During march, as well as the memorial class on the 17th and an adults test at the end of the month. We will be working on demonstration routines in the run up to the annual demo.
To make this interesting I thought it would be cool if we worked in teams or pairs and held a competition at the end of the month.
So get yourselves together and pick a demonstration topic… More details to come
Hi everyone! Here is the winter/spring newsletter! It includes an account of the Mustard Sensei UK tour 2011.
The Kihon Dosa is not like Marmite! We don’t ‘Love it or Hate it!’. In my opinion if you are on the right path to understanding it you both love it and hate it.
Hate it:
It’s so hard! Every time you practice it your own faults jump out at your brain and you start to sweat because of the effort you put into the deep Kamae and the intensity of the movement.
It’s not ‘fun’! Unless there is some exercise or gimmick thrown into the practice it can be quite tedious. However if you feel this way you are probably not focussing on the right things. Also by making it fun you will massively miss out on some of the important aspects to study.
Love It:
It’s so hard! After 14 years of practising it continues to teach me. I can’t predict the future but I am confident that this will continue for the rest of my Aikido Career. In fact it is really starting to get interesting for me now..
It is simply a masterpiece, a work of genius.
The Kihon Dosa was developed by the early Yoshinkan Instructors (Notably Kyoichi Inoue Sensei and Takashi Kushida Sensei) and I personally think that to call it ‘a work of genius’ is barely adequate. From what I gather it was constructed to teach the police force Aikido basics.
Can you think of a more difficult task. Aikido is by no means a short road. To teach the true principles of Aikido through 6 movements (successfully) and with the proper understanding to have built a movement that allows one to test, correct, trouble shoot and improve your Aikido technique for the rest of your life is nothing short of inspired.
The level of understanding of the basics to have injected them into the Kihon Dosa in this manner is currently beyond my comprehension.
So to release this pattern into the world was indeed their Aikido duty.. But it must be difficult. Because, let’s face it, we all do it wrong!
In class the other day I referenced this problem like this:
“Imagine handing the Mona Lisa to a class room of 6 year olds with no paper and lots of crayons..”
So I urge you, each and every Aikidoka in earnest, to seek the proper understanding of Kihon Dosa every single time you practice. Practice with intent and vigour and don’t be satisfied with a half arsed approach. Also, if you have questions, then ask your teacher.
Any way I just wanted to share my thoughts.. Osu!
Med
Hi All,
Little Dragons: 10am – 12noon each day
Cobrakids/Cadets: 1pm – 4pm each day
Price
Little Dragons: £20 for 3 days, or £10 per day
Cobrakids +: £30 for 3 days, or £15 per day
How can you perceive the depth, breadth, heights, sacrifice, gain and value of Budo on the day you enter a dojo for the first time? This question is important! If you can answer it succinctly you cannot fail to have a school that grows fast and therefore flourishes.
For most people Budo is an esoteric and abstract word or it is finite and means ‘Martial Arts’.
As western instructors we have a new challenge, if you care to put it upon yourself to do so. It is not enough to teach moves and martial values. It is not enough to live humbly and try your best to be kind, honourable etc.
"Years ago I saw an aikido instructor named Tadashi Abe in France. He was a true warrior in every way. He was a great example of a man with martial spirit flaming in his belly while the spirit of harmony was visible in his eye. He was a real credit to Ueshiba Sensei's technical and spiritual legacy. He is 100% samurai!"
YUKIYOSHI TAKAMURA (via AikiJournal)
I love this quote. As a martial artist, and as a teacher it provides me with a clear vision of how I want to be. The flame in the belly and the kindness in his eyes are almost tangible and palpable metaphors.
To digress, Budo is a deeply ingrained belief system, a set of instincts and an expansive sense of awareness and consideration. It is also a delicate flower that will be gone with one bad day of over feeding or under exposure to the sun.
I have glimpsed it in others, and endeavour to find it for myself. I see no juxtaposition with my culture. I think this is very important. While I confess an interest in Japanese culture and language this only extends far enough so I can check my understanding of Budo. I do not think its right to parody the Japanese, as the author of the above quote later comments about.
Sometimes I feel like it must be impossible to enjoy a life of Budo. To live your entire life in servitude and self criticism sounds like a nightmare. But this is only the surface appearance of the ‘life’.
I am essentially a servant, to my students and to my teachers. Read that sentence again though. This time with a different intonation on my ‘voice’. Read it as though I’m talking with a sense of pride and honour. It is an honour to serve my students and my teachers.
Now, just for a bit of a game, apply this concept to yourself and then expand it to your entire life. Now apply this to everyone on the planet. It is a world order envisaged by the likes of John Lennon (lets face it, not a well known master of Budo). An entire planet living for others.
It frustrates me though. There is something much more difficult to get across about Budo. The only way to pass this to others is through training. Having had the tiniest glimpse at what I believe to be that right path I find myself in fear of it being lost forever. One generation of complacency and it is gone.
So lets not be complacent. In our generation seek to carry that flame in our bellies and spirit of peace in our eyes.
Hannah Goodwin has been kind enough to write an appraisal of her first year at the Shudokan Dojo in Barnstaple, Devon. Have a read!!
