Green hills, cold streams, narrow rock passes and in the middle of it all young people from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Ukraine practicing aikido for a week.
We were in the Slovenský ráj again and it was wonderful!
This was our 15th summer school in Třešt’ under the guidance of Martin Švihla. 7 days and 6 hours of practice per day. Plus lots of time together over meals, evening talks, ambient music concert, board games and… just a week with good friends and aikido.
The island of Oléron is an unknown part of France for many people – that is, until they learn that the world-famous Fort Boyard is located just a few kilometres from the island. For us, however, Oléron has a different meaning – for several decades now, it has been home to the Aikido summer school.
We practiced for 12 days, 4 hours a day. Under the guidance of teacher Gaston Nicholessi, it’s a great chance to learn something new. And make memories for the rest of your life.
The Sport for Two Festival is organized every year by the Prague 2 Municipal District.This year we had a lot of people interested in movement, so over a hundred children came through our aikido tatami for half a day and we did short training sessions for them. It was a real buzz!
In spring Gaston from France visited us again. For three days we practiced with him in a free, playful and at the same time intense way – we developed basic principles like contact, leadership, relaxation… and we also worked with weapons.
One weekend in May, Martin led two seminars at the Dojo De La Roserai in Toulouse, France. Friday and Saturday were for adults, Sunday for children and teachers of children. And the whole week before that he and Vanda spent in Bordeaux… so here are his notes from the trip:
The exams are an important milestone in the life of an aikidist – and the black belt exams even more so. At this year’s seminar with Franck Noel, seven brave members of our club advanced to the next dan level. You will find their names in the article.
s the years go by, our Shihan Franck Noel gradually reduces the number of his seminars in Europe. And yet this year he found time to visit Prague.
Every seminar with Jan is a surprise. Jan refers to his teaching as “exploration”, and so each year we explore familiar techniques from new perspectives…
Almost 10 people were preparing for this year’s dan examinations, so we organized the preparatory seminar of the Czech Aikido Federation in Vinohrady with great pleasure.
It was still bitterly cold in Prague in February, and we were greeted at Barcelona airport by the sun and the smell of the nearby sea. And so we began to thaw…
On Saturday morning in Prague, around 100 children started their first training on the big tatami… and it was a line from one side of the hall to the other. Check out the photos! And we weren’t all there yet, because the bus with the Ukrainian kids got delayed at the border and arrived a bit late. After a warm-up together, we divided into age categories – small kids, bigger kids and teenagers – and started real training sessions full of varied movement, games and most importantly aikido.
Zdenko Reguli’s seminar in Prague in December was well attended after three long years. Besides us from Vinohrady, aikidists from more than 10 other clubs (even from abroad) came to practice.
We sat on the mats after practice, resigned expressions on our faces. I think Honza broke the silence: ‘When is the next training? And where?”
On that Thursday in November, the first snow fell in Stockholm. The beginning of winter. We slept on the tatami at the Iyasaka Aikidoklubb (there’s an insanely noisy air-conditioning system running at night) and got up at six in the morning. An hour practice, a quick change of clothes and a subway ride to Vanadis, where there was another morning practice at another club. Then we had breakfast at the cafe where Astrid Lingren used to go (Pipi Longstockking was written in the tenement across the park) and the lunchtime training was starting, which of course we also attended. Three workouts in half a day wouldn’t have been too much, but we kept up the pace of 3-5 hours of exercise on our sixth day in Stockholm… and we still had three more intense days to go.
A cottage near the forest, training on the mountain meadow, cooking together, hiking up the hills on the horizon, morning exercises and night walks, conversations by the fire, swimming in the spa town, reading comics and watching horror movies… our camp in Jeseníky was really very varied!