I'm not here

Someone asked me in the offline world whether I still keep writing this blog or quit blogging for good. Well, I only write messages like this here:

In case the link to the continued blog is not clearly visible in my previous post (which Szabi also mentioned) please follow the link below to get there:

http://onlineaikido.com/blog

In addition to my posts, you will find there posts by my friend Connor as well.

In case you simply want to subscribe to that blog, you can do it using our RSS feed or email subscription.

Ueshiba Mitsuteru got married

I've just read in AikidoJournal:

Letter of Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba to all aikikai affiliated organizations:

April 20, 2008

Dear Sir/Madam

I hope this letter finds you in the best of health.

I am very happy to inform you that my son, Mitsuteru Ueshiba, was married to Miss. Keiko Kusano on March 2nd of this year.

Your continued and good favor on the young couple would be much appreciated.

Sincerely Yours,

Moriteru Ueshiba
Aikido Doshu (original signed)

Congratulations! I guess they are happier now than in the picture below :).

I'm looking forward to hearing from the birth of the fifth doshu :).

By the way, Mitsuteru was born in the same year as me.

Relative time

Why is that when you go somewhere you haven't been before it seems to take much longer than to come back from there? Why is it that when you go somewhere for the first time it seems much longer than the second, third, etc. times?

Last week I went to a school to give away a Children's aikido poster. I didn't know the area and it seemed to take at least thirty minutes to get there (I wasn't watching my watch but I looked at my map frequently thinking "is it still so far"?). Today (at the time writing this post at home) I went to that school again because last week it was completely empty (it turned out that they had half term and noone was around). It took me 15 minutes only and I wasn't walking any faster than the previous time.

The same thing happened when we were looking for flats to move into (which happened several times over our four years in London). It's certainly not only me who finds the first walk longer. But why is that?

Are we more alert to make sure we don't miss the destination and, at next time(s), we know the way already so we can think about our own business which makes time pass quickly? Maybe it's the same relativity Einstein described once.

"A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems shorter than a minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute, it is longer than any hour. That's relativity."

Relativity - Which one is hotter?

If the above logic is right and I try to apply it to my aikido studies then the idea is that I should never experience this slow-fast passing of time. I'm supposed to be alert at all times, "be present" as others call it. Indeed, I don't really experience time differences between doing a technique first and second but I guess it would be a pretty good exagaration ("lie" as others would call it :)) if I concluded that it's because I'm alert all the time :). That is the aim, to be alert, but sometimes I tend to sink to comfort and stop discovering new technical bits when we are practicing. This happened on Wednesday as well: we had a beginner and I tried to make fun of ryokatadori (grabbing the gi at both shoulders) because she had a t-shirt on and not a gi jacket (uwagi). It wasn't funny at all when Karesz immediately shouted to stop that and start showing the beginner how to do the technique and start focusing on connection with my partners (it was a technique done in groups). I was pretty ashamed of myself and came home disappointed (again, in myself) but I understood and learned the lesson. From time to time, it happens that I go to trainings and let time pass quickly but there's always something that awakes me sooner or later (a grading date, if nothing better) and I realise that I should use my (and others') time to study harder, improve more and don't let time fly away.

Next time if I notice that a training (even if it's only an hour long) is too short I will need to think about what changes I have to make. Even one hour should be enough to get tired of properly practicing, I guess it's not a coincidence that the Hombu classes last an hour, too.

So I still can't properly answer my initial questions but at least I gave a couple of thoughts to relativity theory at an aikido training :). Let me know though if you can answer the above questions.

Aikido3D review

A couple of months ago a friend showed me the Aikido3D software. I hesitated a lot until I actually started writing about it (which I'd been planning since I got to know about its existence) because I have mixed feeling about it (and so have my friends).

It gives you aikido techniques demonstrated by a skilled master (Donovan Waite). You can watch the demonstrations in 3D, you can stop or slow down any time, you can change viewpoints and there is also some commentary to the techniques. The 'videos' can be grouped by they type of attack, technique or kyu grades. There are buttons to turn features on and off, for example, whether to show the footsteps of tori (aka. nage, who throws the other) during the execution of a technique. You can also switch between hakama and simple gi and you can even turn off either the display of tori or uke. There is another option to turn on the "center radials" which show the centres of practicing partners. You can also adjust the playing speed and turn on/off commentaries.

All this is nice but there's always a question in my mind when using aikido3d: what is it good for? Why is this needed? I understand it's different because of the 3D display but why is that better than series of videos?

I think the main problems that made me think about the possible purpose of the software are the commentaries and the limitations of the display. To explain the latter, I can adjust the camera's position, rotate around the aikidoka left to right or right to left, I can zoom in or out of the centre of the scene, change between top, front and 'follow' views but I just wanted to grab the screen with the mouse pointer and rotate the view freely - left to right, up and down, zoom to one certain thing I wanted to understand. Maybe it's just my personal preferences, it's not really a crucial problem.
However, my main concerns are the commentaries: they don't say much to a beginner and don't say enough to an advanced student about the techniques. For example, comments such as "to drop Uke's center, Nage must extend and relax his arm" are exactly like this. It reminds me of a childhood tale about the girl who was asked to "bring something but don't bring anything" to the King*.

The interesting bit with Aikido3D, however, is that when you slow down you can see the minor mistakes and problems. I was watching hanmi handachi kaitennage and I was like "Ha! He's losing tegatana now! Ha! Again!". It was even funnier when I "turned on the footprints". Sometimes I could see the irimis and tenkans in the line of attack as I was taught but, particularly for longer techniques, the footprints just looked like blood splatters on the mat :).

