Seidokan Aikido (the style of our upbringing) is an offshoot of Ki Society with the Seidokan part translating to “earnest, sincere, realistic.” It emphasizes ongoing refinement, which has lead to a compact, efficient actions without a lot of big body slams. Those slams are cool, but we try to “suck the venom out of them.”
Peculiar etiquette notes:
- We are a “no clap” dojo. We don’t clap when bowing in or out, nor when we’re interrupting our partner’s practice to tell them something. It’s such not-a-thing in our style that Seidokan Aikido people reading this are probably really confused. The instructor does clap once to end the current exercise. Sometimes they clap twice when the first clap sucked.
- Our etiquette rules are basically “we do just enough so some place else won’t think we’re complete cavemen but we’re here to learn Aikido, not Japanese, and definitely not anything that just inflate sensei’s ego. Sensei doesn’t need any more of that.”
- We won’t force you to start over as a white belt, although your first test will probably be delayed to get you into the Seidokan doctrinal stuff while we mine you for cool stuff from your style.
- As a Ki Society offshoot, we are fairly similar but everything’s much smaller. If you practiced with another US East/West instructor other than Roderick Kobyashi-Sensei, your motions may be suspiciously similar (we have been surprised from some former US East people).
- We particularly hang out with ASU people from time to time and can more easily relate. We tend to put off a “weaker presence” stylistically.
- You can probably tell the tone of the dojo from this web site, but we do practice sincerely and seriously, but it’s not a convent.