As an aside to Danny's report, I'd like to give my perspective as a
relatively new aikidoka. I still sometimes lack the confidence that our
"flowing" art (which is often described as dancing) can be effective in
real-life situations.

At the beginning of the knife defence seminar, I thought it was more like
boxing than aikido, in that the moves were very decisive and there were
standard defence moves that were adapted to different situations
(remembering that as it was a seminar, we didn't get to see all the art
offered). And for us participants, our defence was quite stilted. However,
watching Stefan, it was easy to see how the principles of aikido are in
every art. He was at every moment "relaxed completely", while our defences
where very 'thinking' and stiff, his were soft, and while I never once heard
him say "move from the one point and extend ki", it was exactly what he was
doing, and he had some very nice unbendable arm defences. As Danny
mentioned earlier, we were in our comfort zone when it came to the disarming
techniques, with only small variations to koteroshi, sankyo and nikyo.

The major differences were (in my opinion) due to the extra length that the
knife gives the arm. i.e. the irimi movements were not as close as that
which occurs in aikido. I also had some problems with the (icepick)
yokomonuchi type strike, where I automatically went to put on the ikkyo
wristlock, whereby Stefan, actually wanted something else.

I too thought the seminar was very good. Stefan was a very nice and open
instructor. I was really surprised when at the end of the day he reran
through all that we had learnt, and it was heaps!!!


PS For all you aiki-bikers out there it was encouraging/sobering to see
Stefan practing his art in the abscence of an elbow joint (from a biking
incident) wearing an impressive looking brace.

Why thank you Danny........ lol

Charlie