Maybe I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist but I would have preferred the digitalising of the moves of top shihans such as Yamada Yoshimitsu who's in the "special thanks to" section of the software. Waite shihan is really good but I don't know much about him and would have trusted the demonstrations by very top masters more.

A note to myself: as a technique can't be done twice exactly the same way to be 'perfect' (O'Sensei famously refused demonstrating exactly the same technique once again after being asked so because the first photo might not have been good enough) and different technical bits are usually emphasized in different demonstrations so I think I keep training and reading about aikido but don't watch the same recording 100 times unless it is really instructional with loads of explanations and helping instructions.

My rating is 3/5, what do you think?


*the girl brought a bird but she released it just before giving it to the King. She brought something but didn't bring anything...

Are you a slow walker?

In one of the recent trainings I showed tenchinage (heaven-earth throw) in the kids' class. First we started with gyaku hanmi katatedori (left hand grabbing right hand or right grabbing left) and I showed only the chi (earth) part where you just slide a bit sideways and forward and point into the irimi (unstable) point of the attacker who then rolls or sits down the mat smoothly. This looked nice so in the next training I also introduced the ten part where the not-grabbed hand goes to control the attacker's chin and you step forward causing the same effect on the attacker as before (i.e. roll or sit).

However, when we started practicing, one of my young aikidoka speeded up and wanted to throw me quickly. This was the moment I suddenly remembered having read a quote from Abraham Lincoln:

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

I will explain the speed of practicing much more when the speed-up next happens (which is totally expected as children have a lot of energy to release which makes the class lively and, for me, more enjoyable). I guess I will talk about speed after playing some tiring aikido-games such as the one where you need to throw your opponent off balance from a hand-shaking position :).

To switch to my own training experience, this quote is a very good one. It is said that speeding up has a certain balancing effect and you can obviously use more of the attacker's energy, but to learn the basics, especially how to do ukemi (fall, breakfall) without risking injury, high speed doesn't look ideal. If you can do a technique slowly you will certainly be able to do it fast when you learn the necessary skills to handle breakfalls.

I recently complained to one of my friends that their aikido demonstration for recruiting new students was too slow. He didn't respond to this comment which made me think about why he chose that particular speed (I was sure it was a deliberate choice). After a while, I understood why the demo was like that. I understood that he just didn't want to decieve prospective newcomers by showing what they won't be able to do at the beginning. Now I think it was fair because people who would have joined their trainings based on an over-exciting, fast (also, populist) demo would have left soon having been disappointed. I guess it's better to attract less people but keep them for longer than to attract a lot of people whose majority will leave the class very soon (which happens in most martial arts, aikido included, unless you get that addiction).

Although they say "You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps" (David Lloyd George), in the beginning of learning something new wouldn't you rather practice jumping over small ditches if it was possible, to gradually prepare for the great jump?

Black hakama - black eye

Last September when I first officially* trained in hakama I got a black eye. Not as black as Captain Jack Sparrow's but it could still be noticed.

I didn't watch Little Britain at that time but I could have surely repeated stage hypnotist Kenny Craig's famous lines when I saw people staring at me in the street:

"Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don't look around my eyes, look into my eyes, you're under"

It was also funny when I went to watch the others play football the next Saturday wearing sunglasses on a particularly cloudy day. Some other players actually believed that I didn't play because I hadn't passed the ball enough times the previous Saturday and things had turned nasty when discussing the matter :) (I couldn't say that one of the aikido girls kicked me in the face, that would have been so unmanly! :)). Truth 1. I didn't want to play because I still felt some fluidy material 'being shaken' below my left eye so it wouldn't have been wise to kick the ball and run around. I turned into manager instead and directed the team. Some players liked it, the others didn't want to say anything in case I started picking fights :). Truth 2. the Saturday games are far more friendly than it seems from the above paragraph.

There's another joke I immediately remembered when I saw myself in the mirror (I knew this joke with another nationalities so no offence to anyone):

Three Scottish men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties

Macbain had married a woman from America and bragged that he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and that needed done at their house. He said that it took a couple days but on the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were all washed and put away.

Macgregor had married a woman from Australia. He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn't see any results but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done and he had a huge dinner on the table.

The third man Cameron had married a Scottish girl. He boasted that he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, mowed, laundry washed and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye. Enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher, fill the washing machine and call a landscaper.

God bless Scottish women!!!

source: source: http://y2u.co.uk/Humour/Jokes/

Apart from laughing at it, I tried to do something 'scientific' about it and documented my black eye's gradual disappearance. In case you want to fake a black eye for whatever reason, have a look at the pictures and apply the make up with respect to which day you are faking from the supposed injury (the idea comes from a CSI episode when the sharp-eyed CSIs noticed that a women applied the same black eye make up for several consecutive days).
The other reason for taking photos every day was that the person who accidentally kneed me in the face felt guilty about it although we immediately agreed after the incident that 'accidents happen, next time both of us will be more careful'. It would have been silly to make a scene or point to someone else even if I felt like that anyway. But I didn't.
I'm putting the photos of my mornings-after-project here on the right. Note that I didn't take pictures every day when the bruises became hardly visible (click on it to enlarge).

