Aikido for 04/29/2009

Tonight Jake, Jim, and I practiced with the bokken outside in front of Escalante Fitness Center. I brought my camera and between Jim and I, took the following photos from tonight's class.

This was Jim's first experience with a bokken, so we started class with 250 shomen cuts with bokken. Here is a photo from a tenkan shomen exercise we did after the 250 cuts.

We then practiced a couple of bokken-waza kokyunages (nage has the bokken and is grabbed by uke, nage then throws uke while still holding onto the bokken)

We also practiced bokken-tori kokyunages (uke attacks nage, and in this variation, nage does a tenkan out of the way, grabs the bokken handle with the close hand and throws uke forward, taking away the bokken from nage) This photo, is the end of a bokken-tori where I was nage and had just finished throwing Jake while now retaining possession of bokken. The third photo is where Jake held onto the bokken and I had to do a twisting motion to get him to release the bokken.

We finished class by working on the first five bokken katas. This was Jim's first experience and turned the class over to Jake to teach. The final photo is from when Jake and I were practicing one of the first three katas. Jake had just attacked me with a shomen strike with his bokken, I stepped to my left while bring my bokken up for a left yokemen block.

I was able to capture more photos that I need to upload to Flickr. Here is a link to some photos from class I posted on my Facebook profile. Good Stuff.

Run to the airport and Gunnison River, "Woken Furies" By Richard K. Morgan

This morning I ran from the laundry mat to the Gunnison County Airport, ran around the path at the edge of the runway, and then ran to the Gunnison river before turning back for a twenty-six minute total running time.

Last night I finished reading Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan, the last novel in his Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. This novel went further into the back story of Kovacs home planet and personal history. I enjoyed this final novel as it better explains the philosophy of Quellcrist Falconer, a sort-of mash-up of libertarian tendencies with a broader understanding of dynamic power systems both in politics and technology. Of the three novels, I enjoyed the second one the most as a complete self-contained novel. The third novel wrapped up many of the loose ends and does leave the possibilities of other Takeshi Kovacs novels. I do recommend any of these novels as an enjoyable geeky and martial artist ride.

Update:

I forgot to mention that at the end of Woken Furies, while Kovacs is fighting his "younger" self, his younger self tries to perform a favorite "aikido" technique on Kovacs. I always enjoy the random shout-out to Aikido. I'll have to think about what is my favorite Aikido technique, I am not sure I have a single one. It really depends on the situation (I know, this is a cop-out)

Aikido for 04/27/2009

Jake, Joey, Jim, and I began our warm-up. I talked about this past weekend's seminar and repeated some things I have already written about in previous blog entries. We practiced the following techniques:

• Ryotedori tenchi-nage omote both standard Aikikai style and the variation Heiny Sensei demonstrated during Sunday's class
• Katadori ikkyo movement using Ikeda Sensei's
  
• Ai-kamni katatedori hijinage or kokyunage both standard Aikikai and Heiny Sensei's lateral movement.

I hope I was able to express my appreciation of my experience and practice this weekend and I feel the one of the better ways for me to do this is teach as much as I remember, but more importantly, show the value of attending such seminars as the one I went to at Boulder Aikikai this weekend.

Boulder Aikikai Spring Seminar Day 3 (4/26/2009)

Heiny Sensei had use work for an hour and a half on one technique, ryotedori tenchinage omote. She had us visualize the nage's lower had becoming a spiral of energy while nage's upper hand also does a spiral towards the sky. This intense study of one technique tied nicely to Heiny Sensei's comment from the first class of the seminar about how every technique in Aikido contains the essence of Aikido. The complexities of a technique are there underneath the surface of these common techniques and having us focus on one technique, I was able to better understand the larger forces, philosophy, and energies in my own Aikido practice. Heiny Sensei experiences as a young person learning Aikido at Hombu Dojo in the years immediately following O'Sensei's death in 1968 provide an unique opportunity into the development of Aikido and a good takeaway from her classes is that you never fully are a "master" of Aikido.

