Welcome to South Austin Aikido

This past weekend many of us went to San Antonio to attend a seminar hosted by Alamo City Aikido with Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan from Boulder Colorado.

Ikeda Sensei spent the entire weekend trying to assist us in understanding how to connect and move our partners without the use of muscular force. This can be done by getting uke on an edge. Once there, any movement or technique becomes possible simply by controlling our own movement.

One analogy Sensei gave was in driving a car. This is today’s martial art in that once you have enough experience driving, it is not something that requires much conscious thought. The car becomes part of your body and you move automatically to make the car go where you want it too. Aikido can become like this as well with enough practice. Where connecting and moving with your partner becomes automatic and not part of conscious thought.

To accomplish this, Sensei led us though many exercises to give us an opportunity to feel what it is like to put our partners balance on edge. Then we were shown how this relates to various techniques like iriminage, shihonage, or kokyunage. This left us with a lot to work on in future weeks.

Thanks to Craig Slack Sensei and everyone at Alamo City Aikido for hosting this wonderful seminar.

Click here for pictures of the Ikeda Shihan seminar