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This felt like being home after a weekend vacation. I trained with Rick which is always good, met Roy, someone that used to train a lot at the Dojo, but moved away.
We worked on Morote Dori Irimi Nage(?) I need to take better notes between the classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays they tend to run together sometimes. There was a little glimmer of flow, and some concept of maybe being able to see how the parts are all there in all of the aikido moves. I ended up in front of the class showing how it was that I was destined to get punched in the ribs in this move. Learned that I needed to make sure that I was facing my partner, and that I had control of their center before I moved there. This was amazing watching Sensei do it, I still think that I am going to get it right in the ribs this side of a couple of years of practice.
After class we went for a coffee, this was wonderful, and something that I have been wanting to do for the three months since I started at the Dojo. It was great there were 5 of us, and the conversation was excellent. There was a lot that made me think. People who generally come to things easily don't practice well. They tend to look lazy in some ways, and undisciplined, but that there is more going on than that. This was a new lens on the practice issue for me, and I am evaluating it, for how it fits into my life.
The thing about going for coffee may seem strange to some people, but part of my security in relationships has always been having more than a single connection with the people in my life. I like to know them on different levels, to felt that they are my friends in addition to my training partners is important to me, it makes me feel more secure in our relationship, gives me what feels like a wider path to walk down with them.
There was the idea that we have to get out of our own way in terms of our own energy. Sensei put it as getting off the line to the energy that is in you.
I realized that I did not think of Aikido like anything else in my life. There is something different there for me.
We talked about the Marshal aspect of Aikido, and how marshal arts are about killing other people before they can kill you, and are derived from battlefield conditions where it is not a good thing to be gentle with your attacker, or to possible to bring them closer to enlightenment through love.
Sensei spoke about how O-Sensei felt that the Atomic bomb drop on Japan were the logical end of every conflict in the human nature of escalation. WOW! That made sense, and was scary with what is going on it the world today.
It was wonderful. More than I could have hoped for, and like I said it was an opportunity that I had been waiting for since I started.
03-17-2004 11:12 AM 