In my personal practice, I have tried to learn something from every time I do a technique with my partner and I try to ignore my ego by not caring about my partner's rank or experience. Heiny Sensei on multiple occasions through-out the seminar talked about how she learns from each person she trains with and that is part of her own practice. She also warned about not assuming we know our uke or the person we are partnered with and that by making these assumptions, we are applying our own ego onto our partner. We finished the second hour of class by working an different ai-hamani kokyunage that differed from Hombu dojo style.

Every time I go to a seminar, I always enjoy the diversity of people and practice. I am starting to get to know various Aikido people from Boulder and around the West. I am planning to go to Boulder Aikikai in June for a long weekend of practice to tune up for Summer camp. I had a great time this weekend between the great Aikido practice and visiting my great sister and her wonderful family.

UPDATE:
Here are a couple of photos from Boulder Aikikai's website from class. I am in the lower corner with my back towards the camera while reaching for katatetori on nage.
This second photo is more of a formal photo of the seminar's participants.

Family interlude

I stayed with my sister Jill, her husband Lance, and Alexis and Adelaide in Broomfield. After class on Saturday, I drove back to their house and we picked up some pizza for dinner. It was a quiet and enjoyable Saturday evening. Spending time with my nieces, sister, and brother-in-law was great. Jill is a Twilight fan (having read all the books), Lance suggested we watch their copy on DVD as the movie is better than just a "chick" flick. I was skeptical, but I did enjoy the movie more than I thought I would. Sunday morning started off early because Jill was running a 4K in Cherry Creek race at 8:00 so we were all up and going by 7:00 am. I didn't leave until 8:00, locking up the doors. In all I loved seeing my family and experiencing a domestic life that I normally have minimal experience with in my own life. I plan on going to Boulder Aikikai for a long weekend in June, so I hopefully will be able to spend more time with my Denver family.

Boulder Aikikai Spring Seminar Day 2 (4/25/2009)

The morning class started at 10 and was taught by Heiny Sensei. Heiny Sensei talked about having a "spirit of generosity" when practicing that we should open our heart when working with our partners. By being generous of heart, we won't automatically tense up when attacked which can drastically reduce our options to respond to the aggression. By being open, we are more generous, we will be more open to opportunities. We must strive for unity between uke and nage, Aikido's ideal is when two become one in the technique but problems occur when one become two again. We worked on ryotedori (two hands grabbing nage's arm) for many of these techniques. I was working with Jun from Boulder Aikikai when Heiny Sensei came by to work with us. Heiny Sensei said my grab was neutral, neither pulling or pushing, and I was surprised during the next techniqua, Heiny Sensei called upon me to demonstrate my ryotedori on her and how because there is not an obvious direction to move when grabbing neutral, Heiny Sensei worked on us becoming more sensitive to uke's energy and breathing to feel the openings.
During the lunch intermission, I took the following photo of the shomen (shrine) at Boulder Aikikai along with Gary from Colorado Springs.

In the afternoon, Heiny Sensei taught the first class and Ikeda Sensei taught the second class.
In Heiny Sensei and Ikeda Sensei we worked on establishing unity with uke in our techniques, that we need to evolve and develop our Aikido to become more aware of these deeper levels to the art. In general, throughout this seminar with both Heiny and Ikeda Sensei, we worked on the more subtle aspects of Aikido.

Boulder Aikikai Spring Seminar Day 1 (4/24/2009)

I was able to leave Gunnison by noon for my drive to the Denver/Boulder area for Boulder Aikikai's Spring Seminar with Ikeda Sensei and Mary Heiny Sensi. I arrived about an hour and a half early, so I ate an early dinner, browsed a local Barnes and Noble, and then drove over to Boulder Aikikai and dressed out.

Heiny Sensei started the first 6-7 p.m. class by saying that Aikido's essence is in every Aikido technique but because of our limitations (her language was more colorful) we need to practice all of the techniques to understand Aikido. Another quote I remember is "Aikido is deadly, we need to respect our Art". We practiced iriminage variations. Heiny Sensei talked about visualizing ki or energy as coming up from the ground and circulating around uke. She said we should move our center and not our arms when doing the technique.

