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!
No comments:
Post a Comment