Finally we had a new graduation for the Tomiki style group here in Stavanger.. and this time I also took part to it! And not, for once, on the grading committee part! 🙂
After 2 years in Stavanger, where I have been training and teaching both Aikikai and Tomiki Aikido I decided, together with Bob, to attempt one graduation, straight to green belt level (3.kyu). And Friday we had a quite nice group of people grading:
Tommy, Anders and Andre’ for the first time, Jacqueline and Christian for the orange belt (4.kyu) and Jimmy and Geir Håkon for the green belt too.
And in celebration of the great weather we had lately, we also had a nice barbecue at Jacqueline house!
The graduation went really well indeed, with the white belts promoted straight to 5.kyu level (yellow belt) and all the other promoted to green belt level (3.kyu). Jacqueline and Christian have been extra rewarded because of the quite good performance for the first 5 randori-no-kata-no-ura-waza, ie. basics and counters.
For my graduation, Bob surprised me a bit when he pushed me to do all 10 counters and tanto hikitategeiko with active attacker, and he was the attacker. In this situation, the attacker strikes and next try to resist to the technique, tyring of course to keep his center and not just fight back, but moving the body to counter the applied technique.. so that tori has to find other options.
And.. it went very well!! It was fun, both as tori and next as uke. Even if I had never really practiced this active form, I managed to use both Aikikai movements, Tomiki avoidance and a good mix of techniques, with extensive use of atemi, 当て身.
The result of my graduation was then.. blue belt, 2.kyu, with quite great surprise from me! 😀
Dreaming of... Asia 