In the second class, Ikeda Sensei had us work on grabbing techniques (katatedori, moritedori, ryo-katadori) when doing the techiques you must take uke's balance by first moving uke's wrist and then moving uke's elbow. By shifting nage's balance you take uke's balance by being connected into a single, unit. We practiced kokunages, kokyuho, and ikkyo from these grabs.

After class, I drove my sister's Jill and family's house in Broomfield.

Run this afternoon

Tonight after work, I needed to do laundry in preparation for my Aikido seminar this weekend. I put my clothes in the wash and then went on a 25 minute run down to the Gunnison River and back. At the beginning of the run I wanted to quit but realized that it was just mental and ran through to the river and back. I really enjoy the sense of exploration on the run, running on routes I only have done driving. I felt more social as I ran past people coming home from work and children playing. I also thought about this weekend of Aikido and what I wanted to learn and practice. I am also excited about seeing my nieces, sister, and brother-in-law.

Aikido for 04/22/2009

Jim and I started off with warm-up and since it was the two of us, we were able to spend more time working on both our forward and backward ukemi. I then introduced shikkyo (knee walking) since Jim was wearing shorts I didn't want to spend too much time practicing shikkyo. We then practiced the following techniques:

• Round-house punch ikkyo omote - starting in ai hamni, uke step forwards and delivers a punch to the same side jaw. Nage, steps back and bring back hand up and from that opening, all of the omote and ura techniques are available. Working on ikkyo, it is easy to build to other techniques.
  
• Round-house punch ikkyo ura - same opening as omote but back foot at the end of the opening now steps forward behind uke for the ikkyo ura.
  
• Katatetori iriminage - basic tenkan opening for the technique
• Round-house punch iriminage - same opening as the ikkyo ura, basic iriminage easily follows

We ended class with kokyu-ho exercise. My next Aikido class is Friday night in Boulder. I am excited and I look forward to learning and growing in my practice.

Run this morning

I just got back from a twenty minute run. I didn't want to go the gym with the weather getting warmer. Its beautiful today and I during the mid and end part of my run today my route took me through some nearby neighborhoods that I have never been through before. I am starting to understand the appeal of running. I covered more area than I expected too and I got a different sense of local exploration that you don't get from a motor vechicle or even a bicycle. I almost turned back because the gout in my right foot is flaring up again. This gout attack hasn't been too bad and I hope to be coming out of it in time for the Aikido seminar this weekend in Boulder. I am going regardless but I don't want to be hobbling off the mat. Last night during Aikido class, I noticed the pain early in the class but the by end, I didn't think about my foot until we were moving the mats and I noticed the pain. Funny how that works, like today's run where I just kept running and after a while the pain became less important.

Aikido for 04/20/2009

Before tonight's class, I was thinking about how violence escalates in stressful situations. For my own Aikido practice and philosophy, the initial point of contact between uke and nage should be the peak of violence in the situation, that from that moment, the goal of Aikido is to de-escalate the violence to an ideal outcome of nether party being permanently harmed. When stressed and also when too ego-driven practice, it is easy to rached-up the violence when doing a technique, often in presuit of a finishing "killing" blow or other dramtic act. I have to resist this tendency of escalating violence in my own Aikido practice and I feel that it is an important part of O'Sensei's Aikido-Budo legacy that we focusing on re-harmonizing with the universe when confronted with violent intent, that that attacker has already reached the peak of violence at the moment of their violent action/intent, and we as Aikido students, redirect and calm the violence towards an acceptable outcome for all of us. We can't always avoid violence but we can make choices in how we practice and our response once engaged that minimizes the disruption that the violence causes to you and your local environment.

During warm-up, Joey, Jake, Jim, and I (the 4 J's :-) instead of doing dedicated ukemi practice, I had all of us practice kokyunages from katatedori grabs. The first kokyu-nage was a tenkan and then a slide forward while rotating the wrist, requiring uke to step with his back leg and do a forward roll. After everyone went the through the line twice we switch to a different kokyu-nage where instead of sliding forward after doing an initial tenkan, nage swings his arm up while doing a tenkan, uke then tukes his inside foot behind the outside foot and does a back ukemi roll. By using Kokyunages for ukemi practice, we were able to work on the rolls in actual practice so the timing and distances are different when doing a roll in a technique verses doing ukemi in standalone exercises

