Well, heinous Thanksgiving weekend traffic notwithstanding, I am back from the Aikido seminar in Chicago with Saotome Shihan in one piece. This was my first time seeing our master instructor, and to put it simply, he is amazing.

He’s on another plane of reality when it comes to aikido. Even our sensei, who is a 5th dan and been in Aikido for 30 years, is baffled by him at times, so you can imagine what those of us who have only been doing this for a few years or less go through at times.

It was a very martial seminar, lots of atemi (strikes) after the blend with the initial attacks. Strikes to the solar plexus, ribs, leg, any of which might be exposed after a committed attack. Each time we started with one strike and then he would sometimes show combinations of strikes.

Sensei Saotome explain that, despite its reputation, Aikido is not gentle, we, the practioners of Aikido are, or rather we have a moral obligation to be. In any situation, any level of escalation could be appropriate, what matters is that we start as low on that scale as possible.

Listening to him requires you to concentrate because his English is fairly broken and accent thick. However that seemed to just make me understand better, as paradoxical as that sounds.