This one time in Batto-Ho

So at one of the many intensive seminars at EMK we were doing some Iai Batto Ho.

This must have been a mid-winter seminar as we had just finished zazen and we kept the lights dimmed and it was quite dark.

In fact before I really get into this I would like to quickly refer back to something Tim Sullivan once said to me in passing. This isn't a word for word quote but I'll put quotation marks around it anyway, "It is strange to think that the blade of an Iaito is attached to the hilt by nothing more than a small peg." This was said as he pocketed some chop-sticks in case of the scenario in which the blade of his own Iaito detached from the hilt so that he could quickly fashion a temporary replacement peg.

So we're doing some Batto Ho and we've been split into two separate groups. Basically seniors with Iaito in one group and juniors with bokken in the other. Sensei notices that we juniors are not really getting the point of drawing a sword. The basic idea is that you should be able to defeat an opponent in the act of drawing your sword. Real life duals should start and end with the drawing of the Iaito, by which point the dual should be over, with one of the opponents dead. It should be as quick as a single cut, not the sort of stuff you see in martial arts films.

So when you practice Iai Batto Ho, you should extend and you should imagine your opponent who you should be trying to cut. And as I said, Sensei had noticed that most of we juniors were not doing this.

So he demonstrated. With his sword. On me.

I stood there while he demonstrated to the juniors about cutting your opponent, he didn't hold back. If he had misjudged the distance to my face then I would have ended up in hospital with half my face missing. I don't think it would have killed me, but that isn't that much consolation when you have someone swinging a sword passed your face repeatedly. It was dark enough that I couldn't really see the sword as it passed no more than 2 inches from my face, which made me think that he couldn't really see it that well either. But I could hear it. Again this didn't comfort me one little bit. 

And all the while Tim's words about the blade being held in by nothing more than a peg were ringing in my ears.

Thanks for reading!

Winter wonderland

You may have heard of this. It is a badge of honour that I wear proudly. To have taken part in and survived a seminar so horrifying that even Tom Tam himself recalls it as a terrible experience, is something that I will never forget.

That fateful weekend, that shall ever be remembered in the annals of aikidoka legend as winter wonderland. It was here that I became known as the lone 5th kyu. A name that has since been lost to history.

Also Sensei tried to steal my wooly hat.

Now obviously most of these stories that I write about were not nearly as cool at the time as I make them out to be. They're just really cool in my head and then I exaggerate slightly further as to make for enjoyable reading.

But back to over-exaggeration.

It was a weekend seminar, prior to the christmas seminar. For those training for 5th Kyu and above. And the heating was broken.

Let me say that again. THE HEATING WAS BROKEN. You know how cold the dojo is, and that's when the heating is working. Oh and this was the coldest weekend of the year. It snowed!

You weren't there. You don't understand what it was like. I can categorically say that it was the coldest I have ever been in my life. It was so cold that we all slept in the lobby area. We stuffed about 15 bodies onto the floor of the lobby area while we slept because it was too cold to be spread out in the main dojo. I was fully clothed, in my sleeping back, surrounded by other people and their body warmth, and I was still shivering because I was so cold. I was so cold that I couldn't sleep. I think every one else had more or less the same experience those two nights we were there. And to get up in the morning after that, knowing that you'll spend the next hour sitting still for zazen....I've never experienced anything like it and never want to again.

Next time you're in the dojo, feeling like life is unfair. Just remember winter wonderland.

Of sneak attacks and psychological warfare

I can't recall what technique it was. But there was a class that Tim was teaching and I was taking Ukemi for his demonstration. No problem there.
Then all of a sudden, with no warning, he produces a tanto from within his Gi and tries to stab me.
He had picked up the tanto from the kameza earlier in the lesson and stashed it in his Gi for later use.

I seem to have an unusually large amount of memories of people trying to stab me.

But anyway, the point is, it was a sneak tanto attack to check that I had good connection. In this particular instance I did and I remained unscathed.

A few lessons later Tim happened to be taking the class again. I noticed early on that there was no tanto at the kameza. Needless to say I was on edge. Every time I took ukemi I was getting ready for a sudden tanto attack. But none came.
This was scary. I spent the whole lesson watching Tim like a hawk, expecting him to strike at any moment.
It later turned out that whoever was doing the weapons had forgotten to lay out the tanto at the start of class and I had failed to notice.
Sigh.