Now, how the eye got its nice, dark colour: it had all happened before the training even started. I put my hakama on properly for the first time so it had to be tested. Simple tachi waza was ok, I felt comfortable. Mae ukemi, ushiro ukemi were fine, I rolled exactly like before. I knew suwari waza would be more complicated. I expected that when I move in suwari waza I would step on my hakama and possibly fall over (I had heard similar stories before). Simple suwari movements were not so easy but at least I didn't hurt myself. So we tried some techniques where I'd be thrown in suwari waza: I think kotegaeshi was the first (and last) technique to try. I'm not sure whether it was the first kotegaeshi immediately or the second, but when going down to roll I felt a sudden blunt force trauma (too much CSI at that that time) below my left eye. My first thought was that I'd be fine because I hadn't felt any cracking noise which would have meant that something had been broken. The left part of my face was a bit numb so I laid down on the mat to get over it but I wasn't in shock or anything similar. I got a cold, wet towel to put on the 'wound' as we didn't have ice in the dojo. Then I trained like before, the only difference was that thing at my left eye which made me colour some tissues red from time to time during the training.

That was the only injury I have had in a training visible for more than a week in my 7 effective years of doing aikido. I think it's much better injury rate than for any other martial arts where you can easily get a broken rib in a competition.

*I count the Sunday training as official because there are kickboxing trainings before and after the training on Wednesdays and, although I had practiced tying and folding my hakama at home before the first Wednesday training, the pressure of having to change to gi and hakama quickly before training and changing back to normal clothes even quicklire after training was high and I couldn't tie and fold my hakama as nicely as I wanted to.

Integral Transformative Practice Seminar in Brighton

I attended the first ITP (Integral Transformative Practice) workshop held in the UK by ITP teacher Pam Kramer, ITP President. Thanks to Mark, who I know through our blogs, I was invited to join and learn about ITP which is strongly based on aikido as it was developed by aikidoist George Leonard (and Michael Murphy). So I went to Brighton on my name day...*

The first thing I noticed as a good start of the day that I got to Brighton in 20 minutes less than to the university where I go twice a week. Vive la TFL. The weather was typically British but the workshop was an indoor event so nobody had problems with a little rain (and I'm used to it by now, anyway).

We started at 10am with an 'informal check-in' and started doing the various exercises planned for the day. I don't want to go into the details of each of these exercises so I just write a couple of thoughts about the ones that interested me the most.


Firstly, we did the ITP kata which is an appr. 40 minutes long series of centering, balancing, stretching and meditative exercises. Around 80% of what we did were very familiar, I even do many of them in the children's classes (for example, the rowing exercises and the 'water' exercises). It was a good feeling to do something I knew with people I did not know, and at the same time, see that there are small but interesting differences in how these techniques are done in our trainings and at ITP. One of these differences, for example, is how we hold our hands when doing the 'stirring in a big bowl of water' exercise: I simply learned to draw horizontal circles while resting one of my hands on the other (well, kind of...) but we imagined a large spoon in our hands on Saturday and also, that we were stirring water. I liked it very much and will probably change to this method in my classes as children can probably get the exercise more easily.

I also liked the 'soft eye - hard eye' exercises. I have already heard and read (and written a bit) about how and what to look during aikido trainings but the exercises on Saturday helped to understand the importance of this more. Using 'different eyes' while doing taisabaki in pairs was really interesting experience. At one time you see only the face of your partner, then their whole body and then the whole room with others doing the same steps. Definitely something to practice more in aikido trainings: Awareness and connection (two of the letters from the acronym GRACE of ITP).

The third memorable exercise** was the one that tested our ways of communication. Whether you push someone when talking, whether you just surrender or run away from pushy people was tested through a simple moving-pushing exercise. I learned about myself and realized that I'm usually not too pushy but tend to give myself in more easily, possibly too easily. I can now watch myself, change this behaviour if I want to and, next time, test it with the exercise. Liked it.

The fourth one was easy but also a lot to learn from: how to listen and how to be listened to. It's a very good feeling to be completely listened to (be heard), not to be judged or just be able to listen and not interrupt others when they want to tell something and they simply need to be understood and accepted. Good one, too.

There were several other exercises as ITP appetisers but I think the above four are the main ones that I learned the most from.

I also met several interesting people, aikidoka as well as civilians :D which was good.


*My name day also happens to be the International Women's Day as well as the day right after my birthday but I'll rather write about this later, in another blog :). I bought flowers and ice cream to Heni on my way home and she prepared a Japanese dinner by the time I got home. It was definitely a good day :).

**I selected the memorable exercises by sleeping on them, and whatever exercise I was thinking about on Sunday morning got selected for this post.

Awards and certificates

Aikido is against competition (except for the Tomiki style). The only person you need to fight and win against is yourself. So it's a good thing to get some feedback about how the fight is going. It's good to get some recognition for the level someone achieves which is exactly what gradings are supposed to give you. Yesterday Karesz handed out the grading certificates to people who graded at the end of January. The certificates came from the Hungarian Aikido Foundation whom Karesz visited last week to learn more from his master and get the "paperwork" done :). Congratulations again to the 6-5-4th kyu aikidoka!

He also introduced awards now which work well for the kickboxing children and adults at Holistic: he gave away certificates and medals of achievement in 2007. I got the "Biggest Effort" award for writing the blog, running the children's classes and for whatever he felt I had done right :) so I'm not completely impartial when I'm talking about these awards. It felt good to get one which is good. It boosted my inner ego which is not too good. So I have a double-standard feeling about myself because to get an award that distinguishes you from anyone else can lead to some kind of competition between people in the next year. However, if the award makes you work harder and help yourself improve more, it's good. It seems that by this line I have successfully managed to convince myself that the award is good for me. I wonder how others who haven't received one of the three awards feel about it.

Since the master gave away certificates and he wasn't going to get one for aikido before his next dan grading :), we decided that it was time someone got the "Master of the Year" award, so he received one together with an aikido mug. He immediately put it into use by drinking his Guinness (with blackcurrant) from it after the training. A well deserved drink :D.

