Is My Aikido I.Q. Dropping?

This past Saturday I attended a short seminar at Aikdo of Dallas. The teacher was Peter Bernath, Shichidan (7th degree black belt) and Shihan (master teacher), so I guess he is a pretty big muckamuck
in the Aikido world. I don't remember too much except that it seemed like with more than a few things he had us work on, we had to make movements contrary to a common sense approach.

One example was a yokomenuchi attack where we had to slide in and to the side of Uke and turn around (putting our back to the attack for a short time) and then end up with the attacking arm in front of our face where we somehow went to Shihonage.

I don't know if it is seminars or just the Dallas dojo, but I seem to loose a few points of Aikido I.Q. Whenever I'm there. On Wednesday at Minneapolis I was able adequately perform Sankyo to a Katatetori attack, but with the thing in Dallas on Saturday I never got the hang of it. And I don't know what I was doing differently.

I'm sure I was a frustrating partner to work with since I was such a dunce. But it was still fun, and even though it was only a 3 hour seminar I was really exhausted by the end, and my body must have provided some sort of Edorphin shot, or something, because I felt great the rest of the day. Maybe life isn't just a lingering disease ending in death.

The clip above shows Skip Chapman talking about Yonkyo, whom I believe taught at the first seminar I attended.