How was the Dunedin NZ seminar?
We're going to call it a success. We had visitors from Australia; we had organisation members from all over the country; and we had other Goju organisation students that came to learn Taira sensei's methods that they may be able to incorporate into their understanding of Kata.
The Friday was a Okinawa Gojuryu Kenkyukai members only session. These have lots of value as they usually focus more on the kata and kihon instead of being heavily bunkai oriented. A smaller group than the main seminar, about 30 people. But most are familiar with Sensei's teaching, so it's tweaks, correction and "secrets" 😄rather than just bunkai.
Saturday and Sunday Sensei tried to keep the applications relevant to specific kata. So he started with Saifa, worked through that, then Seiunchin, Sanseru. While there were lots of people there that don't train Sensei's methods all the time, there were sufficient skilled members to help. Special thanks to Steve Nedelkos and Paul Chandler from Melbourne. There were others as well, too many to name.
Steve was often Sensei's uke, though when he needed to be a bit more physical Kauri Tepana and Richie Dickens were accorded the privilege.
In the middle of the Sunday Steve and Sensei did a bit of a demonstration of Bo Kumite. I was a little surprised he did it in a public setting, and I had to remind some that recording video in a seminar is not permitted.
Overall we were happy with the seminar. Sensei did comment on the younger participants. He feels that he cannot teach some applications for safety reasons when there are juniors present. I'm sure they enjoyed themselves but he had concerns.
