Aikido for 01/20/2010

For the first class of the term, Mike and I began with our traditional warm-up while I talked about my trip to San Diego and Boulder the week before. During the tenkan exercise, I showed Mike the deeper tenkan that Frank Doran Sensei showed us at the Aikido Bridge Seminar. Mike and I then worked on the unity and breaking balance exercises that Ikeda Sensei worked on for much of the week. I related to Mike how I am finally seeing some of the deeper connections between nage's internal posture and balance and how connecting to uke through the wrist, following up to elbow, but focusing on the moving the shoulder allows nage to more easily break the fragile balance of uke. I told Mike the theme of the class would be a separate shihonage technique from a Doran Sensei class, am Ikeda Sensei class, and a Tissier Sensei class from the seminar. Here are the techniques we practiced last night:

• shomenuchi shihonage omote from Doran Sensei. I showed Mike Doran Sensei's way of nage dropping the inside the knee when doing the shihonage that allows a taller uke to under a shorter nage's arm to complete the throw to the ground. The opening was also Doran Sensei when nage is unable to get to the shomen strike early and lets the strike continue down.
• Ai-hamni (kosatori) katatetori shihonage omote, for this basic shihonage, Mike and I worked on connecting with uke, breaking uke balance by moving from nage's hari and then smoothing moving through to a more traditional shihonage throw and pin following a variation I practiced in an Ikeda class.
• katatetori shihonage omote. The final shihonage was from katatetori and I talked about Tissier Sensei's demonstration and practice about not getting caught up and trying to repeat a failed point in the shihonage as a way to get of trouble when an experienced uke is attempting a reverse. Tissier Sensei's focus on not repeating but moving to a different point in the technique was valuable to actual see and practice in this context because Mike was able to not caught up in struggling with a point in a shihonage when I was attempting a reverse than before.
• katatetori kokyunage
• For the last technique, I wanted to bring everything back around to ikkyo because of its importance and emphasis during the past week's seminar. Mike and I worked on various ikkyos from shomen, kosatori, and katatetori attacks

It felt wonderful and comfortable to back on mat even after a couple of days from San Diego. My Aikido practice is deepening because of the fantastic instruction and practice I have had over the past couple of weeks. I can immediately see the difference in my own instruction because by the end of the night I found Mike's shihonage to have improved and he was already integrating some of the instructions that was taught to me.