I think the smiles on the faces of people receiving kyu certificates, awards, mugs as well as people just training to receive certificates the next time tells a lot about how joyful aikido trainings can and should be.

"Always practice the Art of Peace in a vibrant and joyful manner.

O'Sensei"

How to fold a hakama 1 - my story

In our Aikido Foundation when you reach 2nd kyu level you are entitled to wear hakama. I already wrote about how hakama should be tied on and who can wear hakama in various aikido organisations in earliest posts. Until now, however, I haven't posted anything about how hakama should be folded although it would (almost) complete my hakama-related instructions. The reason I hesitated with this post is explained below.

A friend of mine who successfully graded for 2nd kyu a year before me said that it took him 45 minutes to fold his hakama for the very first time. Later this time was obviously reduced but I always remembered that certain 45 minutes and I couldn't wait to try to fold my own hakama and show that I can do it much quicklier. It looked obvious that I can do better because all the senior students with hakama always finished with folding within maximum five minutes. I thought I could probably do it within half an hour first and go down to 5 minutes within the matter of months. However, this is not how it happened.
Another friend lent me her hakama after a training (but months before my 2nd kyu grading) because she needed to go somewhere and couldn't take her hakama with her. I felt "this is the opportunity, I can show myself that I can do it well and quickly". So I folded hakama first at home where noone could see and watch me after training. Trying it at home was a lucky decision (my friend with the 45 minutes record tried it at home first, too). It took me more than 45 minutes... and then again it took me more than 45 minutes. I followed all the instructions I was given or could find online [1][2][3][4 - my favourite][5][6 - a pdf], why did this happen? I had several versions of how to fold a hakama printed from various websites and they still didn't help me much.

Here is why: All the instructions I found on the Web start with the same 'position': the hakama is on the floor, it's just lying there and looks neat and nice. The five front folds are all parallel and there isn't a single wrinkle nor is a not well aligned fold. If I start with this layout I can finish folding my hakama in less than two minutes. But to get to this properly aligned position is not as quick as it may seem. If you have a very good quality hakama with extremely well ironed folds, I kind of tend to believe that you can put your hakama down the floor so that all the folds are in the right position. But usually they aren't and it often happens that while trying to bring order to one side by arranging the folds you pull another part of the hakama destroying an already well aligned set of folds. This is the process that takes time, at least for me.

Some people even 'cheat' by sewing a bit here and there making 'permanent' folds.

So what happens when you see people packing their hakama in 5 minutes? They either have a very well ironed hakama made of a very good fabric or they are cheating by not folding the hakama nicely and properly. This kind of cheat, however, is much more acceptable than sewing because what they do is they take the hakama home to hang it and fold it properly before the next training.

This is what I do as well. I don't have time to fold my hakama properly after a training, so I do my best in five minutes. Maybe I could do an acceptably good job in five minutes but I'm a bit more perfectionist than that. Besides, hakama folding at home has become a kind of meditative process for me (as another friend pointed it out). It can still take 45 minutes but I don't mind that anymore. I arrange a bit here, a bit there and at the end I'm satisfied with the quality of my folding (I also use my clothes-brush as I don't wash my hakama as often as I wash my gi). A couple of hours later training begins, my nice folds are destroyed but it feels much better to put on a hakama that is in order and taken care of. As part of my folding procedure I enter I kind of shallow meditative state when I just focus on what I'm doing and not really on how I am doing it. When I'm finished it feels much better.

When I was told that what I'm doing is actually a kind of meditation, I immediately realized that I used to do (and feel) the same when I composed music 5-10 years ago. At that time I called it a 'flow' which comes from psychology but I think these two things are very much related. For example, my father almost completely forgets about himself when he works in his workshop assembling some small mechanical devices. It is flow but it is also meditation.

In case you are looking for instructions on how to fold a hakama please wait until my next post.

Fire with fire, fire with water

The paragraph that started my philosophical thinking for this week is from another blog:

"Most people are taught in life (and in most other martial arts) to meet force with force – to fight fire with fire.[...] However, isn't it more intelligent to fight fire with water, not with fire? When was the last time a fireman showed up at a burning home with a truck full of fire?"

In a normal case, you do meet fire with water: an aikidoka answers to an attack with water, i.e. we are not supposed to add any force to that of the attacker but redirect the force and make the energy flow.

This is the basic case but let's play with the ideas of water and fire and their use in aikido.

I think an attack can be fire or water, doesn't matter. If fire is concentrated into a sudden blast it can destroy everything. If water is focused into a tiny ray it can cut the toughest diamond.

An aikido technique can be fire or water, too. As water, it finds the least resistant way and lets the opponent's energy flow so that water itself doesn't have to 'use' its potential energy. As fire, if you absorb the energy of what creates fire (a log, for example) and emit it back as heat and pressure then you used the energy of the attacker and threw him with his own energy. If there's no log to feed the fire, there isn't much to emit back, only a tiny spark is enough until the attack comes.

So is it fire with fire, water with water or what? :) And what if I bring in the rest of the basic elements, i.e. earth and air?

Are these two things (fire and water) the same as yin and yang? Or yang and yin? I don't know but it was good to think about it in the morning.

You might be an aikido addict when - part 2

Here's the sequel to the first post about aikido addiction symptoms.

The list has grown since Monday so I will just add those to the end of the list.

You might still be an aikido addict when...

