This class was based upon the 8-sotai dosa. These 8 basic movements were practised and related to techniques from the basic-17 and Koryu-no-kata. Besides the simple technical aspect, a lot of attention was on the use and development of a soft power, generated by a relax movement of the body with a good posture.
Major problems are :
No understanding of the proper posture and movement. In most cases the bodyweight is too high, the body becomes unstable and this is compensated by making the body tensed. Movement is relying on too much muscular power. By doing this, the movements are becoming slow, which again is compensated by muscular power to apply a technique. Solution : introducing a proper breathing technique, visualization techniques.
No understanding of the role of tori and uke. In many cases the roles of tori and uke are expierenced as attacker and defender, the defender likes to win by a throw or joint technique. The attacker likes to win by using muscular power or by intercepting (often too soon) the technique or movement of tori. This produces a contra-productive result on the evolution of the aikidoka. The idea of cooperative training is not understood in some cases and cooperative training is associated with jumping before the actual movement becomes effective, or with passive movements. Passive movements are movements without the intention to do an action. Interception of the technique too soon by uke is frequently done by studying an isolated movement or technique. An example is a 17-hon kata technique were uke knows exactly what is happening. He is frequently thinking this is randori, and he uses the corset of limiting the movement of tori to win his randori. The feedback of this situation is a negative one. Solution : again here we have to work on posture and also on the ability to feel what is going on during the movement. You only can give feedback when you feel what is going on, the more understanding you have, the more feedback you can give.
Referee and randori Some referee training and randori at the end of the seminar. This will be repeated next seminar.
15-16-17 October 19-20-21 November (with Yoshiomi Inoue) 18-19 December (with Tim Wolput)