I think most people have at least once seen Sensei suddenly attack a student as we've all been kneeling and listening to him tell us about the importance of connection.
Well he did it to me once too, pointing out that we never know what might happen. And again on this occasion my connection was good and was unscathed.
However afterwards for several months afterwards he would walk slowly up to me whenever he was talking and remind me that we never know what might happen.
I'm certain he was waiting for the one time I let my guard down. But I never did. Either that or he was waging intense psychological warfare on me. Freaking me out, always keeping me on edge.

I'm not exaggerating about this one, he did this most classes for several months. Slowly walking towards to me as he spoke, always working that sentence in somehow. You never know what might happen.

I'm still waiting for that attack to come. He's still saving it for me. He hasn't said it now for at least a year. But I know he's still waiting for me to forget, to let me guard down. And I'm still waiting for that attack.

I'm still waiting.

You never know what might happen.

Training at EMK over Summer

Probably two of the most intense classes of aikido I've ever had were when I was training at EMK in Summer 2012.

During summer without the GSJ crowd around the place quiets down a bit and very occasionally, as I discovered, you may find that you're are the only one, or one of two people there.

The first was when Sensei was away on other business and so Tom Tam took the class. And I was the only person there. It was intense.

There was no stopping to demonstrate techniques. Tom did the techniques four times and then I tried to do it four times. When I did it wrong he would counter me to show me my mistake and if I did it wrong again he would counter me again. Barely a word was spoken.

A week later Sensei was back. And only Tom and I were there. We spent the lesson working on my connection by way of doing a lot of tanto work. Many of you may not have noticed but in EMK Sensei has one or two tanto which are sharper than the others. Much sharper. When stabbed with normal tanto it feels like someone is pressing a block of wood into you quite hard. When stabbed with these ones it feels like you are being stabbed.

So the lesson was largely around me and Tom practising not getting stabbed by each other as we wielded some rather sharp tanto. At the peek of the lesson this involved grabbing Torii's wrist and waiting for them to try and stick you with the tanto at which point, if your contact is good, you don't get stabbed.

I got stabbed a lot.

I also learnt a bit about striking someone with a tanto. Sensei noticed I had no idea about how to cut someone with a tanto. He, with a tanto in his belt, told me to perform a shomen with my tanto. And with very little effort stabbed me as I tried.

I'm pretty sure he actually rolled his eyes as he did it, I made it just that easy for him.

Thanks for reading!

Daniel Brunner's visit to EMK

In 2012 EMK was fortunate enough to be visited by Daniel Brunner Sensei. For those of you who don't know Daniel Brunner is a 6th Dan Shihan from Switzerland and could perhaps be quite reasonably described as a real-life sword master. Yeah, that's right.

So anyway, this all happened a while ago now so the order of events are slightly less clear in my head then I would like but I'll reminisce anyway.

The day began with Zazen followed by Batto-Ho as you might expect. Then came the first class of the day, it was a day of Bokken taught by Daniel Brunner Sensei by the way. As I said I can't remember it all that well but a few key moments stick in my mind.

The first being whilst demonstrating a technique with Tom Tam as Uke he wanted, if I remember correctly, to demonstrate the importance of entering and how when we practice, in general, we do not commit properly to the attack, meaning that when training in bokken we should really be putting the pressure on.
He demonstrated this by more or less attacking Tom with a Shinai and quite literally chasing him around the dojo trying to hit him. Just to be clear though, Tom wasn't exactly running with his tail between his legs, he was defending himself properly and backing away with due urgency, it was probably the closest thing I've ever seen to a dual, it was cool, so cool.
In the process of trying to murder Tom Tam with a Shinai he had also hit the Kamiza and knocked several Jo's off their weapon stand. This was the very beginning of the day and at this stage it seemed like he might tear the whole building down by the end of it. Although I can't say for sure but I think Sensei was thinking a similar thing, I glanced over to him during this and got the strong impression he was biting his tongue and deeply concerned over the well-being of the dojo.

Luckily this was the most eventful part of the day, no more damage to the dojo was done.
The other thing I remember was during one of the breaks I grabbed Boon to practice a technique that I hadn't quite got my head around during the class.
Before I knew it Daniel Brunner Sensei had appeared, taken Boon's bokken and wanted me to practice the technique with him as Uke. I almost wet myself from the fear. I had just wanted to get my head around the mechanics of this technique, I knew that when I had it would still be martially embarrassing, but it was good enough for me. But now I was faced with a man who in my opinion, as I have said, could quite fairly be described as an actual sword master. Every movement I made would be an affront to the study of the sword, he wouldn't correct me on it, as there would be too much to even begin doing so. But he would know and I would know that my form was beyond correcting.

