Reports

Maurizio Volpe mainly taught parts of the second dan examination program. At the beginning of the lessons, he also went into individual exercises of Kenkotaiso and Aikitaiso and had basic Ki tests repeated and practiced. After practising the complete tsuzukiwaza they were then performed by Jonnes and Liliana.
With the question "What are we doing?" Maurizio rembered Morihei Ueshiba, Koichi Tohei and Kenjiro Yoshigasaki. While Ueshiba spoke quite little on the mat and simply let the students do the exercises very often, this changed with Tohei. He explained and spoke a lot in his seminars. This even led to the fact that some participants were disappointed, because they wanted to practise physically. Yoshigasaki continued this tradition and said theory would be an aid to the further development of Aikido.
Aikido is known for us to be neither a sport nor self-defence nor competition. The interactions on the mat are primarily aimed to developing the Ki.
Maurizio also commented on the sense of seminars and the role of teachers. It's not about being a famous teacher whose importance might be measured by the number of his students. A teacher may be of help to the Aikidoka in order to perform and understand the exercises better.
Interestingly, Aikidoka who hadn't seen each other for 10 or more years also met on the mat in Thiene. Even Maurizio F., the father of Ki Aikido in the region, attended the training on Saturday. He mentioned that he had just become a grandpa and pulled a bottle of prosecco out of his pocket. So we could toast to this pleasant occasion.

The weather this weekend was a bit cloudy, so we didn't get to see too much of the area. The social get-together took place in the restaurants. On Friday evening we went to the Ristorante Pizzeria Al Molino in Malo, about 6 km from the dojo. On Saturday evening the destination was the Ristorante Calvenere in Calvene, about 16 km from Thiene. It is a quite modern facility, built according to the rules of building biology. A winding, steep and partly narrow road leads from the village of Calvene 500 meters further up, from where, in good weather, you can see the Venice Lagoon, 70 km away.