Thomas Osborn
02-24-2010, 11:30 AM
2/24/10 w [1s 5v] All vets were new. I’ll only have these people for 3 weeks but there is a 6 week group starting next Monday. I’d thought I would have the last group a little longer. Too bad!
Good class though. I am getting the intro down a better, more concise and more complete. After warm-up and solo irimi practice, I did a brief exercise to start to incorporate what I was talking about above. I will call this “soft touch” control. It is a flowing movement a little like Tai Chi push-hands. In addition to getting them to be sensitive to their partners movement, there was another, unexpected benefit; if they didn’t move from their center, if they brought upper body strength into play, the flow fell apart. And they could immediately feel it! Then, when we did irimi tenkan with partners, they noticed when the technique didn’t flow, or when they tightened up, or went to their shoulders. They usually couldn’t tell why, or what to do about it, but the awareness of something not being right is a significant step.
I think I will start to include this soft touch exercise at the beginning of each class
(Original blog post may be found here (http://ptsd-veterans.blogspot.com/2010/02/soft-touch-control-exercise.html).)