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Saturday night was a watershed moment in my training. There wasn't a fight or anything like that. In seven years of training I've changed beyond all recognition. The shy, angry, ignorant, insecure person that walked into my Sensei's dojo seven years ago has died. The last vestiges of him slipped peacefully away about 12am on saturday night.
I feel this break with the past and the hours since then have been spent mulling over how I got here. The answer is budo. I am obsessed with it and it dominates my thinking. I'm hesitant to say Aikido though, I don't think it's O-Sensei's message that has got me here, not on it's own. For me budo is practical, it is how I live my life.
The attitudes I display towards uke is the attitude I take with me into life day to day and the attitude I have towards training is the attitude I have towards life as a continuing process.
In the face of uke you must act decisively, you must end the situation before it can get out of hand, nip it in the bud. He must not even be allowed to complete his attack. Half way through shomen he should hit the mat.
You must be filled with resolve and admit no doubt into your mind. No limiting thought can be allowed to dwell in your head, you must enter in boldly. You must embody "katana ore ya mo tsuki."
I always think of my mind as my spear, my physical Aikido as my sword, and my game as my yoroi doshi (cuz once the spear has got her where I want her I draw my yoroi doshi and I go up and under the ar
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The two most important things Aikido has taught me:
1. If you're not dead, you can still win. In judo you get thrown you've lost, in Aikido getting thrown means nothing. You get up and fight until you can't fight any longer. Seven times down eight times up. Nine times up, one thousand times up, more, if need be. And what do you do when you get up? You get back into the fight.
2. Whatever the challenge, you can train yourself to deal with it. Someone else has probably found a way of dealing with it, copy them. "I can't do this" is a daft view point. "I don't know how" is a more productive and accurate one.
My particular area of interest is women, but it applies to everything. I hate it when guys are like "she's out of my league." Defeatist talk of any kind annoys me but this especially. To misquote Iida Harima no Kami "You should at least see the colour of the enemy's flags."
Now, admittedly, he did get shot in the head just after saying it, but still, I think that reinforces the point that one's helmet belongs on ones noggin at all times whilst on the battlefield rather than discrediting the general principle that it's better to have a go, fail and learn so that you can win next time than not try and never succeed.
It's also my feeling that in all situations one should put some atemi in to see what happens. You can't say "It's impossible" until you've put in atemi and gauged the reaction.
In paintball, one of my other passions, it is said that if you don'
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Yesterday I got to teach. I was teaching n00bs so I tried to simplify things. For instance they were using their shoulders too much so I started teaching a variation of irimi nage which didn't use the shoulders. As in I chucked out half of the technique and stripped it down to essentials.
Then sensei insisted that I teach basics because what I was teaching was too advanced. Confusion reigned.
What a week. I've always had the feeling of applying technique to uke. This week has been quiet though, usually only myself and Bob training so Sensei has been fine tuning us, going though things slowly and stuff. Mainly we've done kokyu ho rather than technique.
Then on thursday both Bob and I found that the feeling of applying technique had gone and has been replaced by a feeling of pushing a hand through very warm butter.
We were doing tenchi nage and I was searching for the applying feeling and Sensei stopped me and asked what I was doing, told me to stop and corrected me back into the warm butter feeling.
Thing is the warm butter feeling was making me think that I wasn't doing anything and that therefore Bob was jumping. Bob told me it was just as powerful as before though, Then we swapped over and Bob, to me, felt just as powerful but again he had the warm butter feeling rather than the applying feeling. So, like me, he changes his technique back into the applying feeling and like me, get's told off and corrected.
Que ten minute discussion with Sensei. Then kokyu which was fun because both of us were quite excited about being able to casually belt each other up and down the mat with no effort.
I'm confused as hell about what I'm doing differently though, I really have no idea. I can't even describe the feeling, I get a headache just thinking about it because it just doesn't make sense.
06-22-2009 11:50 AM 
