July 2010

Many thanks to all who helped make our annual clinic with Amos Parker Shihan a great success. I want to especially thank our guests from Canada, Japan and San Diego for making the trip to Sacramento. An inspirational weekend indeed. A very special thank you to the Wright's, Freed's and Kortan's for opening your homes to our guest. THANK YOU!

To all those who came and participated in Nakazawa Sensei's Aikisambo clinic, thank you. I hope you all enjoyed the training. It was great meeting you and I hope you'll come and visit us again. To Nakazawa and Masaki Sensei's, thank you for coming. It was great training and learning from you.

Now that our June clinic's have come and gone, it's back to the basics. We welcome to the dojo this month Mark, Michael, Sebastian and Alex. All are off to a good start.

Jaime Calderon Sensei from the Tenshin Aikido dojo in Chico paid us a visit. It was nice meeting and training with Calderon Sensei.

In closing, it is with great sadness to report that Siva Arani Sensei, nidan, passed away this month. Siva began in training in 2003 and achieved nidan in 2008. Siva Sensei will be missed by many.

Past Months

June 2010

Welcome to June. We have a busy month ahead of us. Before we get into that, we welcome our newest youth students, Catherine & Joshua who are off to a great start. Welcome back to Zachary who was off for a month due to an non-aikido related elbow injury. Zachary picked up right were he left off and took his youth 9th kyu exam and passed with flying colors. You can see he continued to practice his basics at home and it showed. Lesson for the rest of you. :)

Our annual clinic with Parker Shihan is soon approaching. If you have not yet signed up, please do so ASAP. We need a head count to ensure we can accommodate everyone. I also need a head count for our after clinic dinner at Lupitas. On 6/29 we'll run our class at the main gym across the street. We will have an open house followed by an Aikisambo seminar featuring Kenji Nakazawa Sensei. We can use as much help as possible moving the mats to and from the youth center.

In case no one noticed, the website has been refreshed yet again. Please let me know if you have any problems or recommendations.

May 2010

This month we welcome our newest youth student Mia. She's off to an awesome start andher previous aikido training certainly has helped her along. Congratulations are in order for Jeff and David who passed their adult 2nd kyu exam. Connor, Megan, Katrina and Christopher also received their youth 9th kyu. All did an excellent job. Well done by all. Keep up the great work.

March/April

Been a bit behind in updating the news section so if I forget anything or anyone, please let me know.

Our newest student(s) during this time are Autumn, Michael, Nic and Kellen. All are doing quite well. I would also like to welcome back Bill G. who has been on hiatus for a while. It's great having Bill back at the dojo. Both our March & April kenshu's went well. In April, Barrett Sensei and his student Agnes came up from Davis to train with us. A group of us also went down to Davis for an evening of training. Great time indeed.

Congratulations are in order. Brianna passed her youth 1st kyu and Nicole passed her adult 4th kyu exams. Both did an awesome job and took ukemi for each other. Also taking their advancement exam for adult 8th kyu were Tom and Bill. In our youth ranks, Christian did an awesome job with his 9th kyu advancement exam. Well done by all.

Natasha and I made a trip to Manteca to visit Arredondo Sensei and his students. They are all doing a great job and we had a great visit. Many thanks to the parents, students and Arredondo Sensei for having us out.

Our June clinic with Parker Shihan is soon approaching. We have some exams to get through before then so we should be quite busy at the dojo. And finally, many thanks to Sensei Paul, Senpai's Greg, Jeff, Andi and all who helped with classes while I was on vacation.

February 2010:

We've had a pretty busy February. First, we congratulate Kelvin for passing his 7th kyu exam. The test had good energy and flowed quite nicely. We also welcomed new students to the dojo. New to the dojo this month are Zachary and Thomas. Both are off to a great start and doing well.

We held our second kenshu for 2010. The kenshu was well attended. Everyone trained with high energy. We also had a couple of first timers who did a great job. Well done by all.

January 2010:

Happy New Year and welcome back. The new year is now one month old and things are off to a good start here at the Seikeikan. We've held our first Kenshu for 2010 which was well attended. We also welcome three new students to our youth class. They are Connor, Christian and Daniel. Congratulations are in order for Namkha who becomes our first student to test in 2010. Namkha successfully passed his youth 6th kyu exam. Well done.

For 2010 we'll be incorporating a conditioning class that will take place after the first adult class. Senpai Andi will be leading the group in these sessions. We held our first and followed that up with 30 minutes of jiyu waza drills. Folks were still standing at the end, after they got up off the ground of course, and still smiling. We're also looking at restarting the combat defense grappling class at the end of class. More on this to follow.

Our annual clinic with Amos Parker Shihan has been scheduled for June 24~26, so please mark your calendars. More information to follow.