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?*

...