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Afterword
This'll get a bit preachy, so take your sermon pill if you want to
hear a sermon from someone as measly as I am.
I like to say "Aikido is aikido," meaning that no matter what "style"
of aikido you may practice, you're still doing aikido. Moreso than a
"style," I may talk about it as an "approach" to aikido.
I try to attend a lot of seminars in my training whenever I can. I've
found it amazingly interesting to be able to listen to and feel so
many other people, both teachers and students. This is just my
approach to learning aikido. I certainly do not believe that this is
_the_ way, but _a_ way.
I sometimes recall that old story about five blind men who are
describing what they feel is an elephant. One person feeling the
trunk says that an elephant is flexible, long, and strong. Another
feeling its ears says it's quite flat and thin. Another feeling its
legs says it's quite like a tree. Another feelings its tail says it's
long and skinny. And so on. It's still an elephant.
I feel I'm very lucky to have been a part of Aikido-L. It's a dynamic
and young mode of communication, very much as the art of aikido itself
is a dynamic and young martial art. I feel I am lucky to have found
such a dedicated group of people whose collective experience spans a
whole greater spectrum than any one person will ever be able to
experience.
One of the goals, I believe, of the seminar was to let people
experience each other's aikido, to share in the differences, and to
discover the similarities. If everyone who practiced aikido did the
exact same thing, there would be no art. We should celebrate the
differences in all of our approaches and realize that without these
"other ways" of doing the same thing, this art would die. None of us
wants that.
The nature of the Aikido-L list itself is very much like that to begin
with. I feel that many of us on the list are curious as to how other
people approach this art which we practice, and we participate on the
list due to this ongoing curiosity both about other people's aikido
but, in turn, our own. And, the seminar, I felt, helped bring
together some of the most experienced people from on the Aikido-L list
-- not just those people who taught, but those people who attended as
well. Everyone formed tighter friendships, exchanged ideas, felt new
people, sparked new ideas, and did new aikido that they've never done
before.
I truly believe that things like this list and this seminar are needed
in this world of aikido. With so many affiliations, organizations,
and associations which only serve to divide rather than unite, I feel
there is a need to see across "party" lines, country borders, and past
experiences.
And I hope that is something we all agree upon.
In Conclusion
This seminar was the most memorable and enjoyable seminar that I've
attended in the close to 50 seminars in the last four years. The
quality of teaching was excellent, the training vigorous, and the
off-the-mat fun undescribably entertaining. It helps to have a mat
full of your friends whom you've never met before, I guess.
A huge load of gratitude goes out to all of the instructors who ended
up teaching at the seminar. Without your experience and contribution,
this seminar would not have happened.
A big, huge "thank you!" goes out to Lee and Maria Escobar, Jason,
Eric, and everyone else out at TASA for doing such a _WONDERFUL_ job
of hosting the seminar. You've set the bar up really high for the
next seminar, folks.
Also, special thanks to Wendy Gunther and Jim Baker for taking care of
the T-shirt business. The T-shirts look absolutely great (thanks to
George Gelman's design and Tony Fontaine's slogan). They still have
some available, and I would love to hear that they broke even (which I
don't think they've done yet. Nudge, nudge.)
Thanks goes out to the people on the Awards Ceremony committee (Chuck
Gordon, Cady Goldfield, Wendy Gunther, and Janet Rosen) for providing
for a whole lot of fun on Saturday night.
And, of course, I wish to thank everyone who was able to attend the
seminar from all across the country and the world.
Until next time.
Jun
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