumae Budocenter, 19-20. 12. 2009 “
Hirsohi...
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The Near Future
This weekend, Thursday through Monday, 14-18 January, 2010, I will be participating in my first big seminar at another dojo. It’s the Aikido Bridge Friendship Seminar, at Jiai Aikido in San Diego. The featured instructors are Frank Doran Shihan, Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan, and Christian Tissier Shihan. What a privilege! Several other students from Aikido of San Diego will be attending, too....
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Being Inspired
Our dojo lost a good friend this past week, Keo Power. Sensei shared a lovely tribute on his blog, and I urge you to read it. I had never met the man. From everything I’ve heard about him, and the few photos I’ve seen, I wish I’d had the opportunity.
Some months ago a friend advised me to feel and be inspired by the love and sweat of all those who’d gone before me on the...
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How to go to your first big seminar
I have been around music and horses for many years. In both of cases there are festivals, seminars, workshops, and clinics. I’ve been to many local one-day workshops with touring guitarists and fiddlers, weekend-long annual festivals with hundreds of music workshops going on all day, 4-day riding clinics with world-famous horse trainers, and even one week-long live-in camp in West Virginia...
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Aikido smiled...
In 2009 I came to the dojo. I intended to be serious about Aikido, but could only spare one night a week. I was busy, you see. I was just there to learn some skills I could use.
Aikido smiled, offered a wrist, and I grabbed.
And now, here at the beginning of 2010, without having felt any force to struggle against, and without quite knowing how I got Over Here, I am facing a new direction,...
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