To some dojos, 23 participants on an international seminar means a great success, but for the school for classical martial arts Taiyou e no Michi that is a normal number for a regular local outdoor seminar.
Regular and local it may be, but not at all ordinary. In fact, on each of our seminars one can easily see the will and wish of our students for constant advancement and deeper immersion in the world of the classical Japanese martial arts.
A two-day seminar, entitled `Kenjutsu under the start of Lipac`, once more showed our great dedication.
On Saturday, with giant camping bags upon our backs,
we first climbed at the top of mountain Lipac, where we did our first training session. Afterwards, we descended towards the st. George monastery, where we continued our training sessions.
At the end of the training, instructor Igor Dovezenski answered the many questions asked by the students, regarding the Ono ha Itto Ryu school.
We `spiced` the night with a nice bean stew, around a big table, and sleeping under the stars reminded us of how much we miss living in the cities and alienating ourselves from nature.
On Sunday, we began with a morning training session at 06:00, followed by cleaning and tidying the monastery and it`s surroundings.
We had breakfast afterwards, followed by a second training session. While we trained, there was some tea getting prepared in two old kettles, freshly collected which refreshed us and gave us strength during the short break.
After the second training session, the students had a break at the monastery, and that was actually the only lengthy break for this whole seminar.
When that break was over, we had our last training session, which showed the battle readiness of our students. Namely, the last exercise was about defending oneself from constant quick attacks with a sword, that were without warning and from all sides by a couple of opponent – putting the one defending themselves under constant pressure and stress.
At the end of this seminar, after we tidied-up the yard of the beautiful monastery, we departed towards the starting point. We arrived in Skopje around 22.00, tired but happy because of the great seminar during this weekend.