Friday, August 24, 2018

Aikido of Bali Hai 2019

This past June into early August we had Aikido of Bali Hai 2018. Lou Bermingham, David Eves, Meng Ear, and Melanie Baybayan and I trekked to the island of Kauai for training, relaxation, and fun. We alternated a training day with with a vacation day. Some of the activities members of the group did were zip lining, horseback riding, hiking, and of course a lot of shopping. We began certain classes with some energy work/meditation. Similar to lucid dreaming or Jung's active imagination we worked on directly accessing the energies with imaging, sound, and in the training checked that out with some movement. I'm wanting to possibly start a group where we explore in this fashion, ie a meditation group. This was big in the seventies and eighties, but not so in vogue these days. And lots of good work was done then that is in danger of being lost as aikido tries to move forward.

I initially made my first trip to Kauai in summer of 1996. In the sixties listening to a Dodger radio broadcast by the great Vin Scully he mentioned that the island of Kauai was where the scenes for the island of Bai Hai were filmed in the movie South Pacific. So having an urge to visit the mystical island of Bali Hai the best I could do was Kauai. In 2016 a group of us made the first Aikido of Bali and this past summer was the second. The question now is will there be an Aikido of Bali Hai 2019?

I've always found Kauai to be a power spot. In the Castaneda books don Juan said most places take energy. When you feel very active somewhere energy is leaving you. In contrast a power spot is where you gather energy. You feel you can rest and do rest. Healing on various levels can happen. That's what I've always felt on Kauai. So this last visit instead of being busy busy I focused on just opening and gathering life force, which is plentiful on that island.

The training was pretty much without rolls, but we were able to do weapons work as the gateway to the more of things. So my feeling is that things went well. Is there interest in 2019?