aikido log

[kirkcudbright]

I taught today, the first of 3 Monday classes. This was less a case of "be the change you want to see in the world," and more that a) our senior instructor is following Sensei around the country, b) our other senior instructor is on paternity leave, and c) our other regular instructor, less senior than the other two, but quite estimable in her own

Comments

[lyonesse]

i really love the way leon sensei puts this: "mmm, SAVOR this moment...." :)

[lyonesse]

re: bigness -- i keep thinking i want to find a way to restate that, because it so obviously isn't about what we think about as "big" or even "size" in any way. i suspect what i want is to talk about is more like "reach", or heaven help me, "extending ki".

i'm thinking of using some metaphor like, "how big is your field of vision?" and pointing out that you can see somebody right in front of you, you can see the wall of the gym, you can see the ceiling and the floor. if you were outside, you could see literally light-years away. the feeling you want to have when being "big" is that you are looking and reaching for some distance that may be large -- possibly to your partner, possibly past your partner to the wall or floor or ceiling, possibly light-years away.

do you think that would make any sense to anybody....?

ps -- we should mail our lesson-plans to kokikai-officers and one another.

[kirkcudbright]

The only time I ever talk about "extending ki" is in relation to unbendable arm, or kokyudosa, where it's the only explanation that makes any sense. We're not a ki-oriented style, so we have "ki development exercises", but we don't exercise ki.

Re bigness: I talked about it as the feeling of bigness. You're small of stature, but you've got that big feeling. Part of it comes from posture (which I didn't talk about, but which I sort of modeled through gesture) - head up, shoulders back, chest out. I think it was Otto from SF dojo who talked about doing the shomenuchi ikkyo-undo warmup with your chest out, to get that big feeling. Dan McDougall may have touched on this as well.

Re lesson plans: That would be nice, if I had a lesson plan. I had a note pad, on which I scribbled things as they occurred to me, and I picked somewhat randomly from that list when it came time to actually teach.

[lyonesse]

i think i'm kind of using a post-facto definition of the word "plan" :)

the thing is, i *don't* feel big. not even with my chest stuck out ;) everybody's bigger than me, and it's even a bit of a mindbend when somebody actually isn't (as with our current small beginner). so i'm just not sure it's the right metaphor. i do feel like i reach or look off into the distance, though, and that's what i mean in this case by "extending ki". but i guess i can save that for my class....