Nürnberg June 2024

Seminar with Bernhard Boll

Friday

From June 28th to 30th, 2024, the annual Aikido summer seminar in Christian Veith's dojo in Nuremberg took place with participants from Nuremberg, Fürth, Prague, Koper and Balerna.
Christian welcomed the participants on Friday evening and mentioned that it was the 5th seminar with Bernhard since 2018. The exercises began with a series of Ki tests to complement the SHOKYU program. This was followed by Tsuzukiwaza 5 Ryokatadori from the 3rd Dan program. Michal explained which interaction between Nage and Uke seemed reasonable to him in the Nikyo technique. Claudia with Vera and Adi with Michal each performed the Tsuzukiwaza in full at the end of the lesson.

Saturday

Saturday morning began with Musubi-Breathing and Bokken-Misogi, which were led by Michal. Afterwards, as always, there was tea and sweets before the Aikido training continued. The program included Tsuzukiwaza 12 Ushiro katatedori. Together with the other dojo leaders, technical and conceptual subtleties and variations were tried out and discussed. After a short break, the program continued with Tsuzukiwaza 11 Katatedori irimi from the 1st Dan program. With outside temperatures over 30 °C, it was very warm and the participants worked up a good sweat.
The whole group had lunch in the well-known trattoria next to the Zabolino kindergarten. The guests from Prague then used the long break to visit the Nuremberg Imperial Castle with Adi.
In the afternoon training, the participants practiced Tsuzukiwaza 25 in the form of Bokken and Jo 1, again for the 3rd Dan. Together, the concept of this variant was clarified and the correct and sensible execution was refined. After the work was done, we went back to the trattoria. There were a lot of guests there and Aldo the landlord had his hands full. In addition, some of us looked at their smartphones from time to time to follow the score of the match between Switzerland and Italy in the round of 16 of the European Football Championships. Surprisingly, Switzerland won the match in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin 2-0.

Sunday

The Sunday practise began traditionally with Kenkotaiso, stretching and Aikitaiso. The exercises tenshin undo, zenshin koshin undo and zenshin koshin choyaku undo were also repeated and made plausible. As the temperature had dropped significantly overnight, Tsuzukiwaza with more movement could be practiced. Bernhard chose Tsuzukiwaza 18 Yokomenuchi from the 3rd Dan program.
The second technique of this Tsuzukiwaza is Kokyūnage Jūji (呼吸投げ 十字), that means that the arms are crossed. This term can serve as an example that concepts in Japanese and other languages are not always congruent. The term Jūji 十字 is written with two characters. The second character is 字 and means "character". Jūji 十字 means "like the character 十" and is translated as "like the sign of the cross". In fact, 十 has the shape of a cross but means the number 10 in Japanese. The literal translation "like a ten" would not convey the meaning correctly. We have a similar situation with Kokyūnage Hachinoji (呼吸投げ 八の字). Here it is the character Hachi 八 that represents the number 8. What form of technique is described by this?
Then we continued with Tsuzukiwaza 25, Bokken 1 with partner, from the program of the 1st Dan. On this Sunday morning, a large family celebration was taking place at the place in front of the dojo which the landlord of the club's bar was organizing for his fellow countrymen. We first had to get used to the volume of the music and the singing group. For one participant, however, it was even more difficult because he understood the texts and had to concentrate in order not to be distracted.
At the end of the lesson, all participants performed the Tsuzukiwaza 25.
The seminar ended with a meal together on the tatami, with food that Claudia and Christian had prepared. After that, the participants made their way home. Many thanks to Christian and Claudia for the organization and to the participants for taking part. Some of them will surely meet again soon at the seminar in Velebit.

Photos

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Seminar at Nuernberg 06/2024

Group photo on Saturday

Photos: Karel, Bernhard

Kokyunage Hachi no Ji

Kashiwaya Sensei shows Kokyunage Hachi no Ji for the attacks Ryotemochi, Katadori Menuchi and Yokomenuchi. The form Hachi no Ji (八) is visable in Ryotemochi when he counts 1 and 2. There are two movements with the arms from top to bottom. Koichi Tohei Sensei also called this down-down. The character 八 is written by first moving the brush or pen from top to bottom for the left line and then doing the same for the right line.

Strike order for the character for number 8.