• you open (fire)doors with tegatana and your hip (essentially the same as extending yourself into the door but I had this item before reading the Aikiweb entry)
• when you are a bit drunk you start doing aikido's dance-like moves on the dance floor (it just comes naturally)
• if you are there with a group you even do the rowing exercises together ('in a crazy world only crazy people are normal')
• you all think these look nice and fun (especially if the party is preceeded by an aikido demonstration)
• you always see your dance partner's irimi points and find it hard to resist throwing her (see handshake in previous post)
• going home from a party you can't resist doing mae ukemi on concrete and then you are delighted to see that your camera in your backpack is still intact (Fudoshin san did it, I wasn't drunk enough)
• in a training camp, you change to keikogi at home (or wherewhere your accommodation is) and get on the bus with your bokken in your belt (when you see people watching you you say you are from the bakery)
• you never hold the handle or hold onto the pole in a bus or train, you try to keep a stable hanmi position without using your arms (but the bus isn't attacking in a straight line so it often finds your irimi point)
• walking in an empty corridor you think about how much space you have to do ukemi (the space you need gets smaller as you advance in your aikido studies)
• walking in an corridor you imagine what your boss and colleagues would say if you pretended to stumble then did mae ukemi and stood up as if nothing has happened (copyright Szilard(o) Sensei who also had baseball cap with a Sensei print created by erasing 'Security' from a cap of Sensei Security company)
• you let your friends try to 'draw the sword' from your bokken (sorry, that's mean but many of us do it)
• admire your tegatana in the mirror (but you can always see some place for improvement)

And the three extras:

• You teach your whole family how to roll after just three months of training
• You play with children of your friends/family in shikko dachi and you both feel very happy about it
  
• You teach ukemi to your dog and the dog loves it: runs around, attacks, rolls and runs around and attacks again (ryotedogi kokyunage or, the Hungarian version, iriminage kutya, the latter meaning dog, obviously). As the aikiweb forum says, ikkyo doesn't work on dogs. I have never tried that one, only kokyunage :).
  

You might be an aikido addict when - part 1

I couldn't help but continue the list of Aikiweb's 'You might be an aikido addict if...' topic with my own entries. Initially I thought I would find a couple of entries there which are relevant to me but then it turned out that I can add a couple from my own aikido addiction. Moreover, it's not only a couple of lines but 24 :) and it's only 24 because I can't remember more but I'm sure there are a couple more to make the number 30 :).

First, my favourites from Aikiweb regardless whether I have experienced them or not (but it's likely that these are my favourites because I've experienced them at least once :) ):

You might be an aikido addict if...

• you don't just open a door -- you extend into it from your center
• you immediately stop what you're doing and sit down whenever you hear someone clap their hands
• you find yourself with an irresistible urge to bow every time you enter or exit a room
• you eagerly wait for Halloween (or any other costume party) to wear your gi and hakama outside the dojo
• when you see a strait wooden stick, such as a broken broom handle, you automatically refer to it as a jo
• any building you are in that has a large area in it you think, "Gee this would make a great dojo."
  

Finally, my own list with my own comments (1-12 for now, 13-24 are coming in the next post). Enjoy and add more if you want.

You are (I am) an aikido addict because...

1. on your way to a tranining you warm up your neck and wrists (these are the warm-up moves that attract the least attention)
2. you go home from a training and keep thinking about when the next will be and what you should focus on more (immediate withdrawal symptoms)
3. on your way home from a training you play the training's techniques in your head (usually you are tori)
4. on your way home your arms are always in tegatana and sometimes you walk in aiumiashi and tsugiashi (it's usually dark already so you think noone notices you)
5. on your way home you think about ways how some basic principles can be taught to beginners even better (frustration over not being thrown enough times to get so tired that you need to take the bus home)
6. when you are cold at home you don't turn on the heating or put on more clothes but do an aikido-style warm-up (and you say it's just because you are saving on the energy bill)
7. you close your eyes after going to bed and see aikido techniques played in front of you (not as scary as it sounds)
8. sometimes you participate in these techniques as tori (but that needs much more concentration)
9. you can't sleep because you suddenly remembered a good topic for your aikido blog and can't beat it out of your head until you have it 'written' in your mind (usually starts at 2am and finishes at 4am)
10. you see something on the street or hear a word somewhere and you immediately start thinking about its aikido connection and how it could be written down and posted in your blog (that's how the car alarms inspired me)
11. you treat a handshake as aihanmi katatedori (very hard to resist 'harmony')
12. you redirect other pedestrians on a busy street with tegatana and aiumiashi (detailed experience description coming in another post :))

Others coming next... :P

Live free or try hard

Alright, the title is a bit too newspaper-like but it really captures what I want to say (and my favourite male actor is Bruce Willis, anyway :D). One of the reasons I kept doing aikido for so long is that I usually try things too hard and trainings slowly teach me how not to. I want to control my life, plan everything ahead so nothing is unexpected and for everything I have a plan (or plan B, C, etc.). Obviously, this control-freakness doesn't allow much flexibility, spontaneity and creativity. You always tell yourself how things should be done and you lose the freedom of acting in different ways easily. That's why if you try something too hard you can't live free although you will need the freedom do decide whether to throw your opponent to left or right, step back or forward in randori, etc. When you are attacked, it's practice and quick thinking only, there is no time to make up plans.


About trying too hard: many people say "Try not. Do." I try :) to organise my life accordingly but it's hard :). Whenever I catch myself just trying - and that my jaws are locked from that much concentration - I have to remind myself to let things happen simply the way they do. As another famous saying/prayer goes:

"Lord, give me the strength to change what I can, give me the strength to resist what I cannot change and give me the wisdom to understand the difference between the two" - St. Francis of Assisi.

