Wednesday 16 July 2014

Is it Magic, or is it Aikido?

Derren Brown is a man who meddles with people's minds. In one of his TV shows he apparently made a young woman 'unliftable'. Well, so it seems. In Ki Aikido we have a number of training exercises in which we too become seemingly unliftable.

In the 19th Century a certain lady who went by the name of Annie May Abbott, but was more popularly known as the “Georgia Magnet” performed a series of amazing stunts in music halls which included, among other things, her 'supernatural' ability to increase her weight at will so that strong men could not lift her. Now whether the Georgia Magnet was using the same method as Derren Brown and whether either of them used the same method as we use in Aikido I cannot say. All I can say for sure is that, by mastering a few arts of relaxation and body control, almost anyone could create the same effect.

In fact, I wrote an article about The Georgian Magnet and the Aikido 'unraisable body' method for the benefit of some magician friends some years back. If you are interested, you can read it here:
http://www.magicbunny.co.uk/tophat/issue9.pdf

Meanwhile, this is the Derren Brown version...

Friday 4 July 2014

Aiki weapons workshop next Tuesday

Just a reminder that there is no aikido class on Monday (7th July) but Sensei Small will be teaching an aiki-weapons class on Tuesday (8th July) at 7:30.