Seminar

Today I took part in this amazing MA seminar at my dojo. Master Morallo came down from Rutland to teach us all sorts of crazy, fun things. First we dove into flexibility exercises and strengthening. His stretch routine is a workout alone, and then we did so much more! There were quite a few push-up variation, like Hindus (ouch!) and many hip stretches. Master Morallo focuses a lot of attention on opening the hip joints in order to give lasting flexibility without causing too much wear and tear on the joint. He feels that by doing these exercises on a regular basis will allow you to kick fluidly and without injury well into old age. Needless to say that's the sorest part of me right now. Then we went into internal exercises, pulling our power from the earth and dissolving into our hara. We did this first by working on sebaki and sudiash (I'm sure I'm not spelling those right), the basic evasion maneuvers. This is such a hard concept to actualize, and it left us exhausted. It also opened up a new avenue to training. Working on kihones in this manner can skyrocket you MA abilities, especially due to the spiraling energy that we incorporate into everything we do. After this we moved onto heavy hand exercises of which I have forgotten the name. It's a "push/pull" type of exercise used in aikido which works on your warding off posture. From there we went into kotegaishi along with the circling step used in the throw. Then we went into key locks using the elbows along with a takedown. Great stuff! I was also honored to be Master Morallo's uke, gulp....he's like a Mack truck. Luckily for me I have good ukemi and fall well. I felt like a rag doll! It was fun! I have this suspicion, however, that I may have a hardt time getting out of bed tomorrow morning. All in all I came away with so much more to work with, but it's the kind of work I've been leaning towards. I want to dive so much further into the internal aspects of my MA and see how I can make it work for me, to really begin to make it my own. There has been a difinite shift in my attitude this week and it's left me feeling so much more secure about my abilities and where they can take me. Practice, practice, practice!

I've been chosen again to do the promote three meme, which I haven't done! My next mission is to go over to toplist so that I can see who I deem worthy....hee, hee, hee. Thanks, John!