"Smoke 'em if you got 'em," drawled Tatoian Sensei, as he announced a short break between classes on Sunday morning at the Santa Rosa dojo. At this invitation, eight or so students arose from seiza, some ducking under the sliding door to the outside, some heading back into the dojo changing area, and the rest just relaxing and talking on the mat. Sensei's comment was probably something he'd said and heard a million times during his career in the Army, and it resonated with the simplicity and unaffected good humor that is one of the things I love about him.
Tatoian Sensei, just back from the Phillipines to teach his first classes in Santa Rosa since January, had spent the first hour Sunday correcting and refining our 31 Kumijo partner practice. This form, a partner practice with the jo, is an attacker/defender form based on the 31 jo kata. Tatoian Sensei has had the benefit of a couple of visits from Hitohiro Saito Soke, and during these visits he picked up a few refinements. "He doesn't really teach me anything directly," Tatoian Sensei said about Saito Sensei, " but he will teach you guys, and I just have to pay attention when he does."
The refinements we covered involved a change in the footwork and rhythm of the paired form during the sequence of moves from 9 to 12. The changes made the form more fluid and interactive in a martial way, as the transition from move 10, where the defender captures the attacker's strike and then enters with his own strike, is more of a continuation instead of discrete moves. It requires the attacker to go from offense to defense in a particular split-second.
I trained this sequence with Jor, and we picked up the rhythm after a few halting trials. Sensei walked by us and said, "you two can do awase now." Telling us to shift into real-time fluid practice from the more halting stop-start routine we'd begun with was his signal that we were doing OK.
Tatoian Sensei looked great. He'd lost about 30 pounds, and he walked easily and lightly with no sign of the bad hip that gave him a limp most of last year. At one point he asked me to grab him so he could demonstrate Morote Dori Kokyu-Ho. It was like being lifted up by a steam shovel. I had so completely lost my footing, as he uprooted me, that I had to take a roll off behind him, rather than just crumpling under the finishing strike. To be so totally thrown is very exciting, and something I've missed since he'd gone away.
As of now it looks like Tatoian Sensei will remain in Norther California through most of the Summer, returning to the Phillipines by September. In the meantime, he will probably teach at least some of the weekly classes at the Santa Rosa dojo, including a two-hour class on Sundays. Above is a photo of all of us who attended Sunday's class.
technorati tag aikido
The problem I see with pfaisicm is that when you are in trouble it won't save you, and more often that not trouble comes searching for you, whether you want it or not. I speak for personal experience: I'm reasonably young, yet I have been molested on three different occasions by groups of men. By know you're probably screaming: Avoidance! You were searching for it! Bullshit. Every time it was broad daylight, every time it was a populated area in a good part of my town. Every time I was lucky enough to get away.You say: hey, you run away!Again, bullshit. In another situation, I might not have been so dumb lucky. Want an example of what criminals can do? Again, I can speak for personal experience.An eighty year old family friend of ours was throw down his house staircase: the criminals wanted the location of his house safe, wich did not exist, so he couldn't cough it up. The man, rather active for his age, ended up paralysed in bed because of the wound sustained during the robbery, and died after almost two months, very likely as conseguence of the wounds received during the fall. The trauma on his wife and his children is still indescribable.I would like to point out another error you made. A weapon is not a tool for random punishment of criminals, it is rather an emergency tool to push the criminal to reconsider his actions: just as a guard dog will bark to protect his sheeps from the wolf, the handgun will threat the criminal: quit your actions or you will risk your life. IF the criminal doesn't stop and ONLY in this situation, then, yes, the pourpose of the handgun is to shot the criminal- again not to kill him (even if that may be a byproduct of the self defence), but to stop the criminal from hurting an innocent person.By the way, pfaisicm has no foundation in traditionals religions: the Catholic church, for example, does not consider a sin self defence even when the act of self defence results in the death of a human being, as long as. the defender did everything in his power to avoid the fight . the defender did everything in his power notto provoke the fight. the intent of the defender is not to kill the attacker but to stop himI could spend hours talking about this argument, but I will make ot short PS I am not a native english speaker so I apologize for my mistakes and I hope I made myself clear
Posted by: Sukhjeet | April 25, 2012 at 06:24 AM