Personal Ki training with Sensei

I lucked out tonight as I was the only student for the second aikido class so I received a personal lesson from Sensei. (Not so good for the Dojo as a whole though...)

I caught the end of the first class which I should really have been at--they were working on Jo Sanju-ichi which is on my next shinsa. Then sensei worked with me on the advanced bokken two-man kata Ken Awase and Ken Kumitachi for the first thirty minutes. We went through them a few times each and I remembered most of the forms. Sensei made a few corrections on the details but I was comfortable with the sequences of each attack. I did have a bit trouble remembering the order of the elements when we strung all the attacks together--I'll need to work on that. The second half of class was ki training. Sensei worked with me to practice the basic opening for all the basic aikido techniques. We just worked on combining the initial foot movement, body position and the hand motion with energy extension. It was remarkably helpful and humbling. Knowing that a 70 year old could kick your ass is humbling--being unable to even move your arm in his iron grip is worse. He would make an amazing climber. His forearm strength is phenomenal. He would completely lock my arm and then would relax a bit to give me a chance to start--but more importantly he made corrections to my angles and pressure and to where I was focusing my energy that really helped some techniques. The point of contact is very important as is the exact source of the force you apply. Connecting the energy from your core through a relaxed arm is one key element. It is remarkable to feel how easy it is for sensei to gain control of my elbow and shoulder from the point where I am trying to hold his wrist/forearm. I can grab with all my strength and he just seems to relax and then completely move through my strength to change the shape of my arm, eliminate my ability to apply power and then gain control of my body. Doing Kokyu Dosa with sensei at the holiday party he said to me 'I'm like a ghost when you grab me' which was very appropriate--there but not there. I suppose the most optimistic way to look at it is that I still have about 40 years to learn...

The other thing I learned is that my left side is significantly weaker than my right side (arm and maybe shoulder/back). Time to do some more strength building.