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Old 07-27-2011, 09:01 PM   #35
hughrbeyer
Dojo: Shobu Aikido of Boston
Location: Peterborough, NH
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 653
United_States
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Re: teaching the blind

Everybody matters, and everybody has something to teach. The "weak," small women force me to get super-sensitive to feel what they're doing and where they're going with their technique. The big, strong guys force me to deal with their strength without getting strong back. The newbies force me to deal with untrained attackers. The high dans force me to learn what they think I should learn instead of what I want to work on. :-) My first sensei had had polio and walked in leg braces with a crutch. We learned quickly to keep our backs straight when we threw him because when he went over, that crutch wasn't stopping for anybody.

Nobody's perfect. No one person is going to maximize your training. Training with a blind person would definitely introduce challenges, and they should be discussed frankly, but I'm not convinced there'd be nothing to learn from it.
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