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.
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.
O Sensei is quoted, in The Art of Peace, as saying “No matter how heavily armed your opponent is, you can use the Art of Peace to disarm him (or her). When someone comes in anger, greet him with a smile. That is the highest kind of martial art.”
This video shows so clearly how our actions, little things each of us do individually, can affect the world. A well-timed smile or hug can change someone just a little. They can affect those around them, and so on. Juan Mann, in the video, maybe affected a few thousand people directly. Over 10,000 signed his petition. Over 100,000 commented on the video on YouTube. Over 56 million people have watched just this version of it. 56 million!
Much of what we do is like dropping a pebble in an ocean. We may never notice the affect of the waves we create, but we do create them. Practice peace.
What 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 the Netherlands. (The video above is of him at another seminar - not today.) He had a really interesting way of breaking down the areas of the body, and which area does what. A sort of short hierarchical checklist one can go through when doing techniques to be more aware of where things are falling apart. I would love to spend more time on it (and will try to be aware of it when I’m practicing). There was a lot packed into that one hour!
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:
I can’t resist sharing this video. This is the technique we worked on tonight in class. First time I’d seen it “live”, as best I can recall*. Our versions were a little less dramatic, but still fun to do.
Watching this reminds me all over again how excited I am that I’ll be participating in a seminar with Tissier Shihan next month. He has been practicing Aikido since the same year I was born. I am not a young ‘un. It’s hard to imagine the level of expertise one could develop in Aikido, or anything, by practicing it for my entire lifetime.
Commentary and feedback are invited (via YouTube), of course.
At our dojo, Aikido of San Diego, we start as unranked. The first test is for 6th kyu.
The exam covered:
Ukemi: forward & back roll
Katate-dori: tai no henko, shihonage (omote & ura)
Shomen-uchi: tenkan & irimi, ikkyo (omote & ura)
Jiyuwaza: grabs
Suwariwaza: kokyu dosa
What I’ve been telling my non-Aikidoka friends is that this test is a little like graduating from kindergarten. I had to show that I basically know my colors and can tie my own shoes. Simple stuff, but hard for a beginner to master.
Most of the feedback I got was very positive. There were a few hiccups:
I was mentally off-kilter from having just run back from the restroom (there had been a line). Everyone was already seated on the mat, and my exam was first. So it was run back, sit down, get up, go!
I was winded from rushing, and it took a few minutes to recover from that at the start.
I got dizzy/spaced from rolling, so blew my first hanmi (for the shomen-uchi tenkan), and then almost fell over. (D’oh!)
I was not expecting to have to do shikko (knee walking), so I had no idea why Sensei was asking me if my knees were injured. I think that was my only real deer-in-the-headlights, “duh” moment. I had never tried it on the mat (only once at home), but got through it OK.
Sensei pointed out afterward that my kokyu-dosa (suwariwaza) could be bigger, with better extension.
Overall I’m very happy. Naturally I wanted to nail every last detail, but I did OK, and didn’t embarrass my teachers. I’ll take it.
I had a great time preparing for the exam, and was lucky to work with a very capable mentor - Scott Bjerke. I have never felt so much on the receiving end of the “it takes a village” (to raise a child) concept. In addition to learning from Dave Goldberg Sensei and the other instructors, I have learned from nearly everyone in my dojo, and from others as well. Maybe I can start helping others along now and then (on simple stuff, for the moment).
Now that I have been through the testing process once, I’ll be paying attention in a slightly different way in class now (and likely taking notes after classes). And I’ll certainly be paying more attention to the names of each technique.
Having achieved this little first step, one of my next goals (in addition to working toward 5th kyu, and getting in better physical shape, of course) is to begin to explore applying what I’m learning in Aikido to my riding and other work with my horse. I’ll be posting those adventures here, too.
On of my favorite sempai, Johnathon Purcell, tested for shodan yesterday. Here is slo-mo video of his first throw in his new hakama. He started at Aikido of San Diego when he was 11 years old. He’s off to college at UC Berkeley on Wednesday. He’s a perceptive and thoughtful student and teacher, kind and highly competent. I’ve been very fortunate to train with him since I started practicing Aikido in May. I and our whole dojo are going to miss him something awful. If you’re up that way, perhaps he’ll turn up at your dojo.