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I’ve been studying Aikido as part of the scholarship for about a year at the Dojo. Sensei Andrew Medland offered me the scholarship as a way for me to train even though I couldn’t afford the full mat fees and although many of the jobs I’ve had to do over the past year have been mundane, (such as the cleaning and registers) I wouldn’t change the experience for anything.
Aikido, like any martial art, has amazing benefits and the scholarship offers many more. I’ve had to help teach the children some techniques and movements, occasionally when I’ve only just seen them myself (I would like to point out I only assist in teaching the kids, I’ve never taken a lesson). This has worked wonders on my confidence and I think it has helped me understand Aikido better (whether that shows in my movements though is a different story). I enjoy most aspects of Aikido, like the feeling of being thrown well, especially when you can’t feel yourself being thrown until it’s too late and you’re already in the air. If you nail the landing then it has to be the single most amazing feeling you can get!
I suffer from a stutter and the scholarship has helped so much with it. I have had to talk to people showing an interest in Aikido; taking their name, contact details, booking them a time for their introduction, and general admin work. I often try to avoid situations where I have to talk to strangers for fear of stuttering, so being forced into that situation helped with my confidence which greatly helped with my stutter.
In the past year of Aikido I have made many new friends, both in the adults and in the cadets class (12-15 y/o) there is something with throwing each other around like rag dolls that (thankfully!) creates a lot of trust which means you often end up with good friends both on and off the mats.
It’s not all fun and games though, there are some negatives. For me the most frustrating thing about Aikido is the bruises I seem to suffer from. I bruise easier than an over ripe peach, meaning that even simple grabs or meets create bruises on my arms. Not to mention that regardless of the amount of times I have told people exactly how I got the bruises and the fact that I bruise easily, people still seem to think my instructors and fellow Aikidoka are bullies. Which is obviously really annoying.. However me and my mum have had many jokes over my bruises, occasionally at my expense and sometimes my mum refers to Andrew as a bully. (which isn’t true! But it is funny.)
Also I get rather frustrated with the breakfalls, how can something so simple be so difficult?! Although my falls are improving, it does feel like slow progress much of the time, this is very frustrating as there are many throws I’d love to experience but I lack the confidence to fall from them (like left flips or high back falls, Sensei makes them look stupidly easy and they really aren’t) and even something as simple as a left or right fall can hurt if it’s not done right (unless it’s just me doing them really badly).
I went to the Dojo on a whim, I thought it looked interesting but like many of us I had my doubts as to it’s effectiveness. Yet after that first session I was hooked! I loved it as much in that first session as I do now. I must be honest and say I expected to get bored of it fairly soon, that I loved the novelty of Aikido rather than Aikido itself, but the more I trained the more I realised that there’s so much more than what you first see, and that fascinates me
Shudokan Devon News: July Week 3
Hi all,
Website changes
Please take a look at the new website here. There are some big changes to the way you access information. The BLOG and Facebook pages will now be taking care of news as well as the scrolling bar for headlines at the top of the site.
Adults
Belt Test
Saturday 25th June 2011 at 4pm
The lessons this month will have preparation time in every class.
RRAT
Thursday 16th June 2011 at 7pm
Cost: FREE
Restraint and removal class that is open to the public. This is cool stuff so all students would enjoy it. A big attendance is good for the school so please make the effort.
facebook it
Juniors
Buddy Party
Saturday 18th June at 9:30am (Little Dragons) and 10:30am (Cobra Kids)
Little Dragons will be having a Nunchakku session where they get to show their friends how to use the Nunchakku. The Cobra Kids will be having a NERF war.. Please can Cobra Kids provide their own Nerf if possible. If not we have a few spare. All children will be included whether they have Nerf or not.
Invites are out this week so please return them ASAP!!
Grading Results May 2011
Cobra Kids and Little Dragons
Red
Riley Hacking
Lily Cushion
Yellow
Harry Rolfe
Harry Trantham
Jacob Webb
Zachary Blyth (CK)
Charlie Baglow (CK)
Hi Yellow
Thomas Harries
Green
Sam Annear-Hill
Cameron Huxtable
Olivia Sullivan
Jack Owen
Mateo Ogunuga
Hi Green
Chloe Passmore
Jaime-Lou Patterson
Noah Cullerne
Blue
Daniel Treanor (CK)
Hi Blue
Sam Vincent
Ciaran Overend (LD)
Orange
Lewis Andrews
Zachary Blyth (LD)
Hi Orange
Alex Hookway
Brown
Jacob West
Hi Brown
Charlie Baglow (LD)
Brown/Black
Jo McCaffrey
Samurai of the Month – May 2011
Charlie Lester and Riley Hacking!! Well done guys!!!
Osu
Sensei Med
In my humble opinion, and you may have to bare with me on this, the key factor that leads to fear; anger and low self esteem is ego.
Everybody has an ego. Letting it go is the lifelong task taken on by monks and the similarly dedicated. I believe as martial artists this is where we should mimick those people.
The more I train, the more I study and the more I live this fact reasserts itself to me over and over again.
The secret to shaking it off, I believe, lies in the symbiotic and juxtaposed art of ‘uke’.
I just wanted to share my thoughts. As always, peace.
Med
