There is an old photo hanging by the entrance door to the studio where we practice. Four women from 1920s-1930s moving on a shore with an immense feeling of freedom. It was always intriguing who they were and what they were doing.
Well, it’s not a mystery anymore thanks to this article on CBC:
A quick demonstration and explanation by Sensei Walters, video from the Ki Federation web-site
With Ontario moving to Stage 3 and the outlook being good we are planning for August / September for resuming of in-person classes.
The weekday class time has now been confirmed on Tuesdays 7pm-8pm for Ki Development class and 8pm-9pm for Ki Aikido class.
In case you were wondering what Ki Development classes look like and why they are very accessible, please have a look at the Ki for Health set of exercises performed by one of the Federation’s top Teachers. This set is typical for exercises practiced in the Ki Development class. In case you were wondering, the garden gnome is not linked to the practice of Ki Aikido in any way.
The all-important mind aspect of the exercises cannot be seen on the video, but you might notice how all major joints and key body movements are covered by the set in a gentle and accessible way.
We’re cancelling classes until further notice. Please stay safe!
Duende … is the spirit which inspires those extraordinary, perhaps fleeting, moments in Flamenco (as in other arts like the corrida, or bull-fighting) when the performer achieves a total communion with his audience. Only the truest artistry and afición, free of any taint of egoism or showmanship, can create the possibility of this occurring. It is an experience of bare truth, when one is somehow transported to the very depth of things, to emotion at its most naked and most poignant, so that one can only feel ‘this is how it really is’…. It is a rare thing, hardly to be talked about
Juan Martín, El Arte Flamenco De La Guitarra
The building where we practice is very old and full of odd and wonderful things. One of them is this fencing club poster
This says about fencing pretty much the same as what we could say about our Ki Aikido classes: safe, easy, inexpensive. Muscular and mental response – yeah that is one way of expressing what we try to achieve.
One wonders who Lorand Kaffka was, besides being a member of 1936 Olympics team. The famous Olympics in Berlin…
Our small Christmas do on Dec 7th after a class
Sensei Williams once said – “Ki is happiness” so we must be doing the right thing
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2019 everyone!
… and we’re open during the Christmas break btw
If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.
Jean Sibelius, 1919
Replace in your mind ‘music’ with Aikido. … and then perhaps try to experience it on the mat as ‘something autonomous and much richer’.
It’s now official. Next year Sensei O’Connell 8th Dan will run courses in Toronto on May 9-10, and in Vancouver on May 16-18.
Some photos from Sensei O’Connell’s course in Moscow in 2012.
… in this one thing, all the discipline
Of manners and of manhood is contain’d:—
A man to joyne himselfe with th’Universe
In his maine sway, and make (in all things fit)
One with that all, and goe on round as it;
Not plucking from the whole his wretched part,
And into straites, or into nought revert,
Wishing the compleate Universe might be
Subject to such a ragge of it as hee;
But to consider great Necessitie
George Chapman. The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois.
Ki Aikido 