As he politely corrected little bits of my form the hot tears of shame ran down my face because we both knew that in reality everything was wrong. Okay so I didn't actually cry but I was crying on the inside.

In reality of course he is a very kind and patient teacher and in no way did anything to make me feel bad about my aikido. It is just hard not to feel a bit awe-struck and inadequate when faced by such great teachers.

Thanks for reading folks!

And on the subject of suffocating people....

I'd like to share a brief anecdote in which Sensei wanted to demonstrate how even if your opponent is stronger than you, you can always move the rest of your body, even if you can't move the part they have a hold of.

Sensei stood by the edge of the dojo and called me over in front of the class. He told me to pin him to the wall by his throat. The first thing that crossed my mind was that this was in fact going to end in a lot of pain for me.

I was wrong. It was much worse.

I put my hands around his throat and held him against the wall. My hands were round his throat, but not in any way constricting his breathing.

Sensei looked at me and told me to squeeze. I hope you can appreciated that being told to severely constrict a persons airways and the blood vessels to and from their brain is actually quite unpleasant. But I did as I was told and squeezed a bit harder.

I was now making it difficult for Sensei to breathe and restricting the blood flow to and from his head. But for Sensei, difficult is too easy. With his face turning pink he looked at me and, with some shortness of breathe, demanded that I squeeze even harder.

Now there have been some traumatizing things during my time in aikido but this probably beats it all. I can handle pain and moments where I fear for my life, but actively suffocating another person is entirely unenjoyable in every way.

As I squeezed Sensei's throat with my full force and his face turned some unpleasant colours I couldn't suppress the need to shut my eyes and look away.

And then he moved his body to one side and I entirely lost my grip. And it was over.
I knew he was fully in control the whole time, I knew that even as it was happening, but it didn't stop it from being truly unpleasant.

I guess I can at least take solace in the fact that he didn't follow it up by hurting me with some painful counter technique. You see, there's always a silver lining.

Summer school 2012

For the BB summer school 2012 I was employed and unable to get a week off work, so I could only go for the weekend.

This was to be my first ever experience of Summer school which is why I made the terrible mistake that I am about to discuss.

Before I talk about that though I just want to mention one of the most memorable moments of that Summer school for me. I walked into the hall where we were training for Batto-Ho practice and witnessed at least a hundred hakamas drawing their swords (Known as an Iaito). Their actual real life swords. I'm sure everyone found it really cool the first time they saw an EMK senior training with a real sword. Well this was like that times a hundred. 

Seeing a hundred people with real swords is reason enough to go to summer school.

But back to my monumental miscalculation.

I decided that since I'd only be there for the weekend that I would go all out, throw myself into the training guns ablaze, 100% energy at all times, no holding back. I sought out pretty much every teacher of 5th Dan and above as quickly as possible and spent my entire time amongst the hakamas (For those of you who haven't gone to summer school I should explain that there is a general structure of juniors on one side and seniors on the other with the brave juniors joining the seniors side and the friendly, or sometimes mean, seniors moving to the juniors side).

So those juniors who want to get their ass kicked move towards the seniors. I wanted to get my ass kicked. It did.

By lunch-time of the second day I was completely and utterly exhausted, a broken man.

With my body was screaming in pain, I spent the last few hours of the day fleeing from seniors as best as I could. Yet somehow the seniors were finding me despite my attempts to avoid them. It was like they knew.

They were hunting me. Grinning as they increased the damage already done, or maybe I imagined that.
Something definitely happens in a persons head when you're that tired. You do get full of the paranoia, and times seems to stop.

It seemed to go on for ever but did of course finally end.

The moral of this story is not to try and take on a horde of seniors when you have days of training ahead of you. They will destroy you.

Diasrming someone with a Jo

For those of you who remember Evgeniy.
We were doing some disarming techniques with Jo and I was training with Evgeniy as I often did.
Now with disarming techniques it is key to enter quickly and aggressively, which Sensei felt Evgeniy wasn't doing. So naturally Sensei demonstrated to Evgeniy how he should be entering.
As you may be aware we often train in a way which is more friendly than the actual principle that we are trying to learn about and sometimes Sensei will deem it necessary to show how it would have been done if we were actually trying to hurt each other.
So I faced Sensei with my Jo in hand and gave him the necessary opening (not that he would have needed it). He then proceeded to yank the Jo off me, grab my face, force me back several paces and slam my head into the wall. All in the blink of an eye.

I felt like I didn't deserve this.