Ok, this is probably enough life philosophy for this post, so let me explain how this is connected to my aikido experiences. When you need to connect with your partner and redirect the attacker's energy you can't lock your muscles (although the initial shock reaction is usually muscle contraction). They have to be relaxed to connect and lead your uke which is not so easy, especially if you are similar to me and tend to try things too hard. I tried too hard on Sunday. I didn't consciously want to try too hard but I wanted to do that nikkyo omote so well and, as a result, I messed up each technique. I became frustrated and tried even harder, guess what the outcome was :). So I tried to relax by shaking my hands and legs to relax my muscles. Then I tried again but then I guess I overrelaxed because now I messed up the other way! :)

It's a never ending process to find the balance between too hard and too easy ways. To find the right tones of muscles that allow me to do the techniques the right way. This can be said about almost anything in life, I know: don't go towards the very extremes unless you just want to find how not to do things (and obviously the extremes should not cause something 'final' because if you got stuck there you can't come back and do things the way you think they are worth doing). Hmm...see? I'm looking for control again. :) Plans for everything. :) "Blessed is he who" doesn't worry about planning and gets to shodan within 4 years :D.

So I think this should be the Question of the month:

How do you balance between extremes? How do you not try (doing an aikido technique) too hard yet you don't fall apart from being overly relaxed?

I appreciate every idea from the simplest to the most philosophical.

Our club - the very beginning

Apart from the grading and starting of the children's aikido classes, our club had also happened to be exactly two years old on the 27th January 2008 so now I take the opportunity and write about how it started.

In 2005, thanks to a friend, it turned out that there are more than one aikidoka in London who used to train at the same organisation in Hungary. It was time we met and continue what we had started before and train together. The first time we met with Karesz (aka. Karol, Charlie san, Sensei :)) was very similar to the current, regular after-training events: we went for a beer. We discussed (among many other things :)) that we should find a club and train together. So we started looking for a good club. He looked where he lived and I looked where I could. However, finding a good club wasn't very easy and quick process, given that our financial situation caused some restrictions in terms of travelling distances and training fees as well.

So in the beginning we decided to train on our own where no fees needed to be paid: in the park. With Szabi's arrival, there were four of us so that made two pairs which was almost perfect for us. Karesz, Szabi, Heni (my wife) and me went to the Bishops park near Putney bridge and trained in several weekends of the autumn of 2005, obviously, when the weather allowed us to. There were several people in the park looking at us rolling and flying. We didn't wear our gi on the grass so that's why it was only 'several' people staring. As winter came, the park had become more and more muddy and wet so we had to stop these outdoor trainings.

In the meantime, we visited several clubs. Since we trained in Aikikai style which is the traditional aikido style currently overseen by the founder's grandson, Ueshiba Moriteru, we wanted to find an aikikai aikido club. There weren't a lot of them, and we had also seen several 'aikido' trainings which weren't really resembling to what we had seen and learned from our 3-4th dan masters previously. Maybe these training were just too different and they weren't what we needed but we always thanked them for letting us watch the training (I sometimes participated as well) but then did not return. We also found a good training in Maida Vale led by a 6th dan master. We even attended trainings for roughly a month but for some reason neither Karesz nor me felt that it was the training we want to settle in. Although a bit different, they were technically very good, but I felt something wasn't right with the atmosphere. It might have been just me, someone who wasn't ready to accept a training which was not exactly the same as the trainings I was used to (my former master had even warned me about this) but at the end, we just simply stayed away.

Our trainings, however, had to continue because having skipped 2 years and having tasted trainings again I wanted to continue my aikido studies and Karesz and Szabi didn't want to lose their (aikido) shape :). We decided to look for a place where we can rent a large room and mats for an hour and train as we could. We had a 1st dan and 1st kyu in our group so to keep up our levels it was fine. Karesz was the person who found a place to train. It was in the Open door community center in Southfields (the aikido listed in their website is something very different). It was there where we first trained as a 'club' on 27th January 2006. There were three of us plus a friend as spectator.

The first aikido training in Southfields. Note the smiles :).

Not much later, other friends and friends of friends joined and started their aikido studies. After a couple of months, we moved to the Holistic Fitness studio in Wimbledon and have been training there ever since but I'll write about that when it will be two years since starting trainings there.

After the first Kids Aikido class in Wimbledon

Finally I slept well last night. I think everything went well during my first kids training and both children and watching parents seemed to enjoy the class. Obviously, there's a lot I can improve and there's a lot more we can practice in future trainings as the kids learn more and more basic movements and techniques. I forgot to say and do a couple of things but I didn't expect that everything should go exactly the way I planned, I needed to practice being flexible and spontaneous in 10% of the time.


Someone said after class that I was too serious and hardly ever smiled. I will definitely work on this because it's a good point and I know I tend to concentrate too hard sometimes. An aikidoka has to be relaxed, that was one of the reasons I started aikido for, I needed to build confidence, had to be more relaxed and, obviously, I needed a good exercise. I hope to improve these skills in children I train, too.


There were six young aikidoka in my class and I want to say thank you to all of them because they worked hard and focused surprisingly well during that one our yesterday. I also want to thank the parents who brought their children and some of them supported us by staying there and watching the class. I really liked one of the fathers who laughed every time the kids did something cute and funny. It was a positive support towards me as well.


We practiced a couple of breathing exercises, the famous rowing exercise, played balancing games, learned hidari and migi hanmi positions, mae ukemi and ikkyo omote. This week we will step forward and extend our knowledge.


