Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 14:07:32 +0900
From: Kristiina Jokinen
Hi everybody,
Thanks to both Peters for providing reports and stories on the aikido
weekend: it really was an inspiring and exciting weekend and there's
not much I can say but to join to what you already know: that it was a
great success and I enjoyed it, YES!
I'm sending this message to you personally, since I'm afraid I need to
unsubscribe Aikido-L: it's quite impossible to handle more than 100
messages a day even with fancy filtering. But if you like to forward
this to the list, it's ok with me.
First, many thanks to Peter B for the excellent organisation. You took
care of everything and everybody, and also provided us with exciting
surprises (I've now got a tatami candle holder, cut with a sword by
myself). Wonderful! Thanks also to Peter R for letting me know about
the event in the first place -- things may look accidental but have
long-lasting effects, you see!
As for my personal impressions, I would (naturally :-) describe the
gathering as a huge ki-test. We tested each other's ki (aikido) for
two days in a very positive way: not in order to compete who's got the
best and most effective techniques but to learn more about ourselves
and about the others. And I was fascinated at the variety of the same
techniques, and surprised at the similarity of the different styles.
And they all work! Your skills and mastery of the techniques wasn't
only great to look at or to get a feeling of, but indeed, provided a
glimpse of what the budo attitude "respect you partner" means: it
doesn't matter if your partner does the same thing as you or not, but
what matters is that they do master the thing.
It all started on Saturday morning with Mike "Spike" warming us up and
leading us from the basic kamae to more advance techniques. Thanks for
doing a wonderful job in convincing me that angry white pyjamas
actually contain meaningful, controlled training towards mastery of
vigorous techniques. I mean, it's not only uncoordinated foaming to
suppress (or endure?) pain. We didn't have time to do tenchinage with
ki at the end of the seminar but I'm looking forward to the
comparision next time!
Also my first contact with judoists was a superb experience: Peter B
and the two Sakashita-senseis demonstrated that judo's a very
effective type of budo indeed, with a particular set of wazas as well.
Like others I was impressed at the choking techniques (yes, it was fun
too!) and especially at the ambiguous immobilisations of the attacker:
it's not necessarily the tori who would break the attacker's arm but
the poor uke herself by trying to escape from the grab. Yeah, things
are not so black and white!
I was truly beguiled by Michael McCavish' lessons on Tomiki. His
teaching seemed to have that magic element that transfers pure
techniques to something on an invisible still tangible attitudinal/
mental/spiritual level --sorry, just want to avoid the word "ki". The
way he was aware of the partner and the partner's intentions was
incredible: when demonstrating one of the techniques where I had to go
and grab his hand, he was explaining finer points of the technique at
the same time as perfectly reacting to my several starts and restarts
of an attack. Absolutely beautiful! Demonstrations of Koryu Goshin no
Kata and Junanahon by Peter R and Fujimoto-san were also great to
watch, although I must admit that when I tried to go through the
techniques myself, they suddenly started to look the same.... I also
want to mention Fujimoto-san who showed us the movements in a shadow-
boxing like manner, a kind of hitori-waza. His movements seemed to
have that flow of energy or ki or something, too....
Finally, thanks to everyone: your feedback, enthusiasm and scepticism
helped me to better understand what I've learnt, and what I still need
to learn. Indeed, it was by interacting with you that some of the ki-
tests started to make more sense than before! For instance, keeping
your weight underside and moving from your one point, well, what was
it that Michael taught us: move your hips and not just your feet....
At the end, the translation of aikido as "a way of harmony with ki"
seems to me quite an accurate description of what we all practise,
despite the differences in the details. Why are there so many ways to
do a particular waza? -- well this may sound like a naive answer but
it's exactly because each of us *is* different from the other. But
whatever is the "ki" of the different aikidos, I guess it's exactly
what we experienced and shared during the weekend.
Best wishes,
Kristiina.
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