LawKi and Aiki!

LawKi: A lesson in the application of Aiki in mediation and negotiations!

Well, on Friday at my Legal Seminar I got an aikido lesson! Actually, it was Gung Ngo (a Vietnamese Martial Art that incorporates Karate, Aikido, and Judo). The topic of the seminar was Mediations and Negotiations. One of the lecturers talk about how mediations (not meditation!) was a lot like martial arts. Some martial arts are hard like karate or boxing where you go on a frontal direct attack with lots of blocks and kicks and others are soft where you just evade an attack. He said you want to be more spherical in your mediation or negotiation stategy where you redirect their attack while still maintaining control of your opponent. He even used kotegaeshi and iriminage as demonstrations! w00t!

Aiki: Lessons in reversals and variations

Today, I took the first class which was taught by R. (3rd dan) and taught the 2nd class. R. taught reversals from koshinage (aiki koshi and judo koshi). Fun, except when I banged my head on the mat really hard when my parter was trying to do a sutemi (sacrifice throw). Instead of letting me go out he pulled me straight down and my head jerked back really hard when I hit the mat. Actually, from what R. said, my head may have hit the mat first. I think my arm hit then my head. It freaked me out a bit, but class was almost over at that point.

I taught the second class, and I had a lot of people in class, too! Well, 7 folks, but that's a lot for 2nd class. R. (2nd dan), E. (2nd kyu), D. (2nd Kyu), J. (2nd kyu), L. (4th kyu), G. (5th kyu) and C. (no kyu). Since E. (2nd kyu) is going to test for 1st kyu in about three weeks, it taught techniques from katamenuchi. I emphasized how you can do techniques both on the striking hand and the grabbing hand. I did a couple of techniques each. For the stricking hand, I did kokyunage, kotegaeshi and shihonage from a tenkan opening demonstrating that when you tenkan that these are some of the techniques that you have available. On the grabbing hand, I did nikkyo and shihonage. I also told E. (2nd kyu) that when he is doing the test to demonstrate 4 basic techniques first then at least 1 advanced technique. The same with pinning, do the kneeling pin first then standing.