The above photos were taken by our "regular photographer" with the verbal approval of parents. If you are a parent of one of the children and want to see all the other pictures as well, please contact me.

ps.: Yesterday I learned that there are actually people who read this blog :). Parents mentioned reading it and newcomers in the adult class also said they had read a couple of posts. Thank you all, I'll keep writing and sharing my aikido thoughts! On Wednesday I'll post an entry about Heroes' Hiro Nakamura ;).

Kids aikido classes starting

I'm going to start aikido classes for children on Sunday, 27th January (4:30pm). Kids between 7-12 will be in my group and I'm looking forward to seeing and teaching them. I haven't really posted about this intention of mine in this blog yet because I've just been preparing almost silently and we tried to finalise the date we could start these classes.

One of the reasons I started this blog in September was that I wanted to organise my thoughts and also, gather some basic information (folding your gi, tying your belt, bowing, etc.) that I can later use and, possibly, refer to in my kids classes. The blog has turned into a bit more personal direction since, I think, but I hope it's going to be helpful for young people who want to understand aikido more, too.

The class will definitely be very different from the 18-20 year old students' I teach at the university (for computer science :D).

We have discussed with Karesz and Steve a lot which age groups I should teach. Finally, the decision to have a single class for 7-12 olds has been reached for various reasons: 1. as aikido can be practiced by people of very different strength levels, size and age, there wasn't any point in dividing the group into two age groups like in kickboxing; 2. children below 7, though, might have too different attention levels from, say, 11-12 year olds so that's how the lower age limit has been decided; 3. 12-13 year olds should be able to join the adult classes depending on how strong and mature they are (just like the age until they have to use a booster seat in cars, as the Dragons learned last Friday).

I have been reading various articles about kids aikido classes for a relatively long time, that is why I have the Aikido kids link in my links section from the starting day of this blog. I've also become a member of the related group at Google to learn from others' experiences. Obviously, knowledge about teaching acquired by reading articles and forums is rarely the best thing to do (though you can still learn a lot by it), so I visited the Lil' Dragons' classes (children aged 4-8) and the Kids Zone (9-13) classes run at Holistic, where I also happen to train in the adults' aikido class. Those kids do kickboxing but I still learned a lot by watching, participating and showing them some aikido techniques because Steve has kindly asked me to do so (after I arrived to just observe these classes :)). Needless to say, personal experience has completely changed the syllabus and approach I initially planned. I'm sure I will change these things many times as I gain more and more experience but that's how development is made.

If you remember the post with a lot of pictures where I was in charge of the adult class, it wasn't because I was the best in the team but because I wanted to practice teaching the most. I've asked Karesz Sensei to give me a class every month so I can prepare for my own classes (and he can train as well :)). He was generous in December giving me more than what I had asked for. He obviously wants me to run a good class because he will be the one examining the kids when it comes to their grading and he wants to see some quality aikidoka.

I will have an assistant to demonstrate techniques as well. Armand who brings us nice food sometimes...khm...:) ...is training with us in the adult class and young enough to remember how kids think will join me, for which I'm grateful.

Everything points to my new class and now I'm having problems sleeping because I'm so excited about teaching these kids and planning their first aikido trainings.

I'll definitely write another post after the first class to tell my experiences.

Finally, my favourite kids aikido video with its even better background music :):

Mae Ukemi exercise

Finally I'm ready to post about basic rolling exercises as I could take some illustrative photos yesterday. The following text is couple of months old but it's still valid. Read on if you want to know how we learn forward rolls (mae ukemi).

"Last week I had the privilege to instruct the class as the master and several other students were away to attend a 3-day seminar by Fujita Masatake Shihan. Some of the students who stayed in London requested that we should practice rolls. I prepared with lots of rolling exercises but, unfortunately, I couldn't show all of them. Knowing how to roll, however, is very important as this way you can minimise the likelihood of at least one type of injuries.

To prepare my list of roll-learning exercises, I searched the web for instructions and explanations as to how to roll. I found a forum where a new student asked members of the forum to give him some hints on how to improve his rolling skills. The responses were all something like 'o, yes, in the beginning your rolls suck' and 'go to your master and ask him' to 'you need to practice and practice and practice even more'. These are all true but, unfortunately, don't answer the question. It is very good, though, that there are some other web pages that explain the principles of aikido rolls by giving illustrative pictures and some text that describe how you can do a proper roll (e.g. [1] and [2]).

There are many other sources as well but I'd like to recommend the DVD in which Doshu Ueshiba Moriteru demonstrates some basic aikido movements and his uke show how to roll.

Mae ukemi

I'd like to give you the instructions that helped me to learn to roll the level I am at now (and there's always plenty of space to make rolls smoother and less energy-consuming).

In this post, I'll give you some instructions on mae ukemi (forward roll) from shikko dachi (sitting-like position). When we learn to roll, first we do it from shikko dachi to minimise the possibility of injuries. It is perfectly suitable to learn to 'be a sphere' :) and apply the principles you would also use in tachi waza (standing position). Let's see the steps of a simple rolling exercise:

• You start from shikko dachi where one of your legs, or more precisely, knees point forward and there's a 90-degree angle between this leg and the other (so your other knee will point sideways). Let's use the example where it is your left knee that is in front and it is at a right angle with your right leg which faces to the right (right? :)). You will get a right angled triangle formed by your two knees and the toes of your feet (the latter is considered as one point as toes of your feet are very close)


• Let's transform this triangle into a square. Put your right hand to the fourth point on the mat (which will make the triangle a square). This will help you not to fall over when you start doing the forward roll at slow speed.


• Now you will roll on a line diagonal to your body. For this, you will need to use our left hand which goes between your right hand and left knee. You start rolling by leaning forward and pushing yourself with your toes (also forward).


