Global opinions on Ki Society seminars 2003

I posted the following thoughts on the Brisbane Ki Society Kataokasensei seminar on the ki-info list to see if the seminar was

consistent with the global Ki Society experience. There have been a

number of excellent thought provoking responses. Many different

opinions on the subject of Ki training and it relationship to aikido

are presented.

If you would like to read some I recommend you follow this link

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ki-info/

Hi All,

We were fortunate in Australia to have Kataoka sensei and Iwade

sensei from Ki Soc headquarters to teach a four day seminar over

Easter in Brisbane, Australia. This was Kataoka sensei's third visit

to Australia that I can remember and looked forward to by many.

After attending the full seminar I walked away a little

dissappointed, having not done much Aikido but plenty of Ki/Universal

mind instruction. As Australian Ki Society has had some upheavals in

recent times, its been nearly two years since we had an instructor

visit from Japan. I wondered if during this time there had been

something of a shift in Ki Soc's focus, or perhaps our Easter event

was a one off to get us wayward Aussies back on track?

Most of the seminar consisted of lectures and small discussion groups

on universal mind and Ki principles focusing on select topics. From

what I could tell these were drawn from the summary sheet of the 2002

world camp. The topics included Ki principles for aikido, breathing,

ORE, kiatsu, jo, bokken, etc... I was dissappointed that this didn't

leave much/any time for aikido during many of the classe, in fact for

most classes not a single ukemi was required.

Although Ki Soc. has always focused on Ki development, my impressions

from the seminar are that aikido is now very much a secondary

activity in our training and not martial arts.

Ki flames wars aside, my purpose in writing this post is ask the list

Are lectures/discussion group style seminars now frequent in KS

seminars globally?