Almost private session with Jan in Tivon

Yesterday the classes were here in Tivon, which means that most of the people from the Tel Aviv bubble will not make the effort to come, which is their loss and our gain. We do the one-hour drive four days out of five, but they cannot do it even one day out of five. Anyway, we were only 20 people on the mat, which resulted in the best practice during the whole seminar. It was almost like a private lesson where Jan focused exactly on the things where we felt that we needed some good feedback to proceed in the right direction.

Jan praised the progress that our group has made in their ability to move freely and take nice high falls and much to my humble delight he several times acknowledged my contribution to this noticeable development. The feedback we now got was that the way we throw is very care-taking and helping. It is natural that the nage carries a lot of weight when most of the people are in the initiation phase, but from now on it is time to start throwing with less aid - still supportive of course, but the uke's need to develop more independence.

After the amazing aikido we gathered at Anati's house and ate all the food people had brought. The buffet was least to say international, with typical Middle-Eastern stuff like hummous and tahina, but also Kurdish kubbeh and stuffed vine leafs, Anati's famous leek latkes, Japanese sushi, Latin-American ceviche, together with a bunch of salads, pies, bread, and of course wine, desserts, coffee and tea... We slept nicely after that. Today we are up for another few hours of aikido treats...