Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 14:51:39 -0600
From: Jun Akiyama
Subject: Aikido-L Seminar Review [3/5]
Sunday
Sunday morning came all too quickly which isn't to say that I wasn't
looking forward to it. The weather had gotten much nicer and allowed
us the first view of the Flatirons in the near distance, frosted over
lightly with snow and looking quite beautiful.
Alan Drysdale sensei, figuring that everyone had acclimated to the
altitude pretty well, opened up the morning nice and briskly and used
me as uke for the first half of his class. Playing with early, late,
and "right on" timing for some techniques, Drysdale sensei gave
everyone something they could work on. Unfortuntately, my ankle which
was sprained a while back started to bother me about halfway through
the class and I had to sit out for the rest of his class.
We had two mini-classes stuffed into an hour's worth of time on
Sunday. Craig Hocker, Don Rojas, and Jon Strauss (all list members,
in case people didn't know!) gave us a brief introduction to the taigi
set forms of Ki Society. Basically, taigi calls for two people to
demonstrate six set techniques in a row, both left and right sides,
with a nice even, consitent rhythm. These forms are sometimes graded
in the form of a competition so that people can sharpen their sense of
rhythm, timing, and connection. It's an interesting approach to let
people take a look at their techniques, one that I think could be very
helpful to a lot of folks out there. As an aside, if anyone believes
that Ki Society folks do not use atemi nor can't take a breakfall,
please ask them to demonstrate taigi #19 which looks like a nice
compendium of atemi and breakfall inducing techniques.
The second mini-class was taught by Peter Boylan, this time sans
stick. He went through a few pointers about newaza including the fact
that newaza was just aikido on the ground and then basically just let
us loose. I got grabbed, pretty much literally, by Julian who
proceeded to tie me into a pretzel, untie me, tie me into a necktie
knot, untie me, and then hand me over to John Costello (who is a wee
bit bigger than I am). Quite a lot of fun -- I can see myself doing a
lot more grappling if there were folks out there who were willing to
teach me...
A group of us headed out to a local Vietnamese place for lunch which
turned out to be closed so we went down the street to a Siamese place
and sat outside in the sun. Some of the folks at my table were
discussing the merits of guava juice, but I was too famished to really
get into that conversation...
After lunch, Chuck Gordon sensei opened up his class with some tessen
techniques. Those of us who didn't have tessen used one foot long,
one inch diameter sticks. Gordon sensei went over some very nice
techniques which resembled nikkyo, ikkyo, kotegaeshi, and some very
direct applications of the end of the stick going into various points
in uke's body. Not to let us down, we also went over some empty
handed techniques including the circle-square-triangle sankyo and the
"iron and feather" nikajo that we did last year -- good stuff. I got
paired up with Julian for the seated nikkyo and had a good time trying
to feel what I was doing through his "passive ukemi" which was pretty
interesting to experience. Gordon sensei also went and demonstrated
some hanbo techniques with Peter (who volunteered himself as the only
person with a bokuto near him when Gordon sensei asked for a
volunteer) and Monica. (During the class Diane, one of Emily's
friends from Austin, got slightly hurt from colliding with another
uke. She was up and about after class, stretching her sore and tired
limbs. I was able to talk to her briefly on Robert Wyatt's cell phone
on Sunday evening around 10pm; she was up in Rocky Mountain National
Park and said that she felt just fine and would let us know how she
was doing in a few days.)
With all of the classes concluded, Peter Boylan presented all of the
teachers (except for Gordon sensei whose gift was "in the mail") with
a custom embroidered dogi top with the "@-Ki" symbol on their left
chest. Ikeda sensei also presented the other four teachers with a
Dogi Pack from Bu Jin Design which, incidentally enough, held Peter's
dogi tops just wonderfully.
We had to say goodbye to a lot of people after class, but about a
dozen of us including James, Monica, Alan, Anita, Craig, Robert H,
Julian, Neil, Robert W, Mike B, Paula, me, and someone else whom I
think I'm missing all went to the Oasis, a favorite dinner spot here.
Folks were able to get a round of drinks, eat up, and talk during the
last dinner of the Seminar. I got dropped off at the Golden Buff to
pick up my car but before I left, Robert Wyatt let us look through his
telescope at the craters on the moon and let us see the rings of
Saturn which was quite a treat; it'd been years since I've done that.
I dropped by the dojo on the way back to play a bit with the jo with
Monica, Paula, and James -- remember, it's 1) tsuki, 2) guard, 3) yokomen,
4) spiral block, 5) tsuki, then 6) loopy block -- with 1) and 4) being
together.
I then went down the street to my apartment around 11pm, took a
shower, then went to sleep -- the shortest distance I've had to travel
from an Aikido-L Seminar so far.
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