Teaching Is Learning

Tonight ask acting “Sempai” (senior student) and I worked with a new young teenager on his first night.

It is an odd thing to be asked to instruct somebody for their first Aikido class. I wish I could be Mighty Mouse and fly in to save the day. But it is just me and what little I know.

I tried to help with instructing his first back roll and front roll. You spend time trying to learn how to do something so you don't think about it, you just do it. But then you have to “explain” how to do something and when you try you don't know what to say. It adds a whole new dimension...you see something is off but you can't say what is wrong and you have reconcile the intuitive with the analytical. Not in definitively contradictory but two decidedly different things.

I hope it helped the new Aikidota and I hope it helped me.