Taking in and making images: Aikido and Relaxation

I spent two hours Saturday morning at a teacher’s training workshop at the Aikido Dojo. This is a monthly workshop that helps the black belt’s work on their teaching chops. The Sensei likes to have some less experienced folks there, as well, to be guinea pigs. What happens is that one of the black belts gets chosen to lead a 15-minute segment. They present a series of techniques and work with the group. Then afterwards we have a short period of feedback on what worked for us and what didn’t.

This is the second teacher workshop I have attended and they are quite different from the regular practices. For one, there are bucket loads of black belts in the room. Saturday had about 15+ with, maybe, four white belts. So the energy is quite different. The pacing in the room moves faster and there is clearly work going on at a deeper level than the classes with larger percentages of beginning practitioners.

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