For the rest of class we worked on one technique, yokumenuchi sankyo omote. Due to the limited mat space, we practiced this technique in a line and while demonstrating the sankyo, I talked about how easy it is when doing sankyo to continue to escalate the situation by being fancy because of sankyo's control features when applied properly to uke. While this was Jim's and Joey's first encounter with sankyo, Jake understood what I was talking about and so the point of emphasis when I practiced the technique last night was from the point of engagement to de-escalate the situation through the proper and most correct form of sankyo that I know and practice. I feel the whole issues of violence and its relation to studying a martial art, is about our approach and what we want the end outcomes to be. I don't want to practice or teach Aikido as a way to unnecessarily prolong violence but as a way to practice the effective and efficient physical movements of conflict damping with minimal harm to me and my ukes.

Bike ride, HAPLab update, and no Aikido class

Today I drove over to the Gunnison Community Center and discovered that a rock-climbing competition was going on and the receptionist suggested using a back room as the Mulit-purpose room we normally practiced was being used as a staging area for the competition. I checked out the back room and it is big enough if we moved the chairs and brought in our own mats. She offered the use of these rooms as long as there is not a birthday party. Nobody showed up for Aikido class but it is good to know as this looks like good alternative space if I can find some mats to use. I could see teaching a couple of nights or mid-day classes during the week as there is some interest in having Summer Aikido classes.

I haven't wrote about the past eight weeks where I participated in a HAPLab exercise program. This week was the last week for the program and I improved in all of the physical tests for the program. Aaron (my student trainer) is putting together a full month's worth of work-outs. I have been feeling better with my improved physical fitness that I was motivated today after my canceled Aikido class to go and fix my mountain's bike tire and go for a twenty minute bike ride, my first of 2009. The temperature was in 40s F, but the wind was cold and the sun peaked between the clouds. Yesterday it snowed about five inches but melted fast today. I took this photo after my ride, you can see the melting snow. Tomorrow I'm going to try to get down to Blue Mesa Reservoir and see if I can catch a fish or two. This week I'm going to try to bike at least two times to work at the library. There will be two Aikido classes on Monday and Wednesday nights from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at Escalante Fitness Center. I am leaving for Boulder at noon on Friday for Friday night's Aikido class at this Spring seminar.

Aikido for 04/15/2009

Wednesday night's Aikido class was just Jake and I. For the first part of class we worked free-style kokyu-nages from ryo-katadori and katadori attacks. Our intention was to better flow with an attack. Often we freeze up in a freestyle and fall back on one or two techniques. By practicing in a free-style manner, we tried to expand those basic techniques we fall-back to. The second half of class we worked on the 3 Bokken katas and then worked on bokken yokomenuchi strike.

Jake won't be able to make to Saturday's class, he will give me a call if he has time to practice on Sunday.

Aikido for 04/13/2009

Tonight Jake, Joey, and I practiced outside. After warming up and doing forward and backward ukemi on the soft, green grass, we worked on the following techniques:

• Shomenuchi nikyo omote
• Suwaru shomenuchi nikyo omote
• Shomenuchi nikyo ura
• Suwaru shomenuchi nikyo ura

We worked on the nikkyo pin with all of the techniques and I tried to show the relationships between standing and suwa (sitting down) techniques.

Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

I just finished reading Richard K. Morgan's Broken Angels, the second in his Takeshi Kovacs series. This novel focused on Kovacs running a mission to a Martian spaceship while a war is going on a remote planet. I won't go into the details of the novel but I enjoyed while the novel had cool wiz-bank military technology, Morgan emphasises a futuristic extension of modern budo into a battled-trained warrior like Kovacs.

Another technology theme through the novel is the idea of digital consciousness that backups all of the memories and consciousness in capsule embedded in the base of the skull. If your current body (called a sleeve) dies and the capsule is intact, your consciousness can be transferred to another cloned body of yourself or someone else. During the time period of the novel's setting, this technology has been around for centuries allowing for a kind of immortality. In Broken Angels, Kovacs's current sleeve is a genetic optimized warrior model. Such an effect of conditionally eliminating death in a society would change some things but the underlying violence of humans still persists as I think is one of the main points of the novel. I ordered the last book of Kovacs trilogy from Marmot.

