nardu debrah sensei seminar––saturday, february 5

April 4, 2011

lessons learned in kids' class

March 6, 2011

by Eli Bacher-Chong, age 13

I remember I first heard about Aikido when Brooklyn Aikikai gave a demonstration at my elementary school. Aikido was explained to us as "taking the energy of the attacker and using it against themselves."

After practicing it for about four years, I have learned much about it and maybe even life. I have learned that you can be physically powerful not by fighting or conquering your energy or the energy of others, but working in harmony with it and using it to your advantage. In a manner of speaking, if you cannot divert a stream to your crops, plant your crops by the stream.

I have also learned that there are times that you must push back when life pushes you around. Though I am still coming to terms with this truth, I believe that it was inspired by Aikido, and that it will greatly improve my life.

I was reminded of this lesson when I moved from the kids' class and entered the adult class in 2010. If the techniques became difficult or rough, I had to figure it out as well as I could, or toughen up and learn to face it.

Before I learned Aikido, I was fearful of the world and sometimes didn't like it because I could not control it; Aikido has taught me how to plow right through life and to work in harmony with it instead of needing to conquer it.

"musubi," or "connection"--a seminar with horii shihan

February 1, 2011

Our Tendokan Dojo welcomed Etsuji Horii Shihan from Kobe, Japan for a two-day seminar over the weekend August 21-22. In addition to the seminar, Horii Shihan taught our regular classes on Friday and Monday as well.

One thing Horii Shihan repeated both in the seminar and in the classes was “musubi”—the idea of connection with one’s partner. Staying “connected” with my partner has been difficult for me both in uke and tori. Although I know the whole body must move from the center in accordance to the flow of the technique, I often feel as if there’s some blockage right around where my hand meets my partner, making the area from my hand to my shoulder rather rigid.

For whatever reason, hearing the word in Japanese gave me a new image about staying connected with my partner during a technique. Musubi can be translated as “tying” (as in an obi, or a rope), and is also used for the idea of “union” (it is the first character in the characters for “wedding,” which ties into the idea of “blending” that Sensei often mentions). Whereas my image (due to my insufficient understanding of the concept) of staying connected with my partner was a stiff, stick-meets-stick type of a picture, I now have an image that it is more dynamic and flexible, like a rope, and this has given me a kind of breakthrough in how I stay connected both in uke and tori.

This was a concrete reminder that many points of entry exist for absorbing and understanding Aikido. It may be a word, a physical movement, a spatial orientation, or yet, something else. I hope my training will deepen so I can become ever more open to those points of entry into a revelation/discovery. ––James Yaegashi