I just back from a seminar with four instructors (again!), this time at North Bay Aikido down in Santa Cruz, CA, and I thought I'd share my experiences with everyone here.

The seminar featured Linda Holiday, Jamie Zimron, Dan Caslin, and Greg Mock.

I arrived a bit late due to the fact that I took a wrong turn in getting down there (ended up on 101 South rather than staying on 680 onto 17), but I was able to barely sneak onto the mat during warm-ups.

Linda Holiday led the first hour-plus long session with a spirited practice interspersed with quotes from O-sensei she had read that morning over breakfast. She showed great respect toward what O-sensei had said and mixed it into her teaching. It was a surprise and an honor that she actually remembered my name when she came around to help my partner in suwariwaza shomenuchi ikkyo since I've only met her a couple of times during my entire training. Her techniques were wonderful and I feel she really conveys a good spirit of aikido.

The second hour was led by Greg Mock. I had actually met Greg briefly earlier this summer in Washington DC at Summer Camp, so it was nice to see him all the way out here. He went through about fifteen minutes with the bokken, explaining to us that the bokken tends to bring out the "worst" in us as far as getting tense in the shoulders. We worked with the bokken to develop more "natural" and relaxed movements, and we worked this into iriminage and kotegaeshi. All in all, a very interesting session.

During lunch, I went and grabbed a sandwich at the local deli. The weather was beautiful, so I just sat around in the local park and ate outside.

The second half started out with Dan Caslin. He went through an intricate little movement for back stretches which he then translated into a full technique. (It was like tenchinage from morotedori, but you ended up behind the other person.) Although I didn't really like this technique too much since I felt that uke could pretty easily escape by letting go, it was interesting nonetheless. We worked a lot on a drawing motion with the hand that we ended up applying to kaiten nage, iriminage.

The last class was taught by Jamie Zimron. I think, to be honest, that I liked her class the most out of the four, maybe because she came around before the class and rubbed essential oils on my neck and chest. No, seriously (she was doing that to nearly everyone on the mat), I really enjoyed her teaching style -- creative, different, and applicable. We first started out with a few normal bokken suburi, but she asked us to think of the suburi as being cuts to "cut together" rather than cutting apart. (She said Barrish sensei had told her this about ten years or so ago, and she was still thinking about it.) We then went through a few bokken-dori techniques which were nice to do, although I'd practiced them before. We also went into using our hands as though they were "blades" in techniques like iriminage. Her demos in front of the class range from the slow and methodical to show the mechanics of the movements to the energetic to the martial; quite impressive, indeed! We ended up the class with jujinage (I got to work with Mock sensei on this one, luckily), a technique that I haven't done for a couple of years.

All in all, it was a good day down in Santa Cruz for me. I enjoyed myself!