Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 15:28:38 -0500
From: "Drysdale, Alan"
Subject: list seminar report
Hi everybody:
Just got back from the list seminar. Had a great time, despite having a 2
hr delay on our flight back that wiped me out. (Nothing to do with how late
we got to bed the night before, after falling asleep watching koryu tapes.)
It was a great seminar, and I'd like to give a big public "thank you" to
Simcox Sensei and the Virginia Ki Society who hosted it. There are always
minor glitches in seminars, but this one had fewer than most, and we had fun
and learned new stuff. Carol went over and beyond what was reasonable in
missing the Saturday night meal so that she could go pour concrete into a
bucket to provide a stand (and I'm sure there is a Japanese term for it but
I don't know it) for cutting practice.
I learned great stuff from each of the teachers:
George showed great ki exercises and how to relax through the technique.
For the record, the exercises work. He and I just don't agree on how to
describe the process and explain the results.
Phil's class was my favorite, because I've wanted to try Yoshinkan Aikido
for a long time. It might indeed be, as Phil described it, a bit anal
retentive, but I'm an engineer! I could see how it relates to what I do,
but from a different perspective.
I was really glad Jim's class started late on Sunday, after drinking a bit
too much really good scotch the night before. I thought "Oh, USAF. I know
that." In fact, there was a different twist (!) to each technique that I
did not in fact know. I've done kote gaeshi holding the forearm when uke
had an injured wrist, but never thought of doing nikkyo that way, and found
a new way to look at nikkyo.
I expected Chuck's class to be physically challenging, and it was, but it
was great stuff. Again, I thought I had sankyo pretty well figured out, and
this gave me a new perspective. Now if I can just remember the first half
of the sword kata and get him to e-mail me the rest of it I can polish it
next time we are in proximity.
The mini classes were interesting. Jun taught me I don't know as much about
ukemi as I thought I did. Wendy's class on what hurts when and what you can
do about it was great. Peter lent me his sword ("Don't worry, it's only
gunto. If you bend it we can straighten it.") to try whacking through
bamboo. I missed his iaido mini class because I was obsessing about what
came next, but that looked like fun too.
Regrets: Didn't get to meet everybody. (Didn't even realise Neil was there
until we were looking at the videos on Sunday night. Neil - the budo babes
agreed that you have evil eyes, in a good sort of way.) Didn't even find
Wendy and Jim to say "bye" on Monday. And it's over all too soon.
The rest of y'all that didn't make it: you missed a lot of good stuff. It
maybe wasn't quite as wild as last year, with a couple of the main
troublemakers not there, but it was still great. It's time to start
thinking about next year: where we should have it (hopefully in Memphis),
who should teach (certainly the host instructor), what topics you'd like to
see taught in the mini sessions, and so on.
Alan
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