Aikido for 02/03/2011

Last night Tip taught class and after warm-ups, he had us do a couple of exercises we learned from Cyndy Hayashi Sensei class last Friday. Uke attacks nage continually with either shomen, munetsuki, or yokomen strikes. Nage first starts by just moving to avoid with any arms, as the speed increased nage can use the arms but not do any techniques other than to get out of the way. I found myself instinctively stepping back from the barrage of attacks, not being able to really enter irimi but tenkan worked well. Very interesting to consider. We then worked on the following techniques (I was uke for all except one, great training):

• katatetori kokyunage tenkan
• katatetori kokyunage irimi
• kosadori nikkyo omote and ura
• kosadori sankyo omote and ura
• kosadori kotegashei omote, for one of ukemi, I took a break-fall from this technique.
• kosadori shihonage omote. This was special because I took my first public medium speed shihonage break-fall for Tip. When we paired up, I worked with Ken who worked with me on doing break-falls from about five foot off the ground. I learned some useful body position pointers from Ken including anticipating and facing the throw. I actually really enjoyed learning and taking these more difficult ukemi. This is one indicator that my practice is improving my Aikido, this ukemi is not so much different from the standard ukemi but does require more body control and confidence in your abilities. I learn to not think, to not anticipate, but I experienced those beautiful moments of pure movement and grace of the whole being body, mind, and ki.