Happy Holidays 2023

It's that time of year. We are waiting on the end of 2022 and ready to welcome in 2023. We are still on our limited in person schedule at Aikido of Mountain View. And hopefully sooner as opposed to later in 2023 we will be in our permanent location just outside San Jose's Japantown. 2022 saw Harry Concepcion sensei receive the rank of rokudan. And in 2023 we will celebrate Steve Tsao sensei and of course David Eves sensei attaining the rank of godan. So much hopefully to celebrate in the New Year.

We want to pass our condolences to Meng Ear, who lost her father in 2022. Having lost both parents years ago, I know it is a difficult path. Elle had her cancer surgery in 2021 and has been pronounced cancer free. She is still undergoing post op treatments, but those will end early in 2023.

Personally, my Golden State Warriors defied the odds and brought home a 4th NBA championship. And Steph Curry deservedly won his NBA finals MVP. This is a reminder to us all to persevere and to chase the championship level of our best selves through our Aikido training.

We are currently in our break week between Chrismas and New Years. Our first class of 2023 will be at the Mountain View dojo the first Wednesday after the New Year. I am posting a couple of recent videos with this blog. We are currently still doing our Friday online noon to 1pm class. And these 2 videos were actually part of one class. But I thought to put them into 2 videos just to emphasize the importance of their message.

The first is titled Consciousness becoming Conscious. It's quite a topic. I remember Deepak Chopra in an audio cassette talking about about what he considered the process of creation. Beauty becoming beautiful. Love becoming loving. Intelligence becoming intelligent. Power becoming powerful. I think you get the idea. I personally think this was well done. https://youtu.be/ozb58Bg0NWI

We use curtains as gateways to travel to different levels of self. Pretty heady. But the same class had some real good movement. So I didn't want that to get lost, so I put it in another video. It's entitled 

What I learned from Steph Curry.Basketball in played from Hoop to Hoop. But movement to the hoop is  achieved through lateral movent. Conversely playing defense requires lateral movement, ie being a defender means staying in front of the offensive player. My own views on this are distinctly my own, but....... For me entering, encapsulated in the thrusting movement of the spear, for most people getting off the line, in translating lateral movement tnto forward motion. Tenkan is pivoting off the entering motion when you can no longer turn. It is even possible to enter while stepping back as you get the hang of it. In Aikido this is all encompassed in the term tai sabaki. For example in basketball Curry's most devastating move is a step back jumpshot. But the energy most be entering or going forward in spite of the backwards move. And how his lateral moves set up this drives to the hoop as well as his step back. At present in terms of motion he is the person I study the most. Except I use the Aikido spear moves instead of a basketball. So the second part of this class I put in its own video.https://youtu.be/LI6wnsKEBgA

I practice what I call the fire water changes which I use in conjunction with the 2 handed figure 8s. Your  movement become spherical which allows for what I believe Osensei refered to as kokyu no binyoo na henka. Ie the subtle changes in breath. That may seem esoteric but the basics for that I feel are in the 30 movement form we practice for spear/staff. And the above video goes a bit past that and may inspire you to try to master the changes on your own..

So enough for now. Again, Happy Holidays!