On a Saturday morning Aikido class a few years ago, Sensei brought in the book by Gichin Funakoshi, “The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate”. He read us the first precept in full: “karate-do begins and ends with rei” “Along with judo and kendo, karate-do is a representative Japanese martial art. And with it’s fellow martial…
Category: aikido
Training Away From Home
When I tested for 1st Kyu a couple of years ago, I was presented with an interesting problem. My friend, Mentor and uke, Sasun, that I selected to be my test partner, could not participate. His back went out. So rather than testing with him and benefiting from the familiarity I built up through the…
Kata overload
From my cursory view of my twitter, facebook and Google+ friends there seems to be an interest of late in the 31 jo kata. I watched videos to learn the kata myself a few months ago but it wasn’t until a recent visit to Aikido of Cotati that it helped start to give me an understanding…
Surrendering to Center – revisiting this
My first blog post was titled “Surrendering to Center”. In describing this, I wrote: “What this means to me is that center happens. “Center” is that element of myself that I cannot avoid. it is me, the good, the bad, the ugly. Therefore, I happen. I happen everyday, whether I am alone, with my son,…
Quiet yourself and train!
I think that this is much better than “shut up and train”… maybe it’s the PC version… but it’s kind of on my mind right now. A friend recently expressed interest in Aikido and I thought about the suggestions and advice that I wanted to give him. Strangely, it was advice that I heard a…
What do you have planned for your Aikido in 2012?
We are closing out the year here in a few days, and I’ve been thinking a bit about the things I want to work on in the upcoming year. I think that it’s good to have goals and to work on different aspects of an art. While general comments like “I want to get faster/stronger/quicker”…
Preparing for Shodan
A couple of months ago Sensei Noha gave myself and two of my dojo mates the OK to test for Shodan (1st degree black belt) in the spring of 2012. I am as scared as I am elated by this. Scared because physically, my knees are not in great shape. I have a hard time…
1000 Sword Cut challenge
Who’s in? Including today we have 52 days left in the year. In 2010 I did 1000 cuts exactly one time and I’d like to do that again at least once this year. Simply do the following: Pick up your sword, staff, nun chuks, escrima sticks, naginata, or broadsword and swing it a 1000 times….
My New Macbook Pro
I’ve always been a mac fan but never considered a macbook until recently. I’m so amazed at my new mac notebook though. The track pad and the multi fingered gestures are awesome. Some things like “pushing” the page up with a two finger gesture vs “pulling” the page down with a mouse pointer on a…
Like you would catch a baby
I remember that a few years ago one of our teachers, Sasun spoke about a statue of O Sensei that depicts him standing in hanmi with his arms out stretched. The figure shows O Sensei as if he’s just finished Tai No Henko. Tai No Henko is a fundamental exercise in Aikido. The video below…
Mark's Meanderings 