On the topic of Jo work I remember a time a few years previous to this when he felt I wasn't blocking correctly with my Jo (blocking isn't the right word to use in any case). To show me how off my form was, which I knew it was, he attacked me continuously as I backed away desperately trying not to get stabbed by his Jo until he pinned me against the dojo wall with his Jo aimed neatly at my throat.

I'll admit I did deserve this one.

It didn't make me feel much better though.

Me during Zazen

*Breathe*

*Breathe*

*Good*

*Breathe*

*Calm the mind*

*You're doing well*

*I am very calm*

*I'm actually quite impressed with just how calm and empty of thought my...*

*damn*

*Breathe*

*Better*

*Just don't let your mind wander*

*Breathe*

*Like last time*

*When you started thinking about why you always seem to lose your socks*

*Just how do they all go missing?*

*I must lose a pair of socks every week!*

*Well next week...dammit. Focus!*

*Focus*

*Focus*

*Well focus is the wrong word, really I want to defocus, focus on nothing*

*Defocus*

*Yeah*

*We must have been sitting for a while now*

*My legs are starting to hurt*

*Sensei will ring the bell any minute now*

*Any*

*Minute*

*Now*

*DAMMIT FOCUS!*

*JUST LIKE LAST TIME YOU'RE THOUGHTS ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE*

*YOU'RE COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF CALMING YOUR THOUGHTS EVEN FOR A MOMENT*

*...*

*...*

*Breathe*

*Focus*

*Defocus?*

...

The time Sensei almost murdered me...kind of

Okay, I have a confession to make, Sensei did in no way almost murder me.
There, I've said it, good to get it off my chest.

However Sensei did once almost suffocate me to the point where I lost consciousness.

For the life of me I can't remember the name of the technique but I'm sure you'll all know what I mean when I say it's the one where you suffocate Uke.

Well anyway I was training with Soon (Tan Chin Soon) at the time, when Sensei grabs Soon to go over a technique prior to demonstrating it to the class. It's the suffocation technique, except we're doing it with Uke pinned firmly to the ground.

Sensei does it with Soon twice who taps out in due course both times. No problem, but then it's my turn.
Sensei begins applying the technique and before I know I can't breathe and the lack of oxygen has for some reason caused me to entirely lose the ability to use my arms to tap out. My vision is going dark around the edges, a darkness which is quickly filling my whole vision and I'm trying to tell Sensei that I can't breathe but, of course, I can't get any words out as he's also crushing my larynx. I was at this point entirely helpless and becoming quite scared....

Then Sensei releases me, realising that I'm not going to tap out and have reacted badly to the pin. Vision returns as well as sensations in my arms. At this point I notice my left hand is repeatedly clenching and unclenching involuntarily, I try to stop it but I can't.
I was filled with a terror that I had permanently lost the use of my left arm, its hard to describe what it feels like to completely lose control of your arm. It wasn't that I couldn't feel it, or that it was unable to move, I could feel it and it was moving despite my brain telling it to stop.

But luckily that eventually passed too and I managed to breathlessly utter to Sensei that I thought I needed to sit to one side for a few minutes.

This all took place in the space of about 5 seconds but it felt much longer.

Sensei sat me up and put me in a position to help me regain my breath for a while. Then he decided that perhaps we shouldn't do the technique.

Thanks for reading!

The time I gave cheek to Tom Tam before class.

I'm sure you can all guess: this didn't end well for me.

But let's put this more in context first.

During my second year of aikido we had been doing quite a lot of nikkyo in GSJ. There was a minor joke running around at the time about how much I loved to take ukemi for nikkyo techniques, I can't entirely remember why, I think I had happened to be chosen for nikkyo ukemi a few lessons in a row by Sensei.

So Tom was covering a class as Sensei was away on at a seminar or something similar and was going to be teaching the same thing that Sensei had been focusing on recently, including nikkyo. Before class someone made a joke about how much I loved nikkyo and Tom said that he would make sure to pick me for nikkyo.

Then I said, "Bring it on."

...

...

...

This was a mistake.

We must have done nikkyo for at least an hour. In that time Tom proceeded to bring it on to my wrists for every single demonstration during that hour.

I learnt more about nikkyo that day than I care to remember and I kid you not when I say that I could feel the consequences of my foolish comment for 3 whole months afterwards.

3 MONTHS! My wrists actually hurt for a quarter of a year. Can you imagine how much it hurt at the time?!

There is definitely a moral to this story and please pay attention and don't make the same mistake I did.

The moral is: NEVER GIVE CHEEK TO YOUR SENIORS.

Just don't do it. Ever. You'll regret it. They'll make you pay.

Thanks for reading folks!