Northern Wind

It's done. This was the last day of a week-long shochugeiko, and it's been quite a week. If you happen to have the time to attend every single class plus the special sessions, you would have spent around 45 hours or so doing budo in one week. I had the chance to do about 20, and that certainly felt like a lot. The odd thing is, there are people who work in physically demanding fields (even a pharmacist who stands on his feet all day is demanding to me ) and do it for 40 or more hours a week, so why would 20 hours feel so overwhelming, mentally and physically? Perhaps because I/we did it in addition to our normal jobs (and I sit at a desk all day and don't exercise like I should, which doesn't help, either). Today, though, was the toughest for me. I did the 6:30 am Aikido class, the 7:30 to 9:00 judo class, then the 9 to 11 jodo class, took a half hour break and then did the 11:30 to 1pm Aikido class. Phew! I need a shower. And I think it's time to wash the gi! Unfor...

During day 5 at noon Aikido, we spent the majority of class doing randori and switching partners on the bell. It was mostly good, but randori is a tough subject in Aikido for many reasons. More reasons, in fact, than I want to go into at the moment. This morning and at noon, Jack Bieler Sensei from Denton, Texas, went over many of the subtle but differences between Seitei Jodo and the traditional Shindo Muso Ryu. In both classes, we covered the kihon (as performed solo, or tandoku dosa ) and a little bit of the first kata in the Omote series (which the 8th kata in the Seitei no Kata), tachi otoshi. Those who had taken time off from work stuck around after the hour to look at the second kata, tsuba wari, but some of us had to get back to work. We'll be doing more with Bieler Sensei during tomorrow's jodo class (which is two hours, so we should be able to go over more material). It will be interesting to see what everyone thinks after the fact. There are some differences, no do...

Let's see, what happened... Judo was fairly informal last night, just a handful of us. I spent it working with a young brown belt (I love working with spry young brown belts who can take lovely falls all night long!) on the series of throws I'd been thinking about based off of the foot-sweep action, and getting some wonderful feedback from Kyle Sloan and Nick Lowry Senseis. Which has been the absolute beauty of this week: the experimentation, the influx of ideas and thoughts from other perspectives. I think there's a time and a season for everything, and perhaps most of the time one should devote oneself to the practice of, shall we say, "established principle." But once in a while, the exploration, the broadening or even bending of the mind is a wonderful way to stretch one's skills and knowledge a little further than where they were. I ended up spending most of the Aikido class sitting out in the genkan with Lowry and Sloan Senseis talking about some surpris...

I'm a little stiff and sore today, but I'm not sure why. Sore, I think because I made a few less-than-perfect attempts at ippon seoi nage during a lesson/discussion with Kyle Sloan Sensei. That's mostly isolated to my lower back, but it's not unbearable. The general stiffness all over, though, I'm not sure why that is. Sure, I went to several classes, but I didn't exactly exert myself to an extraordinary degree. . . . . . . . . . . In Aikido, we continued working on the kaeshi waza reversal techniques, and saw some nice experimental discoveries. The one problem that always seems to plague most aikidoka when attempting randori is we get into a competitive state of mind (winning and loosing) and many time forgo "real" attacks and honest recoveries for a spirited game of "slap and tickle." We all do it, me included; it's human nature, I suppose. Lowry Sensei has described truly productive randori as a game of catch, tossing the "ball...

Another good class. I got to work with Byron Curtis for the hour, someone with whom I haven't had a chance to work since I moved to the morning schedule, which was nice in itself. Jim Ellison Sensei had us all work on a favorite drill of his (and a good one): transitioning back and forth from kote hineri to kote gaeshi . The idea is to follow uke, let his movement drive the action. (You can also pick a point at random when instead of going to kote hineri, you transition into tenkai kote hineri , but that's essentially the end of that sequence!) Then we did the same thing with oshi taoshi and ude gaeshi . After that, we did a little bit of another one of Ellison Sensei's favorites. Basically, uke and tori stand facing each other, and tori has a hold of uke's wrist, but lightly . Very slowly, uke takes a step (either foot) toward tori. Tori's job is to sense that movement through his hand and move uke's hand either down the line or perpendicular to the line. If ...

Day two has begun. The schedule for the week, which I failed to mention yesterday, goes as follows (all times are part of the normal schedule except the 9:30 am and 2:30 pm sessions, which are unique to this week): Monday 6:30 am Judo 9:30 am Aikido kata kihon/henka 2:30 pm Aikido Randori Renzuko Waza 6:00 pm Jodo 7:30 pm Aikido Tuesday 6:30 am Aikido 9:30 am Aikido kata kihon/henka 12:00 pm Aikido 2:30 pm Aikido Randori Renzuko Waza 6:00 pm Aikido 7:30 pm Judo Wednesday 6:30 am Judo 9:30 am Aikido kata kihon/henka 2:30 pm Aikido Randori Renzuko Waza 6:00 pm Judo or Chi Gung 7:30 pm Aikido Thursday 6:30 am Aikido 9:30 am Aikido kata kihon/henka 12:00 pm Aikido 2:30 pm Aikido Randori Renzuko Waza 6:00 pm Aikido 7:30 pm Judo Friday 6:30 am Jodo 9:30 am Aikido kata kihon/henka 12:00 pm Jodo 2:30 pm Aikido Randori Renzuko Waza 6:00 pm Aikido Saturday 6:30 am Aikido 7:30 am Judo 9:00 am Jodo 11:30 Aikido The Aikido emphasize for the week is to be on randori; the judo emphasis on ashi waza ...

I never had any intention of starting a blog about budo, and yet, here I am. I didn't want to do it for several reasons: 1) My time is limited. I have a career, a family, other interests, another blog on a completely unrelated topic, church, and now Facebook (my, how that thing is tempting). 2) Whatever I could possibly think of to say about budo, someone further along the path than I could probably say it better, or with more authority, or, heaven forbid, would say something completely contrary. But I do think about budo, a lot, really, so why not jot a few of those ideas down? Maybe no one will read them, but that's fine. Mostly, I think, this is for me. If anything, the process of transcribing my thoughts helps to either solidify them in my own mind, or bring to light their inherent flaws. Either way, if I alone learn something, grow, take a few steps further down the Path, then it will have been worthwhile. And so I begin... Today was the first day of Shochugeiko at Windso...