• Keeping tegatana at all times, you start rolling on the edge of your left hand which is followed by forearm, upper arm, shoulder touching the mat and then your roll goes across your back (diagonally!) and when the right side of your hip/pelvis reaches the mat you are almost finished. It is very important that your spine touches the ground at one point only because you don't want to risk a spine injury in a tougher rolling situation later in your aikido career (or when you fall off stairs at the age of 100+).


• Finally, your right leg (knee facing right) and the balls of your left foot need to touch the ground gently and you have just arrived at the exact same position as when you started you roll: shikko dachi, left leg forwards.


• You can continue practicing by stepping forward and rolling on the opposite side (right leg pointing forward at the beginning).
  

Things to be careful about:

• Keeping tegatana. If you don't do this you may hurt your elbow or shoulder when you do a faster roll. That is why you need to roll like a round ball. Or planet, for philosophers :).


• Feet closely pulled in. If you leave your legs straight you won't be able to stand up at the end of the roll as your legs will just hit the mat with a noise. Making noise consumes energy, hence you will need to use your own energy to stand up (as the energy of rolling is at least partly lost).


• Protecting your head. Your head (face) mustn't touch the mat during rolling as it is very vulnerable to injuries. Turn your head a little bit sideways when rolling.

I will describe some more, very basic, rolling exercises in later posts."

The next will be a basic ushiro ukemi (backward roll) learning exercise in a couple of posts from now.

Connect

If you want to practice aikido in harmony with someone, you two (or three or more) need to be connected with each other. Your motions (centres) have to be connected in a way that enables you to work in harmony. Your minds also need to be connected to follow what the other is thinking, what their intentions are. For example, you as tori need to lead your uke and they have to come forward and follow your lead never losing each other. If uke releases your hand, there may go a good atemi towards him and both connection and harmony are gone immediately. If you just try to 'escape' uke's grasp you may get away from being hit but you also lose the chance of studying connection and harmony. This attitude would make it very hard to progress in aikido.

If the connection is not made in a smooth way there is no chance you are ever going to work in harmony. Colliding forces show a kind of connection but that doesn't lead to harmonious martial art practice not to mention that the 'state' of collision is not really sustainable because either your or your partner's arm (leg, hip, shoulder, head, jo, whole body, etc.) will bounce back and then there is no connection, no harmony but there may be an injury coming. If you connect and can maintain the connection there is a higher chance that, sooner or later, you will be able to work in harmony with each other (and noone gets hurt).

The topic of connection in this post comes from a research study I'm doing. I needed to recruit people who would use an online system I created to assess the quality of automatically generated tables of contents for documents. My observation was that for me it's a really hard effort to connect to a user and make them understand exactly what I want them to do. Different people think differently, they interpret the same sentences differently. Even if I give a detailed task description as to what they are required to do they will interpret it differently and do the task differently. Different states of different minds. So I didn't give everyone the same introduction text but started to explain to them what they need to do and upon any reaction to what I was talking about, I changed my explanation towards the way they understood better (at least I hope so :)).

The point is, that there is a connection between connections :). I needed to connect with my users to make both of us satisfied with what we were doing. It's a little bit of achieving harmony between two parties and I think I learned this skill in my aikido trainings. (I hope none of my users will comment on this post saying that the connection we intended to establish was a total failure :).)

The concept of connection, of course, can be applied to countless situations in life.

• Think about (verbal) conflict resolution when a bad connection can lead to someone "well gonna get beatens' ".
• Think about various negotiations when you need to reach an agreement (e.g. a price) that leads to a win-win situation.
• Think about playing a football game when you need to pass the ball to your teammate who should know that it is your intention to pass, maybe that you pass it to him between two opponents for which he needs to start running forward.
• Or just think about how good it can feel when the train you need to change to doesn't leave at the exact moment your train you are in is just arriving at the station (probably you notice better where there is no proper connection).

Aikido at the Olympic Games!!!

I was checking out the blog to see if all the wigdets work fine when I found an ad our friend Google has chosen to show to us.

The good news is that as a result, I learned something new: how to filter out ads.
The bad news is that the behaviour of the ad's creator can deceive a lot of beginners or people knowing little about aikido.

However, good news win...

Good news 2:1 Bad news

...because if you do know something about aikido, the ad page is really funny, especially the part describing aikido at the Olympic Games :D (I wonder if it was the Summer Games in Mexico city or the Winter Games in Grenoble).

Please read the quote below and laugh (I highlighted my favourite parts). According to the real spirit of aikido, let's love the author for giving us this entertaining bullsh...erm... text.

Aikido is by far one of the most popular martial arts and forms of self-defense in the world. Ever since its induction in to the Olympics in 1968, it has fast become a very popular and martial art!

Aikido focuses on both ground fighting and standup fighting on an equal basis as far as training goes. The theory is, if most fights end up on the ground so you need to be prepared for both.

Aikido is an offshoot of jujitsu which mainly focuses on ground fighting and not standup self-defense. Due to the nature of Aikido, training is done almost full-contact. This allows for the student to learn exactly what full-contact resistance feels like as well as is great for conditioning and muscle development.

Some of the downsides of this fighting system is, the standup techniques are not focuses as much on striking, kicking and grappling (standup). This has brought a lot of criticism to the art of Aikido because many feel that it is an inadiqute form of self-defense and personal protection.

I'm not giving you a source link, it doesn't deserve that. Chris says, the writer should be locked up for a year and be forced to read articles about Paris Hilton :D.

Happy New Year, I'll be back with more meaningful posts soon ;) (and might analyse the above text more deeply when I'm not in a positive mood like now).