Oct 18th to 20th marked Tatami Studio’s third Annual Aikido Seminar with Mark Larson Sensei!
It was awesome receiving instruction from one of the worlds best aikido instructors, Mark Sensei, and awesome training with our Aiki friends. Thank you to everyone that travelled from near and far (Minnesota, North Dakota, Tennessee, Nevada, Japan, Denmark, Sweden and Winnipeg) for the seminar. It would not be the same without you! Loved seeing my lil’aiki sis Antonella from Sweden! What a wonderful surprise!
Thank you to Jeff and Laurie Przybilla for taking the time to come up from Minnesota to video record the seminar. You can purchase Mark Sensei Seminar DVD’s from Jeff. They date back to 2008 and contain loads of great info…with more in the years to come! A huge thank you also to Takahashi Sensei in Japan for the calligraphy he wrote ‘BUDO’ (translation ‘Martial Way’) for the back of this year’s seminar T-shirt! Takahashi Sensei also wrote the calligraphy above our shoman. He wrote this banner for the Budo-Martial Arts Demonstrations in Japan at the opening ceremonies which I was fortunate to be at and participate in earlier this year with Mark Sensei and some of my aiki-friends from around the world.
Takahashi Sensei gifted this banner to Winnipeg Aiki Shuren Dojo.
A huge thank you also to Takahashi Sensei in Japan for the calligraphy.
Takahashi Sensei gifted the banner to Winnipeg Aiki Shuren Dojo which was pretty awesome. I had shivers when he handed it to me and got a little teary eyed. It reads, ‘Ki Shin Tai’ translation ‘Spirit, Mind, Heart, Body Connection’. The neat thing about this calligraphy is that when Ama was in Japan in 2015 with Mark Sensei, Takahashi Sensei had gifted the group Japanese paper fans. He asked each person what they would like written on it, and Ama said ‘what would you like to have written on it Sensei’ so Takahashi Sensei wrote the same calligraphy as on the banner. Pretty freakin’ cool-eh!! Shivers again! That is perfect Budo! Both the banner and fan are part of the shoman, to remind of this connection every day. So many other little and subtle things happened this weekend that made us aware that Morihiro Saito Sensei’s spirit was all around us. Awesome! We are truly blessed! You know you’re on the right aiki path when things like that happen.
Thank you to David Gottlieb Sensei (Copenhagen Denmark) and Jim Sullivan Sensei (Tennessee USA) for staying a bit longer after the seminar and giving us and our students aikido classes with great instruction.
BIG HUGE THANK YOU, to Mark Sensei for so many things but especially for making the trip up to Winnipeg to share his aikido with us. Thank you Sensei for keeping Traditional Aikido true, and for preserving it for us and for future generations to come. We know that you give all your credit to Morihiro Saito Sensei, but we also know that without you and the dedication and heart you put into it when you were in Iwama for nearly a decade, many of us would not know the traditional aikido we now know if we were not guided by you.
