Chuck.Gordon
18th March 2002, 17:16
I went to the aikido/jodo seminar at Arlington Aikikai in Chicago this weekend. The aikido was good, clean, technically sound and lots of fun, but the jodo ... was just dead frigging brill!
JODO:
I can't keep all the lineages straight yet (it's that left-brain/right-brain disconnect that my wife calls my natural lobotomy), but Meik Skoss holds sho-mokuroku in Shinto Muso-ryu from Shimizu Takaji. His jo work is impressive as hell. It is, IMNSHO, to the seitei jo (that Peter Boylan has valiantly tried to help me learn) what a HMMVW is to a 1969 Toyota pickup. The Toyota is fine in it's place and all, but if you really want to get somewhere against all odds, you pick the Hummer.
In the course of the weekend, we learned three waza (honte uchi, gyakute uchi and hikiotoshi uchi) and one kata (Uchi Otoshi).
The stances were natural; the kamae made so much more sense than the kendo-influenced seitei stuff! If you ever get the chance to attend a sem or class taught by Meik, do so. He's a helluva teacher and a genuinely brilliant budoka.
He has powerful opinions and I don't always agree with them, but his research and experience are vast and he always gives me something to think about. One of the most meaningful things I took home from this encounter was, oddly enough, some thoughts he shared on shaking hands.
In class, he covered general grip, stance, striking and movement theory, and everything Peter had tried to teach me sort of fell into perspective. I am deeply and well impressed and find myself hungry for more.
That is not derisive commentary on Peter or his efforts, BTW, he did good, but I think the SMR koryu stuff is as different from seiteijo as Kashima Shinryu is from kendo. I can see the value in seiteijo, but having had a taste of the other end of that stick (ahem), I have to say my taste runs toward the less-diluted lineage.
From what Meik taught, I've already begun to extrapolate (probably quite badly) some of the other kihon Peter has taught. The seitei is not without valuta, but the paradigm is very different. Peter's always been upfront with that and this seminar brought that into focus, for me, very clearly.
I KNEW that SMR jo was deep, beautiful and powerful, but until I got a personal glimpse of that through Meik, it was knowledge at a distance.
In the end, we still sucked when we swung those sticks, but we sucked at a higher level.
AIKIDO:
Lisa Tomoleoni, a yondan from the Shindo Dojo in Japan, is a powerful, sweet, deeply devoted woman who does a great ape impression, despite her avowed lack of any such intent. She does lovely aikido and has a frank, refreshing point of view that challenges her students as much as it lifts them up. She is very intense and thoughtful, and I enjoyed training with her folks.
I still find much of her aikido too, um, sweeping and embellished (that's a personal taste, not a disparagement of her style), but she also made solid points for discussing the why and how of said swooshiness. She made some very interesting points about zanshin and connection that were good to hear and I applaud her for it.
During the early stages of the sem, especially, many of her students were simply not paying attention to each other. Walk up, grab wrist, get thrown, walk away. She emphasized that connection and technique begin long before partners cross wrists and doesn't end until both are completely done. The actual _moment_ of technique is simply a point along the spectrum of connection. The folks there worked hard on that, to their credit, and improved markedly by the end of the shindig.
She also spoke at some length about the necessity of uke taking responsibility for his/her own safety (don't depend on tori/nage taking care of you, make sure you're aware and actively engaged in the process) and about ukemi being more than just falling down (good attacking skills, maintaining pressure on tori/nage, etc). Good stuff, all in all.
Chuck
JODO:
I can't keep all the lineages straight yet (it's that left-brain/right-brain disconnect that my wife calls my natural lobotomy), but Meik Skoss holds sho-mokuroku in Shinto Muso-ryu from Shimizu Takaji. His jo work is impressive as hell. It is, IMNSHO, to the seitei jo (that Peter Boylan has valiantly tried to help me learn) what a HMMVW is to a 1969 Toyota pickup. The Toyota is fine in it's place and all, but if you really want to get somewhere against all odds, you pick the Hummer.
In the course of the weekend, we learned three waza (honte uchi, gyakute uchi and hikiotoshi uchi) and one kata (Uchi Otoshi).
The stances were natural; the kamae made so much more sense than the kendo-influenced seitei stuff! If you ever get the chance to attend a sem or class taught by Meik, do so. He's a helluva teacher and a genuinely brilliant budoka.
He has powerful opinions and I don't always agree with them, but his research and experience are vast and he always gives me something to think about. One of the most meaningful things I took home from this encounter was, oddly enough, some thoughts he shared on shaking hands.
In class, he covered general grip, stance, striking and movement theory, and everything Peter had tried to teach me sort of fell into perspective. I am deeply and well impressed and find myself hungry for more.
That is not derisive commentary on Peter or his efforts, BTW, he did good, but I think the SMR koryu stuff is as different from seiteijo as Kashima Shinryu is from kendo. I can see the value in seiteijo, but having had a taste of the other end of that stick (ahem), I have to say my taste runs toward the less-diluted lineage.
From what Meik taught, I've already begun to extrapolate (probably quite badly) some of the other kihon Peter has taught. The seitei is not without valuta, but the paradigm is very different. Peter's always been upfront with that and this seminar brought that into focus, for me, very clearly.
I KNEW that SMR jo was deep, beautiful and powerful, but until I got a personal glimpse of that through Meik, it was knowledge at a distance.
In the end, we still sucked when we swung those sticks, but we sucked at a higher level.
AIKIDO:
Lisa Tomoleoni, a yondan from the Shindo Dojo in Japan, is a powerful, sweet, deeply devoted woman who does a great ape impression, despite her avowed lack of any such intent. She does lovely aikido and has a frank, refreshing point of view that challenges her students as much as it lifts them up. She is very intense and thoughtful, and I enjoyed training with her folks.
I still find much of her aikido too, um, sweeping and embellished (that's a personal taste, not a disparagement of her style), but she also made solid points for discussing the why and how of said swooshiness. She made some very interesting points about zanshin and connection that were good to hear and I applaud her for it.
During the early stages of the sem, especially, many of her students were simply not paying attention to each other. Walk up, grab wrist, get thrown, walk away. She emphasized that connection and technique begin long before partners cross wrists and doesn't end until both are completely done. The actual _moment_ of technique is simply a point along the spectrum of connection. The folks there worked hard on that, to their credit, and improved markedly by the end of the shindig.
She also spoke at some length about the necessity of uke taking responsibility for his/her own safety (don't depend on tori/nage taking care of you, make sure you're aware and actively engaged in the process) and about ukemi being more than just falling down (good attacking skills, maintaining pressure on tori/nage, etc). Good stuff, all in all.
Chuck