Shihan

I was watching a video of one of the I'll put it in the Patreon group as a scrutiny exercise.

But it was in that one of those Shihan, you know, that got voluntold to spread the art.

And then they spread the art through curriculum is what they did.

And by anybody's standards, like even by today's standards, if you saw like a Westerner move like they were, you would go, that guy sucks.

And that's what happens.

That's what's happening all the time.

And so going back to that video where we see this Shihan spazzing, clearly he doesn't have that ability.

Clearly, this is low-level skill.

It's the thing I've really done.

I studied with Robert Nadeau, Shihan, I studied with Richard for many years, Hiroshi Ikeda.

You know, I've had really the most amazing luck in life to have had wonderful teachers.

And I really just tried to share from some of these incredible people.

That's a huge part of what's going on.

Then you have this thing, it was around even when these Shihan were developing their weapon systems.

You have this idea that, you know, your body art is based on weapons stuff.

And you get weird justifications like this too, but I'll go into that in a second.

So-

Growing up, we had to do all that stuff for Shihan.

Like, my sensei, we had, we, he couldn't touch anything.

We had to make sure everything was done for him.

And then after that, it was under the FAAA.

under Christian Tissier, and so my last teacher before I went on to England was Philippe Goutard, who is now Shihan, and been teaching Aikido worldwide as well as in France.

So my experience was I had a good exposure of all those things to understand, but I was nowhere near an expert.

I was not an expert.

And people said, you know, well, you've got Iwama Aikido if you want to learn.

And there's one in Stoke Newington called the London Aikido Club.

And I went there and I met Andy Hathaway, Sensei, who is now Shihan, and learned Aikido from him for a number of years.

And I moved to, eventually, after several years, he moved on, and I met Tony Sargent Sensei, who is now Tony Sargent Shihan, from the TIAE.

I have another question that it talks about, you know, when the Gokai started, there was Shoden, Okuden, and Shinpiden.

And then, uh, where does Shihan come in?

Uh, yeah, because, um, during four years of, uh, Usui Sensei, no, Usui Sensei was only active four years because he passed away after four years.

Um, uh, when Usui Sensei selected, uh, uh, a student for Shinpiden, this person becomes Shihan, and also, uh, premier...

First, he becomes Shinpiden student, [laughs] of course.

Oh, okay.

And he becomes Shihan, and he also becomes a directive of the association, Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, because the third role of directive is very important because Usui Sensei wanted to teach the spirituality, uh, from the point of view of managing, not something material, like manage the money, manage the association, you know, administrate the association.

You know? Because, uh, there were many people attending and many people becoming, uh, members.