Reviews of Pacific Shizen Aikido

I am a student who trains with the children and youth groups. Honestly I enjoy the kids classes better. They are held on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I think our youngest is about 9 and our oldest is 14-15. It's a great group of kids and the senseis are nice. The senses can be strict and fairly hard on you but that's usually more in the youth group on Wednesday after the kids class. You can sit out but they will try to convince you to join back in. Okay so I think I'll talk about the kids class 'cause that's my favourite class. We work on basic techniques and sword practice. We also play awesome games like: Sumo wrestling - not technically a game but really fun, The Game That's Name I Can't Remember (something to do with Samurai) - reminds me of red light green light but with out saying "red light green light" and with knee walking to work on being more quiet while knee walking, Duck Duck Goose - Okay this one seems silly and I was doubtful at first but it's actually really funny when we have like four 13-14 year olds playing duck duck goose. Yes the senseis can sometimes be cold or strict but in my opinion the good cancels out the bad.

I trained here for 4. 5 years, and at first it was a really good place to be. But about 2 years before I left one of the senior members of the dojo started to say weird things to me in private. She was really angry about little things and sometimes made things up just to have an excuse to be angry at me or put me down.

Just before I left, I was training with her, and we were instructed to practice a wrist grab technique. I did that, and after class she wanted to talk to me in the store room. She told me that I had been thinking critical thoughts of her, that by grabbing her wrist(as instructed) I was correcting her. She was really angry. I left shortly after this because no one would do anything about this.

Also, a their senior instructor from out of town and his student made inappropriate comments about women.

Two other women who I trained with there also had to leave because of injury(forced to train to the point of injury after saying she needed to sit out), or simply being excluded for arbitrary reasons (I think because she had trained in a different style before).

Although the main teachers do have a lot of aikido experience, and have good technique, I can't recommend them for the above reasons.