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?*

...