I don’t know why I work myself up. Last week I was facing some fairly high uncertainties and I scared myself by thinking about “what-if scenarios”. While I used to torture myself thinking about what if – and still do from time to time – I have gotten a bit better about it.

Aikido

For the past 3 days, I’ve studied under Hiroshi Ikeda who came from Boulder to the school here in Houston. He and my teacher both studied under the same man (Saotome) who was trained by the founder of Aikido. Ikeda is Saotome’s most senior student and he was really amazing.

So much of aikido has nothing to do with fighting back. Ikeda has really mastered balance and is able to use it in some really amazing ways that will stop a fight. He is able to take your balance without you even knowing it. If I centered my core and stood firm and held my arm out, he would push on it and, of course, noting would happen. Then he would touch my arm lightly and after a moment he would gently push and I would find myself going sideways. All of the training was about taking your attacker’s balance so that you could easily put them to the floor without ever striking them. When I first saw him do his thing, I thought “Wow.. that looks… really fake” because it just doesn’t make sense unless he works with you very slowly and shows you exactly what he is doing.

Here is a mix of Ikeda doing Aikido:

Here is a picture of someone who was dropped like a sack of potatoes after they grabbed his arm. All Ikeda did was move his arm about 5 inches and the student was on the floor:

At the end of everything, we had two black-belt tests. Each black-belt studied for 7 years to take the test and it was really something. Each one had to perform the different forms correctly and show proficiency with the sword (they used wooden swords). After all of that, they had to do a “randori” – which is where the person doing the test is attacked by three senior students and they have to come out on top at the end of the test. That was really wild.

A sword test

Randori

All in all it was a good weekend. I’m really kind of tired though.

Cats

Some of you might remember that a couple of cats adopted the TG Center as their home right before we moved from the 713 Fargo location. Before we moved, I took the lovable black and white one home with me because I really didn’t want it to die.

While I thought that there was a chance that I could be a cat person, I’ve found out that I’m not. I really don’t like cats very much – even this very loving cat. Well, to make it worse, it turned out that she was pregnant! LOL!

Her kittens are only 2 days old. It looks like there are two marbled black(ish) ones and 3 white ones. They will all need a home… so, if you would like any of these uber cute kittens, please let me know. I think that they will be ready to go in about a month.

Also, if you would like to give the TG Center cat (the mama cat) a good home, please let me know. I’d love to get back to being a non-cat person