Jayemmcee.com, creative shoebox

Jumping Kyu

one year of yoshinkan aikido

wow.

i really can't believe it's been a year.

one of the most enjoyable yet technically difficult martial arts i've ever immersed myself in.

i've created a training manual for the dojo, posters flyers, t-shirt designs, documented the 6 month instructor course on me camerabox and even met the global headmaster and son of the founder of the style.

and i just got to 5th kyu.

and because the yoshinkan style is so highly structured, we learn each technique step by step and inch perfect.

learning like that is counter intuitive to me, as i'm more of an instinctive learner who better picks up things by just doing them all in one go.

so although i understand how it all works, i still have trouble blending well.

flying through the air and always landing nice is a doddle to me - so my development is kind of imablanced. kinda.

but as i've stepped back and looked at it sideways, i see that with the solid structure of understanding i'm building, i can later focus more on sensitivity when delivering techniques.

receiving techniques comes so naturally to me, that, well, i never have to think about it.

perhaps that's what i should do when delivering them, too.

like yoda said: you must unlearn what you have learned.

or perhaps not.

aikido focuses more on muslcle memory anyway, the idea that if you do it over and over again the same way every day for years, eventually it will become second nature.

makes me wonder why i'm so good at flying. but then, i've always been throwing meself around since i can remember.

so back to blending and sensitivity. i'm quite impatient actually.

but there's no shortcuts in aikido, and i truly understand that.

so my future for aikido is set. 3rd/2nd kyu by this time next year then i will enrol on the Jan 2010 instructor course, it seems only right.

then i'll have 'that' reason for quitting smoking, heh.

and i'll be an aikido instructor. about bloody time!

so back to dojo and trying to perfect my basic stance [which, alas, is somewhat erratic]. they say that good posture and stance is a reflection of a state of mind.

hmmm...

domo arigato gozaimasu to sonny sensei and my aikido family at Yoshinkan Aikido Malaysia.

osu.