Piotr Stępniak

It was the first seminar organised by PAJJ for a long time now and I must say a big thanks to the organisers: masters Mirosław Wiśniewski and Mirosław Glaz for a baggage full of inspiration and energy which I brought back with me Unfortunately I missed Friday’s training due to misunderstanding with trains and my seminar was so forth shortened only to Saturday’s training.

Soke Yamaue is a very interesting person. Above all he’s very open to people, friendly and keeps smiling He seemed very happy to be here and it showed he wanted to teach us a lot of things. He begun the first training on Saturday with explanation of the specificity of samurai age in terms of martial arts… on the example of seiza etiquette. We were then divided into two groups: master and students. While soke Yamaue thought masters, sensei Mirosław Glaz, and in the second part also sensei Mirosław Wiśniewski took care of us -students. It made me miss Niesulice camp in 1999 …

The techniques were adequate to the group level and the conditions – we had no tatami, so they ended without any throws. Masters’ group at the tatami was separated from us with a huge cottar which was a effective way to stop us from any sneaking It was a great prelude to the “main course”.

Soke Yamaue started with explaining the stance used by his monk adepts[see the frame] – humble, kind, but at the same time closed and alert – just right for unexpected attack. Later on we moved to freeing from grips, we took the active approach, with proceeding to neutralisation of the attacker.

During the half an hour break there was some time for taking a photo with the master and to ask him for the signature in Budo Pass, the rest of the break sensei Yamaue tirelessly talked and explained “few things” to a group of listeners.

In the second part of the training our group had a little less time with sensei Yamaue, but in favour we were taken to tatami. We stayed with grips, but for a change in suwari-waza and handachi. After we tried few combinations sensei started a series of presentations of different kind of techniques, not only in seiza. He explained the value of technique done not only on mechanical pain application basis, but also with the use of Ki energy flow, especially in the form of wave… Each uke‘s face expression said everything for itself, I didn’t see mine, but I think it was similar

Ceremony, lockers and the road home. I only regret it was that short and I had no time to speak to many of my friends whom I had not seen for a while…

I didn’t take any pics, but few kind people did, you may see them here..