This year’s Brighton and Shoreham Ki Aikido course with Sensei Mark Greenley (8th Dan) was once again a great day for everyone involved.
Sensei Greenley always aims to make an area course interesting by teaching different variations on techniques rather than sticking to the grading syllabus. True to form, he did not disappoint.
He started off by literally keeping us on our toes with a right-footed 8 ways exercise, starting from any one of the 8 directions! In addition to the entertainment this provided, it reminded us not to get stuck in routines and to be fully present in everything we do – including the warm-up exercises.
We moved on to an irimi version of 1st form Ikkyo and several other variants on techniques that I hadn’t come across before in my 35-ish years of practice. It is refreshing and fun to learn new ways to do techniques. It’s also a good reminder that while up to 3rd Dan we spend a lot of time working on a set syllabus of exercises and fairly standard ways of doing them – something that often draws criticism from people who practice other arts and don’t understand the benefits of this learning process – there is a lot more to Aikido than this. The syllabus curriculum is valuable in helping us to learn a range of skills – a vocabulary of movement if you like – but the myriad of variations is where we get to apply those skills in unexpected ways and appreciate the richness of the art.
Thank you again to Sensei Greenley for giving us all plenty to think about and work on, and to all my students for working hard to host the course and make it a success.
Sensei Carl Myers
