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Old 07-14-2006, 06:38 AM   #20
Amelia Smith
 
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Dojo: Martha's Vineyard Aikido Club
Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 154
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Re: Brown Belt Syndrome

Ah, brown belt syndrome! I see a lot of that going on with particular people, and I wonder if it's more about them than the stage of development, since for some brown belt syndrome seems to last six years or more, while for others it's only a couple of months. One more dimention of brown belt syndrome which hasn't been mentioned above is total insensitivity to uke, which for some reason seems to go along with the rest of it.

I trained less for about a year while I was a 2nd kyu, partly because of the demands of graduate school and perhaps because I was at a slightly different style of dojo that I didn't like so much as my old dojo. Mostly, though, it was graduate school. I did take a break for about 6 months after shodan, though, to do some travelling (in an area where there was no aikido, and practically no martial arts of any kind). When I came back I found myself the senior student in most classes, and that situation has continued to the present (2 years later). I haven't been bored so much as frustrated by the occasional lack of other students. I think that for those long, later plateaus, you need to transfer a lot of your attention to teaching, and get some sense of progress from the progress of newer students -- withour overcorrecting.

So, I think I missed most of brown belt syndrome. Whew!
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