Doshu Seminar in Almere, Holland - Day 1

On 14-15 November 2009, Doshu Ueshiba Moriteru held a seminar in the Netherlands. The event was (as far as I know) in correlation with the facts that the Netherlands commemorate the 400th anniversary of starting trade relations with Japan this year, and that Aikido has been practiced in the country for 45 years. This post is my personal report of day one of the seminar, day two will follow soon.

I was very excited to attend this seminar for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Simon Sensei said, "it's a once in a lifetime opportunity". Taking part in a training lead by the Doshu is something many people only dream of, and most of us would like to take part in such a training for very long until it eventually happens (or not). So I consider to be very lucky to participate in a Doshu seminar. As many people were interested in this weekend, it's not surprising that the number of people who have registered up front or bought tickets on the day was well above 400 (we haven't found any reliable methods to estimate the number of people by just looking at the crowd). Coming from this, the second reason of my interest in the seminar was to see how so many people could train together, how we were going to fit in the room (even if the matted area was said to be 2300 square meters). I was also excited about training with a lot of different people. I haven't attended a seminar for quite some time now, that's another reason. In addition, I wanted to see whether the Doshu does techniques differently from what my senseis have taught me (different senseis in different dojos).

Based on the first day's experience, the Doshu seems to be a very nice person and a good entertainer, and he does techniques in a very punctual manner, exacly the way he demonstrates them in his DVDs.

After starting the training with some introductory words followed by a standard Japanese-style circles-and-stretching warmup, Sensei demonstrated techniques to be practiced in the middle of a half-circle (made of people surrounding him) in front of O'Sensei's picture. Most of the time his uke was Waka Sensei, his son. As there were hundreds of people attending the class, some of them were sitting in seiza during the demonstrations, others were on their knees behind them, while the rest of the people were standing in the back rows to see whatever they could. Sometimes not everyone saw anything at all, and Sensei asked a couple of times "Can you see me?" "No!" - was the usual answer, while people who could obviously see him did not really respond (or at least not as loudly). This problem was getting solved somewhat as people started to realise that you can't just stand in the third row to see everything because then the fifth row won't see anything at all. Nevertheless, it seemed to a be good tactics to position yourself close to the demo spot when training with a partner, so when the demonstration part came you could be in the rows in which you could see more than the others behind you. At some point Sensei noticed that the density of the demo spot was quite high while the other ends of the matted area were less crowded. So once he stopped the training, then waited until people gathered around the usual demo spot, and he opened a pathway in the crowd and moved to another spot to demonstrate. This way you never knew exactly where the demo would take place so the practicing pairs were a bit more evenly distributed while this trick was on.

At the very beginning, Sensei tried to use the microphone to describe the current technique, but he soon smiled and signaled that demonstrating a technique would need both his hands. He passed on the microphone to the interpreter (Sensei was talking in Japanese), however, he usually used the mike to signal the end of a practice part (i.e. when he needed us to gather around him to learn about the next technique to be practiced).

We practiced the basic steps: irimi, tenkan. He demonstrated and emphasized several times that it doesn't matter what the attack is, the steps to execute a technique are the same. In other words, whether the attack is yokomenuchi, gyakuhanmi katatedori, ryotedori or morotedori (etc.) you should use exactly the same body movement. So we did ikkyo, nikkyo, iriminage, shihonage and kotegaeshi from several different attacks during the morning and afternoon sessions. I trained with a lot of different people. Some were easy to move, some could move me very easily, some were resistant, but most of them were nice and gentle. Some followed exactly what Sensei demonstrated, some did techniques the way they learned (if some steps were known a bit differently by them), some mixed Doshu's steps with what they knew, some experimented with various ways of moving. I tried to follow what was demonstrated, although I think sometimes I tried other ways of movement, adjustments as well. It was interesting to see how different people had small differences in their movements. It was easy to have small differences because there were people there from different organisations, different teachers, dojos, and different countries (we have also seen cars in the parking lot with Czech plates so it must have been quite a drive for those aikidoka, and there were people from as far as Russia and Spain as well).

The Saturday trainings were also attended by a number of shihans and other senior aikidoka. The shihans included Peter Goldsbury Sensei and Christian Tissier Sensei as well, unfortunately I did not know the others and hence, I don't remember their names now either.

I haven't really discussed yet how so many people fit on the mats when practicing. Apart from the mentioned density differences in the dojo, my impression was that there were about 1-1.5 mats available for a pair of aikidoka training. This would put the number of participants to around 2000, but since I'm pretty sure there weren't there so many people, my mat per pair impressions are probably faulty. The impression might also come from the fact that I, just like most of the others, tried to follow some sort of tactics to get/stay close to the place where the Doshu would be demonstrating the next technique. So I'm not sure about the number of participants (I was the 431st to register, that's for sure), but most of the time we did not find it particularly practical to execute a technique fully, i.e. to throw someone or pin them down. We usually went up to the point where we thought it was still safe, which was usually the last point before uke would definitely go to the ground where his/her body would be in danger of being stepped on. We still enjoyed training a lot though, and moved and sweat a lot as well. I tried to get as much out of the day as possible, asked senior people to correct/help me, apologised for not speaking Dutch (yet), and I got away with a nice experience and only one bit of blueish area on my left foot (someone heavy stepped on it).

To come back to how a training went, there is a story: the circle in which Sensei demonstrated a technique was often not large enough so he and his current assistant sometimes needed to ask people to move further back. He did this by using gestures. At some point, someone missunderstood a gesture and, instead of moving backwards, he stood up and followed Ueshiba Sensei as he thought Sensei would demonstrate something on him. When Sensei realised this he smiled and showed the aikidoka that it was a missunderstanding and he should sit back in the crowd. The story could end here and it would not be unusual at all, but after a second of waiting, Sensei had a better idea: he showed the student to come back. He came back, grabbed Sensei and he was the uke of the Doshu for one single technique execution. When Sensei asked the student to come back, everyone was laughing and we applauded the move. I think this was a very good aikido demonstration in itself. Sensei could leave the guy embarassed, even ashamed, but he decided to resolve the situation in a way after which everyone was happy. At the point of happening I don't think anyone thought this move had any significance but having thought about it I think this was a very good demonstration of everyday-life aikido.