I was at Aikido tonight and chatting to someone who was at the Doshu's course in Cardiff over the weekend. Unfortunately I wasn't able to be there.

One comment he made kind of surprised me. He said that he learnt nothing new over the weekend. I'm guessing that he meant new techniques but it caused me to reflect that I learn something new almost every time I step onto an aikido mat.

Two highly recommended books

Linchpin - Seth Godin - Uses the metaphor of Artist vs Factory worker - an artist is a unique person, using their talents visibly and people will ask for them by name. Factory workers are replacable cogs, paid the lowest economic wage.

I've been reminded recently of one of the primary ways of measuring 'success' on this journey of understanding.

Wendy Palmer, in both Conscious Embodiment exercises and aikido gradings, is looking for how well people recover after they have been knocked off centre. So, someone can do a marvellous technique at first, but when pushed off centre doesn't recover.

I've just got back from an aikdo seminar at Bristol. I've been struck again at the depth of understanding that I get from the practice.

Wendy is coming back to teach here the UK in April. This time I'm delighted to be sponsoring her workshops. Wendy is an absolutely outstanding teacher and is really not to be missed.

When I started training that both CE and aikido I wanted to get to that centred state and just stay there. I rather quickly found that I couldn't. I thought that this was because there was something wrong with me and if I just trained a bit harder, practiced for longer then I'd get there.

O Sensei, the founder of Aikido, is reputed to have said:
     "It's not that I never lose my centre, it's just that I recover it so fast no one ever notices"

A prime tenent of CE is that if we change the underlying energetics of the situation, then the content will change.

One way we can experience this, sitting in our chairs, is by imagining a stressful situation for 10 seconds and noticing our phsyiological state. Then we centre using 4 part centring. Then we bring that same situation back to mind.

Try it now.
Imagine a situation that has stressed you in the past couple of days. What was happening, what did you see, what was said, how were you standing/sitting? Stop after 10 seconds.

I moved house last week. It was a bit of a marathon and I was taking boxes and crates up to our new flat until far too late at night. It's a great flat and a good move, but the unaccustomed lifted has shown up a weakness.

I strained a muscle in my mid-back region. I've just got back from my physiotherapist, Sonja Bass. Having freed up the muscles she did some posture work with me. What she was showing me is that I try and lift from my mid-back, not my hips and legs, so I don't use my centre (hara).

I was musing on the AA proverb

"You don't think yourself into a new way of acting, you act yourself into a new way of thinking"

and it got me thinking about how posture patterns and thinking patterns are related.

I've just done the latest level 2 course with Wendy Palmer. It was a fantastic weekend as usual, with Wendy demostrating by her presence, just as much as her words what this stuff is all about and how it has the possibility of changing the world for the better.

Space is Ground

Wendy's theme this time was 'Space is Ground'.