I am truly thankful for all the students who came out to support the dojo and attend Karita Sensei's class. Please take his teachings to heart regardless if you understand or can apply them today. The funny thing is that when Sensei demonstrated Aikido and would explain Aikido, he would basically do that exact same things that Karita taught. His explanations were shorter and more straight to the point, but he was a native English speaker. If we are able to somehow embody what Karita Sensei was teaching, our Aikido would be incredible. However, those of you who turned your nose up to it are missing the point. When Sensei was alive, our job as students was only to copy and we were not to encouraged to interpret things. Copying them and accepting them was the fastest way to learn, but thinking about it or trying to understand is not natural to human movement and slower. Do you think about every step you take? That would take forever and burn up a lot of mental energy. Therefore, we just move and in martial arts we just copy. In copying, our bodies store the knowledge and when the time is right we come to understand it. What is the old SNL joke about Arnold schwarzenegger, "Hear me know and understand me later." It's funny but true when studying the martial arts. Learn it first with your body and then with your mind.
The truest way to learn is to give up what you think you know and surrender to what you don't. This is also the only true way to "steal" the technique.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Day 9 update: Wow! How hard was that. Having to let 2 people off the hook was easy, but letting myself off 7 times was almost impossible. I have to say that I actually failed. I was so busy that I didn't remember until I got home at 11:30 PM that I had two left. Bummer. But, I can see that the whole exercise is about letting yourself off the hook.
Day 10: Let yourself off the hook 10 times and anyone else for that matter as much as you like.