Mind matters

21-22 of October there was an aikido camp in Norrköping, a town near to where I live, with Ulf Evenås. Ulf is a 7:th dan, that is 7:th degree of black belt, and has been training aikido for nearly 40 years. He’s pretty good. I would say he’s excellent actually, and fun to hang around

This weekend was special since four people from our club were going to test for black belt. We’ve been encouraging and supporting them for quite some months now, before their test. Until the last weeks before the papers had to be sent in, two of the people were still not sure if they were going to take the test or not.

On saturday there were three trainings before the actual testing, and since I was short of money, I chose to skip the first two trainings and attend the third one. It was quite fun to watch people sweat and train! And also to observe how the testees were doing. It also gave me an opportunity to connect with Lars-Göran Andersson, a 5:th dan who has held many seminars in our dojo, who arrived a little too late for the first training due to have been geografically challenged by the location of the dojo!

All went well, and then it was time for testing. I was uke to Traian, and it felt like it went very well. I didn’t see how the others were doing since I concentrated very hard to blend alot with the mat. And I’m quite good at that! There were 6 people testing for shodan (1:st degree black belt).

After the 6 people had finished testing, there were 2 more people who were going to test for 4:th dan! They kept at it for a long while, and when it finally seemed to be over, the committee said it was time for kokyo nage (breath throws, that is: throwing people around, preferrably effortlessly). One of them was assigned to begin, but after three throws they stopped it, deliberated some, and then something weird happened, atleast from my own perspective. Ulf looked up from the deliberation and said: “Mika, wheres Mika?”. I was so confused that at first I didn’t respond, and then I raised up my hand. Ulf called me forward and I made my way onto the mat and then he instructed me too to attack. People afterwards told me that the yell of happiness that escaped from me was hard to miss!

So I went in with all I had, attacking and was thrown this way and that way for some time, until the testing ended. Afterwards I asked Lasse (the committe was composed of Lasse, Ulf and Leif; our head instructor) why they chose me and he said: “Because you always have so much stamina left after a training!” and Leif said: “Mika, it’s because you take a beating so gracefully”. The swedish words he used were: “Mika, det är för att du tar stryk så snyggt!”.

Oh, and everyone passed, so now our club has 4 shining, new blackbelts! :pom: :pom:

Posted in Aikido

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. This post has been viewed 8068 times.