Ellis Amdur and "It Had to be Felt"

After a bit of a hiatus, this is turning out to be somewhat of an Aikido month and more Japanese focused month. Having been a big fan of Ellis Amdur, and read his books ("Hidden in Plain Sight" has been of fundamental importance in my understanding of the relationship between Aikido and the internal Chinese martial arts) I was pleased to see that his latest column "It Had to Be Felt" is now up and running in earnest on Aikiweb. It describes his experience of taking ukemi at the hands of many of the Aikido greats and he has encouraged people who have had direct experience of taking ukemi for these greats to post on the column also. Thus this looks set to become a wonderful resource for people going forward.

In his own words: I would like to be part of something that, collectively, is ... for some time, even decades, the aikido community will have a resource in which people can, for example, look up and read what it was like to grab Tada Hiroshi or Kuroiwa Yoshio, all these wonderful teachers who are now gone, or whom you will perhaps have no chance to meet. There were giants on the earth in earlier days -- perhaps we can, at least, get a felt sense of what it was like to work directly with them through people's memories.

I will try and keep updating this post with links to his columns as they come up, as this blog is also many ways a diary for myself and my thoughts at the time, it will serve as an easy way for me to access the columns in the future, and also be of some benefit to my readers, I hope. I have divided it into Posts by Ellis himself and others.

A New Column: It Had to be Felt

It Had to be Felt #1: Chasing Doshu

It Had to be Felt #2: Chasing Waka Sensei

It Had to be Felt #3: Osawa Kisaburo: Simply Perfect

It Had to be Felt #4: Arikawa Saditeru: "Please Put your Hand down"

It Had to be Felt #5: Tanaka Bansen: "You Tokyo People"