Training thoughts...

What we did today was interesting... balancing on one leg and sinking to do Ikkyo really made you try to do it well. Done right you will effortlessly move uke, with the caveat that you're in a proper position and that you have uke's center under control. Bad position means you're out of reach or leaning. Sinking vertically is also important, even a slight leaning back or front will provide impetus for uke to resist.

I noticed when doing iriminage that we have to bring uke tight into our chushin and move only that. If we move like dancing, i.e. moving our chest, uke feels this. When moving on chushin alone, the feeling is akin to floating.

Ushiro ryotedori, its good practice to do this when we're tired and uke is strong. As usual its not a problem to take uke's power with proper awase. But, we tried it in the instances when we didn't get it right, and uke got a firm bear hug from behind. First I tried to do something similar to what we did from the front choke, but it was difficult to blend into uke, since my whole back was controlled. I know sensei does body awase easily, but backside is hard for me... go figure. So when that didn't work like it should, I tried to revert to what we did normally, fill the gap and lift uke's center... uke was stronger and taller so that didn't work either. Next I was trying to do skin awase, hard to get this right with our chest and his forearms being the connective parts... almost but not quite. I did a standing rei and it worked... just ok... Have to study this a bit, accepting an attack from behind is being neglected in our practice, and I think we should look into this because I've a feeling that if we do it as often as we do frontal acceptance, we'll get better improvement overall... since we'll be less focused on sight and it'll be more intuitive and tactile.

Extending into uke is giving me an insight. At first, I'm feeling that if we do it continuously into Uke's weak points it would be give them huge difficulty in moving. But it doesn't always work... now I'm thinking about what sensei said about pulling the thread from uke. I get it, we don't wait for them. Even as they are coming, and I'm thinking acceptance and all that, I really should also be having this thread I'm pulling from their center. Accepting is nice, wholesome and so superflous that half the time I'm expecting to just roll all over me. Thread pulling would probably seem more akin to what Takeda Shihan does...I would think.

As you can see, my bright idea is still a bit dim...