The previous post is Saturday, May 24.
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Aunkai VA Seminar · Jun 8, 09:55 AM

It’s been a week since the two day Aunkai seminar in Fairfax, VA. About thirty people attended, and a wide variety of martial arts were represented: aikido, bagua, taiji, judo, even military combatives. I recognized a number of people from various online forums: aikiweb, e-budo, and internal-aiki. I got a lot of questions about Dan Harden because I was one of the few in attendance who has met him. Putting names to faces, making new friends, and geeking out over martial arts and body training—all fun aspects of seminar attendance, but I was there for the Aunkai training.

I first met Rob and Ark in April 2006 on may way into China. They are both friendly and open. Rob introduced me to several basic training tools: shiko, tenchijin, and ashiage. I worked on them sporadically for just over three months while I wandered through China, and then I stopped by again on my way back to the US, in August. Rob confirmed that I had made some basic progress. I was looking for that data point to confirm that I should continue this training. The body skills this training inculcates are so rare that I was concerned I would be unable to pick them up; at the time I didn’t know if they were rare because they were jealously guarded, only suitable for people certain talents, or what.

Now fast forward to the present day. I’ve been training sporadically with Dan Harden for about 18 months, and in the last 6 certain basics have started coming together, but along they way I’ve developed a desperate curiosity to understand the difference between Dan’s approach and Ark’s approach. This was the context for my visit.

On Saturday, Ark introduced a series of basic exercise, starting with shiko, tenchijin, and moving through several related exercises and variants. He went into surprising depth explaining how to use these tools to identify and train efficient body movement. I went for lunch with several guys to a middle-eastern joint down the street. We continued training through the afternoon, and I ended up sharing beer with Jim Sorrentino and a couple guys at the Capitol City Grill before a big dinner with 15-20 people from the seminar.

On Sunday we training more, and by the end of the seminar we had been lead through push-out, some basic spear work, agete, and some striking drills. Ark pushed us through a little bit of grueling low-stance work, just enough to impress on everyone how hard we should be training ourselves, but not enough to keep me from being able to climb stairs the next day (his previous US seminars are infamous).

I don’t have much comment on the material. Ark’s method, as I understand it, is identify efficient movement and then train that movement into the body and teach the body to be jealous of itself. We didn’t get into breath training.

* * *

  1. So did you ever satisfy your “desperate curiosity to understand the difference between Dan’s approach and Ark’s approach”? ;- )

    — Tom    May 15, 07:06 PM    #

  2. Pretty much. They both produce results, and I’m happy to be training with Dan.

    — Tom    Jun 13, 08:42 AM    #

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