Five

[sienamystic]

Tested tonight for my fifth kyu, second orange belt. First test with a weapons component, so I got to demonstrate the 22-count jo (short staff) kata. I was swinging wildly between "you got this" and "oh my god I can't" right up until I started the test. Towards the end there was a lot of heavy breathing, and not the sexy kind, but I managed to neither throw up nor pass out, so put that in the win column.

We had a lot of people testing, including two people going for their blues, and everybody did really well. Lots of good energy in the dojo tonight.

I'm working on a small piece of writing that will work as a blog post for the dojo, about what aikido means to me, and I'll post it here as well when I'm done.