In Shindenkan, we had stood together very strongly for this long period - without or with very few unifying activities and this created great expectations for this new season in all of us. So finally, after 18 months of Corona shutdowns, restrictions and great uncertainty with all of us sports associations, it was with great pleasure that we at Shindenkan opened the course season with one of the really big courses - namely Iaijutsu 1.

Iaijutsu 1 was developed by Yamana-Itotani Sensei and was held with great success for the first time, 5 years ago, in 2016. Just like then in 2016, I had been looking forward to this very much because now we can once again look forward and rejoice to be our very best in the safe confines of Shindenkan. But I was especially looking forward to Iaijutsu 1, because it's just a super cool course and that this time I was to be a co-instructor at the event.

The Iaijutsu 1 course must be passed before graduating to 1st dan in Yakami Shinsei-Ryu and members of the Shindenkan can participate from the 5th Kyu and if a dispensation is granted from the 6th Kyu. And to my great joy 🙂 there were a lot of Shindenkaners who signed up for the course – both new Shindenkaners and Shindenkaners who had already participated and passed the course in 2016.

The Iaijutsu 1 course is a comprehensive course and is completed over 3 course days. So leading up to the course itself, I fortunately had many preparation hours together with Yamana-Itotani Sensei so that I was well-prepared for the teaching method, schedule, points, special focus areas and not least the very important and coherent points that were in the running of the videos 🙂 and the presentation on the 2nd day of the course, I was quite happy with that.

Finally we arrived at the day of the first Iaijutsu course day and it was a fantastic day with a bright positive atmosphere - with deep concentration, really good questions and challenges for all participants and for the course instructor.

The first day of the course included OBI binding (binding of the sword belt), sitting sword etiquette as well as the first 2 out of 4 Iaijutsu Kata's 🙂 The pace was characterized by a great desire to learn, great immersion and all the participants' reactions were extremely positive and it was clear that everyone was enjoying themselves find out more on the coming course days.

The second day of the course was too extremely exciting for me because it was here that several of the big conclusions and clues about the history behind Iaijutsu had to be drawn through carefully selected videos, coherence from the historical perspective as well as all people's preconceived notions of what they see, what they want to see what reality then reveals afterwards. Because the reality is that most people want to be deceived and maintain their own opinion - this also applies to myself 🙂

But in this situation Yamana-Itotani Sensei had carefully instructed me in his well thought out eye opener and it just worked perfectly. Where participants were positively surprised, provoked and all in all a very positive mood and space for us all to laugh - both at the eye-opener and ourselves 🙂 After that it was time for repetition of what we had learned last time as well as introduction and learning of the third Kata out of 4. Once again the participants' reaction was very positive and they are looking forward to even more on the last day of the course.

Yamana-Itotani Sensei had carefully instructed me in the schedule for the third day of the course, which was to be completed with a short repetition of the first 3 Kata's and then introduction and learning of the 4 Iaijutsu Kata. Then we changed gears and drove for 3 hours with very high concentration and high intensity and the time flew by - because suddenly all 3.5 hours had been spent in deep concentration.

The participants were very tired at the end 🙂 - But there were only very positive reactions from people around the course, also about how the time had flown by.

I can hardly wait until the next time we have to do this course because I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think that all the participants really helped to keep the level high - so that we could go all the way through with high concentration and high intensity both with me themselves and with the participants.

Because I felt that time flew by on all 3 course days and that Iaijutsu 1 really started the Shindenkan season at a high level and with fantastic unity around exactly what we stand for in Shindenkan - The multi-track and value-based, 1000-year-old unique system and cultural heritage - Yakami Shinsei-Ryu.

The course was very well received by all the participants and now we are training on the loose in all local schools to get ready for the big competence graduation which, according to tradition, will be carried out at Shindenkan's Xmas event in December 2021.

It was nice to get back to a normality again 🙂