Kagami Biraki

Another New Year, Another Aikido Seminar

The Kagami Biraki seminar at Dallas with Yamada Sensei is this weekend and it is a mess-O-people in what is normally a spacious dojo. But especially in the morning it was WAY crowded and there was often not room enough to take a fall and definitely not enough room to roll out of anything.

For me it is sometimes a drag to go to these seminars since they are so crowded and sometimes (rarely really, but still sometimes) the people you work with are super confident and seem to like telling you what you are doing wrong. However even though you work out about 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon it is usually not too taxing (at the time) since you can't go all out because you keep bumping into people.

Harvey Konigsberg taught the last session and I actually got a “Good” comment after he watched me try something he taught. Way cool, since I didn't know what I was doing and also because he talked so softly sometimes that I couldn't make out his explanations.

I did hear him refer to Ki or “your energy” a few times and it struck me that while the Aikido books are full of talk about ki. Most of the seminars and dojos I've gone to rarely mention it. I don't know what to make of if , but there you are.

The video above it much like what he taught today. It was really interesting because just watching it on You Tube doesn't convey how powerful the motions felt.