Twice a week I ride a bus to the dojo in Southeast Portland. This gives me roughly an hour to contemplate what’s going to happen.
Each evening is broken up into two classes.
- Ki Training
- Aikido
There’s a short break in between and socializing with very friendly people.
Ki Training
To quote the Oregon Ki Society website,
The purpose of Ki development training is to help students improve the quality of their lives. By improving health and performance, Ki training helps students to be more productive and successful in their personal and professional lives. We view training as an ongoing process emphasizing personal direction and growth through lifelong training. Ki training helps students to live positively and excel in a rapidly changing world.
The primary focus of Ki classes is learning how to coordinate mind and body in daily life. Ki training provides skills for relaxation, calmness, concentration, personal health, and positive interactions. Students gain more energy and enhance their understanding of Ki Principles.
This class gets me in the mood. We stretch out, do some exercises and then learn about coordinating mind and body. I’ll have to go into the specifics of what it means to do that later. I haven’t completely figured it out yet–it seems to be a given that I won’t ‘get it’ for awhile either.
Aikido
Now we move on to throwing people around. Well, in my case I get thrown around a lot. I secretly think they fall for me.
There’s lots of movement, especially when you ‘get it’ and don’t think about the movements and where your feet and hands are anymore.
I’d write more about this part of the lesson but I don’t understand what I’ve experienced so far. In fact, I wrote a twitter like this…
- Aikido theoretical concept: Extend Ki
- Novice practical application: Look confused while throwing someone 5ft without any idea why it worked.
I’ve got some ideas about how and why it works but it’s all head knowledge right now. I’ll elaborate on my own theories at a later time.
