The reflections of a 47-year old beginner in Aikido, about training, learning, aiki, horsemanship, and life.
Linda Eskin is horse person (dressage/trails), user experience planner (Web/apps), and a student at Aikido of San Diego.
BROWSE POSTS BY SUBJECT
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
Most of the posts here are duplicates of my posts from
my blog on AikiWeb.com, a very active and friendly community of Aikido students and teachers. If you are a member of AikiWeb, and would like to comment, please do so there.
I am a beginning student of Aikido, a martial art that, like horsemanship, takes a lifetime to master. These posts are only my own observations on my own experience. You should not rely on anything I say here. Any inept or incorrect information is my own responsibility, and should not be a reflection on others.
I am grateful to
Dave Goldberg Sensei for being an extraordinary teacher, and for creating an engaged, thinking, and compassionate community of students and teachers at
Aikido of San Diego. If you are in the area, visitors are always welcome to observe classes. If you are a student at another local dojo, keep an eye on
our dojo calendar for upcoming seminars and other events.
Copyright 2009, Linda Eskin. Please feel free to share any of my poetry, online, or in print, keeping my name and any other acknowledgments with it. I will almost certainly be happy to let you use anything else I've posted here, with proper attribution, but please ask first.
Contact me via e-mail
Linda Eskin
MORE AIKIDO READING
Enjoying Weapons Classes
I’ve been doing more weapons classes, and really enjoying them. There’s something that feels more centered and focused about working with weapons. Well… most of the time, anyway.
We practiced tonight with the jo,
and some things were starting to flow.
But grace was not to be,
‘cause I fell like a tree
when I caught my foot on Nage’s toe.
I’m fine, thank you. ;) Just got my feet tangled up and fell plumb over sideways. Thud.
I demonstrated just a little bit more competence during the rest of the class, at least. I don’t know what it is about weapons that makes techniques involving them seem so much simpler - or at least more comprehensible. Maybe it’s just that introducing a single straight line into the equation adds a hint of order or a point of reference to the usual wiggly confusion of arms and wrists. In any case, I find weapons classes to be quite a lot of fun, and very rewarding.
—-
I couldn’t resist adding this, which I’m also posting to the AikiWeb thread “Limerick Challenge”:
Though I love Thursday night’s weapons class,
my techniques with the jo barely pass
for aikido. It’s true,
and it makes me quite blue,
that I tripped up and fell on my side.
Haha… I crack myself up. :-)
