Gokyo and kotegaeshi

Another day of no-gi, hot and dusty aikido. Fortunately it was cooler for our 9:00AM aiki class today than our 6:00PM judo class yesterday. We had to cancel judo class yesterday afternoon because it was simply to hot to be grappling. The ceiling, lights, and A.C. should be installed Monday or Tuesday.
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This morning we went through tegatana, highlighting the proper foot/ankle posture for tsugiashi and discussing the usefulness of the "helicopter" pivot as a great way to get from an omote position into an ura position. In hanasu we reviewed releases 1-4 and then explored the gokyo-like wakigatame and the kotegaeshi that comes off of hanasu#3.
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Kristof's aikido is remarkably clean and gentle. We started off our aiki relationship agreeing that each practitioner will understand aikido differently and that each instructor will teach what they understand of aikido differently. With that in mind, it will be easier for Kristof to look for the commonalities between the teachings of his American Tomikiryu instructor and his Ukrainian Aikikai instructor. Today we had somewhat different ideas about ukemi and about footwork, and we had different names for the same stuff, but both Kristof and the Mokuren guys recognized what the other was doing as aikido. It's pretty cool that a person can travel from the Carpathian mountains of Ukraine to the sweltering pine woods of southwest Mississippi and still practice aikido.