You expect occasionally to take a little leap forward in your understanding of things. What you don’t plan for, is to have your mind blown open by new possibility and instead end up realising that what you thought you knew just wasn’t anywhere near the whole picture at all.
This last weekend at the Aiki Connections 2019 seminar, I experienced exactly that.
It was an excellent melting pot of different disciplines and traditions, yet everyone appeared to be keen to get on with training and learning together.
I was particularly impressed by how Howard and Joe kept adapting their explanations to better fit in with my karate perspective, even including kata like Bassai Dai and Seiyunchin to help me better understand how I was already exposed to what they were teaching us at that moment – further reminding me that they are widely studied across disciplines, styles and traditions. Nice!
As fantastic as everyone was on the weekend, I really must thank Phil for having taken the time to set me at ease and working with me several months before in order to set my mind at ease that a Daito Ryu seminar was exactly where I wanted to find myself.
My little group of karateka are all more than pleased that we committed to the weekend seminar. I have a strong suspicion that this one was the first of many to come.
(Addendum – Lionel and his group are now valued members of our study group)
Lionel de Nobrega
