A seminar with Jan Nevelius is always full of surprises, because every year he brings a new perspective on familiar things – and we can explore these new connections with him.

A seminar with Jan Nevelius is always full of surprises, because every year he brings a new perspective on familiar things – and we can explore these new connections with him.
Every seminar with Jan is a surprise. Jan refers to his teaching as “exploration”, and so each year we explore familiar techniques from new perspectives…
We sat on the mats after practice, resigned expressions on our faces. I think Honza broke the silence: ‘When is the next training? And where?”
On that Thursday in November, the first snow fell in Stockholm. The beginning of winter. We slept on the tatami at the Iyasaka Aikidoklubb (there’s an insanely noisy air-conditioning system running at night) and got up at six in the morning. An hour practice, a quick change of clothes and a subway ride to Vanadis, where there was another morning practice at another club. Then we had breakfast at the cafe where Astrid Lingren used to go (Pipi Longstockking was written in the tenement across the park) and the lunchtime training was starting, which of course we also attended. Three workouts in half a day wouldn’t have been too much, but we kept up the pace of 3–5 hours of exercise on our sixth day in Stockholm… and we still had three more intense days to go.
Swedish teacher Jan Nevelius (7th dan) has been visiting us regularly for many years and brings us inspiration in the form of stable and dynamic aikido.
During the lockdowns, we practiced online and could have only dream about organizing our regular international seminars. We also had to cancel the annual seminar with Jan Nevelius, scheduled for March. So at least we organized an online training with him. And it was a truly international event – more than fifty aikidas from all over the world joined our Zoom. Here we offer an hour-long video recording.