Takeda Satoshi Sensei Seminar review

Last saturday, by way of invitation from Chicko Xerri Sensei of the Fudoshin dojo at Noosa, Chris and I braved the wild Queensland weather and subsiding flood waters sneak into Noosa for Kenkyukai Australia's Northern Spring training camp with Takeda Satoshi Sensei. Sensei is a 7th dan instructor visiting from near Kamakura  Japan (Shonandai just over an hour from Tokyo) and is the home of Kenkyukai Aikido, affiliated to Aikikai Hombu and lead by Takeda Shihan, a principle student of Yamaguchi sensei. 

The school has a very open approach to developing aiki as a personal expression, rather than seeking a unified look amongst the practitioners.

As such the seminar was quite different to many I had been to in that technique wasn't taught explicitly and the focus was less concerned with what was right and wrong feet and hands and just getting on with it exploring aiki. I get the sense that rather than being this way because there were a lot of seniors on the mat, that this is business as usual for the school - something confirmed by some of the seniors there.

The seminar began with stretching and exercises designed to develop the idea of drawing everything into ones centre and centre line which was to be the central focus of the seminar (at least to me any way). Draw uke into your centre with aiki and then rather than throw them just release them, releasing then looking something like a throw but without the effort involved. Sensei explained that when someone  holds you  they have you at one point on the compass, you have the freedom of the other 359degrees so why fight, just draw them in  and release them to the open space. This was explored through the many combinations of handhold attacks. Later on we used shoto (short swords) to help get this sense of expansiveness beyond our hands. Sensei was generous in freely using many people as uke during demonstrations to enable us to get a good feeling of what he was doing. The role of uke in the school is to  never give up but to continue to extended you physical energy to nage thus allowing them to explore aiki throw technique that may continue even after the pin to become another technique.