The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
Ok, I'm a wimp. A tough guy would have, well...toughed it out. Yesterday after our warm up we doing something and while walking to observe what Charlie was trying to demonstrate I had a slight accident. I slid my right foot forward and the long lanky toe next to my big toe caught some traction and the rest of me went on another inch or so with my full weight. I didn't break the toe but it sounded like 10 to 20 knuckles cracking in unison.
It didn't hurt at that time so I kept on practicing, but at the one hour mark it really started bothering me. Yes I could have stayed but it really was irritating even though it wasn't swelling.
Anyway by last night it was black and blue on the tip and today I walk like I have a club foot.
I will probably miss tomorrow unless it feels way better.
Sidney is out of town for a week or so, and Charlie taught last night.
We worked mainly from katate- tori (wrist grab) but the cool part was towards the end of class where Charlie felt we were getting too hung up on the mechanics of the techniques so he had nage close their eyes and extend their arm for uke to choose which hand to grab.
So we sensed whether it was ai-hamni or gaku-hamni and respond accordingly. We all tended to freeze up at first but it was cool to really feel the freedom to simply sense the attack and trust yourself to figure out the correct response.
I got a Bokken (wooden practice sword) from the Internet and there were two lengths available and I got the one that I thought was most similar to the cheap ones we have at the dojo.
BUT, once I pulled the Bokken out of the box I saw it was smaller that the others, just by an inch or so. But it feels great and the finish is beautiful.
I just hope I'm not jealous of the bigger Bokkens that the other guys have at the dojo. Hey, I'm comfortable in my own skin AND my smaller Bokken, I mean it gets the job done doesn't it?
Next to the Bokken is a very cheap Jo I found at a Martial Arts supply store locally.
The only thing of note was while we practice shomenuchi with the “Jo” Sensei had us exaggerate our body movement so we really sensed our center driving the motion. It was fascinating when you “accidentally” felt you were doing it right and you hear the “whoosh” of the Jo cutting through air. Plus he had us practice the shomenuchi strike in batches of 100, if you tried to use your muscles too much you actually become winded.
Shiba Sensei said he wanted to at least regularly practice with weapons once a month an perhaps twice a month and that we should bring our own weapons on those days.
I suppose getting your own Bokken, Jo and Tanto is one of the things that designate a commitment to the practice. It also brings to mind one of those things that crosses my consciousness from time to tim, “what is my level of commitment?”. I missed a full week because of home and work duties again, and in general my efforts are minuscule compared to a really dedicated Aikido student, but I keep on gong. Oh well...
Tonight Charlie emphasized unbalancing the attacker's center and basically letting uke throw himself. I think we started with yokomenuchi for each attack and in one instance we entered early to catch uke well before the strike gets any momentum and then bring the other arm up like iriminage and then step through in the most unbalanced direction.
Charlie kept pointing out he was trying to have us realize that we were addressing uke's area of power and neutralizing it by either catching the attack before it got going or flowing with it and simply directing it. Often it was by simply stepping slightly aside and lightly guiding uke through the direction were you (nage) are not.
A good class.
Then video shows the founder in 1935 and aroun the 30 to 40 second area he does some of the stuff we did tonight, although we were much slower.
As an aside I read in more than one place the ukes for the founder were shocked because they would attack as usual but "suddenly" find them self on the floor and not really know what happened. One guy deliberately tried to be more aggressive because he thought everybody was just playing nice with O Sensei, be he too was shocked to discover himself tossed like all the rest. So if it looks a little to staged in the video at least consider there may be more going on than mets the eye.