Today, I went over the the Gunnison Community Center at 2:00 in case anyone showed up for Aikido class. I waited around for about 15 minutes and left after nobody did. I finished my novel when I got back. It rained and snowed today but I hoping that the weather will left tomorrow so I can go fishing.

Aikido for 04/08/2009

At practice, Jake, Jim, Chris, and I started off with a warm-up and doing forward and backward ukemi. We then practiced the following techniques from the ASU 6th kyu test:

• Shomenuchi iriminage
• Katatedori shiho-nage omote and ura

Before class I was talking to Jim and he asked me if I have ever done any Eastern meditation practices due to my Aikido background. I mentioned that I participated in some Tibetan Buddhist sitting mediation with the wife of one of my first Aikido sensei, Patrick Hammond at Central Illinois Aikikai. Jim was surpised because he knew Patrick from the Tibetan Buddhist community in Crestone Colorado. Small world and I may go with Jim the next time he goes to visit. I am glad to find out that Patrick is so close and I hopefully will be able to get him to guest teach here in Gunnison. I know my Aikido has deepened and widened since I saw him last.

I had a very intense lucid dream when I last sat with his wife in mediation and if I go for the weekend, I hopefully will have more opportunities to develop myself in Buddhist reflection and quiet.

Counting Heads by David Marusek

I just finished David Marusek's Counting Heads and found the novel better than the average near-future/cyberpunk/ science fiction novel. Counting Heads has nanobots, genetic engineering, clones, "singularity-able" AI, and more all supporting a fully realized future. One of the main characters was born in 1951 with the help of anti-aging treatments looks like he is in his 30s when the novel starts but then ends up "seared" when he is infected with a viral or nano bug that as one side-effect, forces him to age normally. Chicago and lower Illinois (Decatur) are major locations in the novel along with the idea of reconstructing a human after decapitation. I liked how the various technology modes combine to provide a world that has similarities with our economically stratified society in that technology is not classless but that the values of the upper classes are reflected in both the availablity and access of different types of technology. The clone cultures and substories were also different from other novels in this genre as well. Marusek just published a sequel to Counting Heads so I'll go ahead and request the sequel through our ILL at the library.

Many of these novels in the genre are running together but I enjoy reading this particular near-term hard science fiction genre because I enjoy these stores (with a different setting and/or character development they become similar to other genre storytelling like detective, historical, or even romantic genres) and like imagine the underlying technological developments that would theoretically have to develop to reach a particular level found in the novel's narrative. I have been neglectful in writing my responses to the major print novels and non-fiction in this blog but I'll try to be more diligent after finishing a particular work. The next novel I just received through Marmot (our shared library catalog) is Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan. This is a sequel to Altered Carbon.

Aikido for 04/06/2009

For Monday's Aikido class, Jake, Joey, and I did the warm-up and added two hapoundo (8-way) exercise from both left and right hamni. We then worked two tsuki kotegaeshi variations from the 6th kyu ASU testing requirements. I am not sure what Ikeda Sensei considers as the basic kotegaeshi technique, so the first variation was an initial tenkan movement and the second was a step-back and cut-down opening before applying the kotegashi in front of uki for an omote-style variation. The last technique was a katadori ikkyo variation before ending class with a kokyu-ho exercise variation as well.

Aikido for 04/04/2009

Yesterday afternoon Jake and I practiced for about an hour and 15 minutes at the Gunnison Community Center. We started off with practicing various koshu nages from shomenuchi, yokomenuchi, and katatedori. We then spent the last 1/2 hour of class doing the first three bokken katas.

Aikido for 04/01/2009

Last night Jim and I were the only people practicing, Jake left a message that he wasn't feeling well. After warming up, Jim and I did some tenkan exercises and spent the rest of the time working on katadori ikkyo omote and ura. We finished the class doing kokyu-ho. I enjoy working one-on-one especially with a beginner because we can really focus on all of the steps in a technique and I can also improve my own techniques as well when responding to questions and issues that come up naturally in an extended practice session on the mat.