Seminar and Go Dan

So the black belt seminar went very well. It was all the black belts (and a few invited browns) under Sensei Morallo, Sensei Moe (pronounced moya) and Sensei Bottomms. Huge class!!! We took up the entire dojo. Mostly we worked kihones and focused on working the obliques and serratus anterior in our movements and not so much the hips. Keep a solid horse stance and move from hara, like a whip. Lots of tenken stepping and a bit of kote nage, which I really loved. Need to practice more of that. Then a bit of grappling, which is very new to me. We've only done a LITTLE here and there in our dojo, but that's not what our dojo does. The Rutland dojo has aikijutsu, which is really quite amazing. Maybe someday, in all my spare time, hee, hee, hee.

Then came the Go Dan test. Sensei believed that he was only going to be showing us kata, however Sensei Morallo had a different plan. Sensei Bottoms proceeded to do at least half an hour straight of ippons, with the uke being all of his belts that had attended the seminar. It was amazing. He just had mushin, pure and flowing. Truly an amazing martial artist.

The next seminar will be on fighting and I'm looking forward to that. However, I may be pregnant at the time (cross your fingers!!!) and will have to be happy with observation.

Overall training is going very well and I've found myself a groove, finally... I'm going to look into taking a Ba Gua class in Burlington. I'm not feeling it with Kempo. The sensei is great, as are the students, but I don't have the excitement around it, which is important to me. Plus I'm headed in the internal direction anyway and this is a good place to start. We shall see.