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8/6/05
Evening class.
Worked with Noel on test stuff. It was great, I learned where some of the smoothness that he has in his ikkyo comes from, how the shoulder is rolled from the point that you hand reaches the ukes elbow all the way to the mat. It was great. It also felt like I am completely not ready for the test this time.
Victor and I worked together and he helped me with my technique of the morning, and easily pointed out that the problem was in the very beginning of the technique. We worked on it for maybe 5 minutes, and I think that I got the answer, and started doing it a lot better. We also talked about getting frustrated.
We then started working on Kote Gaeishi. Victor would do it, and I cannot tell you why it was that I fell over. Victor said; "Don't give the uke your address". I thought why not, I live behind a locked gate, they have to call to get in… Besides Victor knows where I live! J Then I realized that what he was saying, don't add your own energy to the ukes, as then they have something to use as a place to push or pull. If you only guide their energy then there is no way that they can "find your center or your energy". I did kote gaieshi this way for a while with Victor, any time that I added energy he would reverse the technique on me. Any time that I only guided I didn't use any strength at all and Victor would fall over. It was like Magic.
Worked more on a variety of techniques on the test, and then we did Jui Waza. With Victor it was a game, and I would do ok some times, other times, I saw or had the reversal happen to me. Barry Victor and I were the first group. It was interesting feeling some flow. Not enough to be happy with, but some flow was there. Made me feel a lot better about my aikido.
Second group was Shawn, Daniel and I. It was a good group too, almost opposite of the first. Slower, less strength used. It all felt good. There was a lot of flow, and I worked on always trying to get to the center of Nage when I was uke. This made the Nage have to work on the flow of energy. Shawn picked up on it, and did the same back, and we were laughing and having a really good time about it all.