After having left the dojo I trained at some 12 odd years ago now and having spent the time since actively teaching, conducting seminars and watching people learn, I have come to realize just how vast the Aikido world truly is and how difficult it is to share and teach the information. It seems that no matter how much I teach, I always leave out some of the important bits.
It also seems that sometimes I teach a lesson that I consider critical (in absolutely every sense of the word) to players' overall development and at the moment I teach it, everyone seems to understand both the concept and the application. I'm pleased ... until I teach it again 6 months later and it can seem that I never covered the material at all. That's how difficult it can be and why all Sensei repeat the same material over and over again, esp. for the ranks under Shodan where a full and complete understanding of the fundamentals is so very important.
There are many well-known Sensei out there with much the same observation; that sometimes it seems as tho' we Sensei are forever teaching the same lesson over and over and it never "sticks" so-to-speak. All good Sensei accept this reality and willingly, if not gratefully, teach the basics because the future of martial arts always lies with the beginner, the white belt who someday is bitten by the Aiki-Bug and who can't put it down afterwards.
My Sensei also made much the same observation and when I was still with him he would many, many times hold a seminar for out-ouf-towners (member dojo of his org) and we would watch as people would come up and make a comment such as "Gosh Sensei, I sure hope that you teach that jodo lesson again (or kata again). I really enjoyed it when I was here 6 months ago but I forgot all of it. Would you please teach it again?"
I was shocked the one time he made a fully honest comment to me of "Why should I bother. He obviously doesn't want to learn it and work on it otherwise he would have spent the last 6 months working on it at home. Does he want me to spoon-feed him the information?" ..... Sensei was talking about black belts that in some cases were Nidan or Sandan and up and not about colored belts/kyu ranks but true to his ethics, he taught the requested material in a serious attempt to help people learn and advance.
Although his comment was directed at high level black belts who should know better (not beginners who are still trying to understand fundamentals) it always stuck in my head and raised a question .... how do we put the info out there? DVD's and training tapes always seem to be nothing more than an encylopedia of waza and don't really teach the in-depth material that is handing out at a seminar. They are a sort of "animated book" and not much more beyond that with little meaningful explanation or teaching.
I've been told that when I teach, I give out as much data in one day as other Sensei do in 2 or 3 days of seminar sessions. I do that deliberately because it's like a bug under my skin trying to break out (did you see the "Mummy" movie?). There is just a bunch of stuff in my head and I can see the value and I want others to see the value and to learn and progress faster because when I stand in front of a group of players whether it be a dozen or a over a hundred (and I've taught groups of both sizes) I do not see a bunch of white belts; I see 6th, 7th and 8th dans in front of me. This stuff (Aikido and MA) puts the lead in my pencil and has added so much incredible value to my life that I cannot understand how someone can tell me that they want to learn but then not do the time on the mat to make it happen).
So after years, decades literally, of wondering how to get the info out, how to let people see the lesson over and over again so that at some point it "sticks" and they can utilize it, I decided that we'll film every seminar and that I'll do a total brain dump so that the DVD's we have available for sale beginning this year will, in and of themselves, "BE" the seminar. If you attend the seminar and then later watch the DVD it will BE the seminar so now you can hear the lesson and see the drills over and over and over.
In this fashion I hope to find at least a partial solution to this problem of communcating the info enough times and in sufficient detail to be of real use to Aikido players.
We already have Kodokan Goshin Jitsu almost ready to go. This month we filmed the 8 Releases. We should also be able to prepare Kuzushi no Kata and The Walking (in the can for the last year but we plan to re-shoot it with the new depth of detail).
I'm pleased that when we filmed Goshi Jitsu last year we covered so much material that we literally had to cut hours out of it and still ended up with two full DVD's of information for only 21 waza. Who would have thought that Kodokan Goshin Jitsu had so many solid hours of material that amounts to a private lesson? We taught for a full day and had to cut the material to the most important but it's still a lot of material. The 8 Releases were plotted out and I calculate 3 DVD's at least, each with up to 2 hours of material. Like I said; once you really, really dig down deep and start looking at every nuance the amount of teachable (and studyable) material in Aikido is much more immense than what any of us realize and it would behove each of us to focus and learn as much as we possibly can from the best sources available.
The moral to the story is this. Everything we teach has so much detail that it amounts to a lifetime of study; truly a lifetime. You should not expect to learn it all in one sitting but instead, over a long time of repetitive lessons, learning classes and practice times. Classes, seminars, DVD's, Godo Geiko, You Tube Channels, and prep'ing for demo's all add to the bits and pieces that over time fit together into the larger whole.
L.F. Wilkinson Sensei