4:01
So it was hard for me, this phrase “the Grand Master”. Now I don’t care, people can call me the Grand Master, that’s fine. But then in…2000… no in… 1992 Paul Mitchell and I actually formed a business entity, called “The Office of the Grand Master”
(0429-0431) (cough)
And at that time I was not so interested in the form of the practice. He as a person who was a catholic brother, was used to a lot of ritual and organization of the church, the catholic church. He also had taken many, many years of Aikido, so for him this emphasis on form was really important. And I was not so much into form as I was into essence.
5:09
So our partnership started out that way. Now I feel like we are both very balanced in this form/essence thing. And sometimes I’m much more strict than he is on the form. But that’s ok… The thing of it is, that at that point…. In martial arts, because I had to have something to compare it with, there’s often the founder or the founder’s successor that holds the essence of the practice. But the Dojo master holds the form-practice and teaches. So Paul and I saw us, ourselves, as him being the Dojo master, so to speak, and my being the essence person. So that point, to make it much clearer… I don’t know who came up with the phrase personally, but then I introduced this phrase “lineage bearer” because I knew that I was that. That I was the successor and that in this lineage I was the bearer of this lineage. And that I didn’t feel like was disputable, that’s what I was recognized as.
6:40

0:00
In the early days I used to work a lot with Paul Mitchell, like we did master candidate intensives together, we did self-assessment work together, key training and Aikido work. And one of the things that I took away from this work was a concept that helped me so much in the early days like before 1995 of trying to hold this great paradox between my personality and this part of me that was recognized as lineage bearer. So I’d like to share this with you:
0053 ähm (Räusper) 0054
0:57

6.00
and… I invited Paul, and I really wanted him to do some of this Aikido-work. I hadn’t experienced it but from what I understood from his sharing I knew that it would benefit the students, which it did, totally and still does to this day.
0620
I invited Barbara because she was facilitator of groups and we did kind of pseudo-therapeutic exercises together. I invited a friend of mine who was a Sufisheka who was initiated to lead Sufi-dances and walks which were also very beautiful and very provocative. I invited a friends of mine who was a trained psychic and she helped lead the group in… because we were all having these interesting psychic phenomenas, but we didn’t know what they were and it was through the gift of Reiki that these things kind of popped out and so she helped us to understand and how to hold them and how to use them and so on and then another couple of Reiki Masters who were therapists, Gestalt-therapists mostly.
7:22

7:22
So this was a wild group and there… sometimes one person couldn’t come and there might be 3 facilitators up to 5 or 6 actually. But all through this Paul was there with his Aikido-work. And this work really was very important for me on a physical level because I really got the experience of being centered and understanding about my own physical energy and my energetic body together. It was just as beneficial for all the other students who were there as well. We closed down that program after 5 or 6 years and went on to do master candidate retreats together, masters workshops together and so on ….
08:29