Aikido of Maine goes to Florida!

On the very first day of the year, seven of us from Aikido of Maine flew to St. Pete’s Beach, Florida for the ASU Winter Intensive 2019, for Winter Camp. It was just like you’d hope, blustery and cold when we left Portland, and sunny, blue, warm when stepped out of the airport in Tampa.For Ania Small, a teacher at our dojo, it was familiar ground; 2019 was her 13th Winter Camp. But it was also the first time a substantial group of students had gone along – something she and Gary had often hoped for. This year the ASU grant program helped one of us get there, and the Winter Camp five-for-four program helped another of us get there, and then there was the lure of spending the first week of the year in training, and in Florida. “Not only did I get to share the experience of traveling to camp,” she said, “I got to see our dojo members out there in the bigger Aikido world, and note the progress made after a five day intensive, training with great teachers and partners.”And that was the thing. There we were that week, in the bigger Aikido world, training for five full days. Saotome Sensei and two featured instructors, Chuck Weber and Mary Heiny, taught every day, so we had the chance to delve in with them; and members of the ASU board each taught one or two classes over the course of the week, so we had the chance to see a wide range of teachers and styles. For Diana, who has attended seminars for many years but never an intensive, “It was extraordinarily different from all the other seminars I’ve attended, which have all focused around a single teacher. The multiplicity of directions in which they have taken Saotome Sensei’s transmission was fascinating to see and experience.” The remarkable thing – and every one of us noticed it – was that with all these different teachers, there was still a feeling of coherence, of everyone exploring the same central ideas. As Ania put it, “It illustrated Saotome Sensei’s emphasis on principle rather than style.”For this year’s Winter Camp, Saotome Sensei also made a calligraphy –

wakidachi: “establishment of an environment of social peace and harmony” within and beyond the dojo. It’s on the t-shirt, and on the cover of the notebook that every attendee received. And this too permeated the whole experience. Ahead of time, Sara remembered how “I was extremely nervous and not sure what to expect,” but upon arriving “I was heartened by the warm reception at the welcome desk … and that feeling extended throughout the entire intensive. ”