Welcome to South Austin Aikido

Every year that I go to the DC Summer Camp I am amazed at how many dedicated aikidoka come there to practice and learn aikido.  I meet people from all over the world who practice aikido at home.  This year the list included people from Portugal, Brazil, Turkishtan, and South Africa.  In addition, there were people from just about everywhere within the US.  It is exiting to train with someone who lives so far away and discover that our training and technique are not that different.  And while we might have difficulty communicating verbally, the practice provides a means of communication that we both understand.

The focus of the practice and continued support of senior students made the camp extremely rewarding for me.  We were lead through many new exercises which I hope to share with our group during the coming year and improve my techniques as we continue training.  Sensei had several strong messages although he lectured very little and mostly demonstrated what to practice and watched.  The first message was on the focus of training.  Not to allow ourselves to get too rapped up in rank.  The development of a skill takes time and is not necessarily related to rank.  Too many times our focus is on rank instead of the practice and learning of aikido.  We should turn our attention to learning the skill and rank will take care of itself.

The second message was on martial awareness.  At times we focus so much on the technique that we loose the big picture perspective on where we are, who is around, and how much space we need or have.  The understanding of distance and space are critical to the practice much more so than the actual technique.  We must learn to automatically adjust these distances and understand our surroundings as part of our training.  Do not get so focused on the hand that we loose sight of the person and our ability to move within our surroundings.

As usual, we covered so much ground in so little time that my head is still spinning.  Hopefully, when I regain my balance, the ideas from camp will settle to a point where they will become part of my regular understanding and practice.  All in all it was a great camp and highly recommended for everyone in the future.