Date: Sep 14, 2006

Location: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Venue: Asia Martial Arts Defence Club
Address: Near Heraa St., Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Phone: 966-2-6940930 x2108
URL: http://shuseikan.tripod.com
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Notes: Free Aikido Seminar
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6/29/2006
Last week I was training with Rembrandt after class. It was amazing and magical. We were doing a kind of physical conversation. There was give and take, and an exchange that often caused both of us to laugh. I found that if I used the slightest amount of upper body strength, in the conversation, I would instantly, and I mean instantly do a breakfall. It was wonderful!!!! It would happen again and again. It taught my body what my mind already knew, good Aikido has nothing to do with strength.

Class this week has been heavily influenced by the Kirisawa seminar a few folks attended last weekend. It's been good training as it deviates a bit from our usual approaches in that it is a bit more indirect, doing things like taking uke's energy directly to the floor to unbalance with no joint lock or other coercion.

Also notable this week was learning a new breakfall using ushiro mae ukemi to fall out of ryotetori tenchinage. Once I started practicing these ushiro mae ukemi breakfalls, opportunities to use them seem to be popping up out of tons of techniques, like irimi and sumiotosh.

Inevitably questions have arisen out of this about how 'real' it all is. I.e. the falls take time to do... Could you ever really be relaxed enough to take them in real life without having your neck broken?

Adiscussion last week in Aikido-L really caught my attention, and I've been thinking a lot about it. The initial article ( url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945&pageNumber=1&catID=2]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945&pageNumber=1&catID=2/url] ) really struck home to me about practice and what is required to become an expert. I feel like it is especially timely with me currently trying to change my practice a bit. It reinforced that I need to think in class about what it is I'm trying to accomplish.

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