Aikido Northshore Seminar with Hiroshi Ikeda

Contributed by Lee Crawford*

The weekend of November 17th-19th Aikido Northshore in Kirkland, Washington was honored to host Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan for a seminar. Even though the month of November is known for it's tumultuous rain and windstorms, Ikeda Sensei once again proved his title of "The Sunshine Boy". The weekend gave us beautiful sunsets and breath taking views of Mt. Rainier.

Again Ikeda Sensei was focusing on nage's connection to the uke's center. Sensei approached this connection principle by describing the line that connects nage to uke's center. Without establishing this line the connection to uke's center was impossible. We all heard "You got it? I got it!" but of course we never "got it". Sensei also discussed in detail about how to receive uke's power and how much of their power. Sensei gave us a lot to think about when he said, "You receive uke's power until you don't." I guess we all need more practice to fully comprehend this principle.

The idea of developing both physical space and mind space led us into a great randori class on Saturday morning. The focus of the randori was movement, movement, and yes you guessed it, more movement. We were all treated to many demonstrations of Sensei doing randori with three to five people.

On Saturday afternoon we were also lucky to have a session with koshinage training. Sensei gave us many exercises to practice to augment our koshinage skill development. Sensei also patiently sat through one Shodan and two Nidan tests to three nervous members of Aikido Northshore. Fortunately all passed which led to many happy toasts at the potluck.

One of the best aspects of bringing Ikeda Sensei to the Seattle area is the large community that gathers to train together. There are thirteen dojo with many political affiliations in the Seattle area and over half of them were represented at this seminar. There were also students who came from Portland, Missoula, and California.

All the members of Aikido Northshore would like to thank all that attended and of course we are always indebted to Ikeda Sensei for his kindness and dedication to his teaching. Next year Ikeda Sensei will be visiting Aikido Northshore the weekend of November 16th-18th. All students regardless of affiliation are welcome.

*Lee Crawford sensei is the founder and chief instructor of Aikido Northshore.