I began officially teaching in Boulder, Colorado at the newly re-opened Boulder Ki-Aikido dojo in April of 1999. The Chief Instructor of Rocky Mountain Ki Society (RMKS), Russell Jones Sensei, had recently moved to Brazil with his wife, Lael Keen Sensei, leaving a single, combined Denver-Boulder dojo in Westminster, Colorado.
Having moved from Fort Collins in the Spring of 1997, where I had been an assistant instructor for 3 years under the leadership of Russell Smith Sensei, Head Instruct or of the Fort Collins Dojo, I needed a place to train. At first, I trained and taught at the RMKS Boulder Dojo located over the existing Rock Club climbing gym on Mapleton, but the Boulder Dojo closed after about a half a year.
I then began to teach alongside Derek Nabel Sensei at CU Boulder, as part of the former Rocky Mountain Ki Aikido university outreach program. Derek Sensei and I had a great time during the 2 years together. We touched the lives of many students during that time, our classes sometimes reaching more than 30 students per semester.
The commute to the Westminster Dojo for my own personal training in Ki-Aikido during this time became a burden for me; it was during rush hour and I was not a big fan of sitting in traffic after putting in a full day of work. I began to come to the Westminster Dojo less and less frequently but was sad to see my involvement in the art diminish to only a few times per month.
In 1998, during my months of practice in Westminster and my teaching role at CU Boulder, I began running into former Ft. Collins students and Boulder dojo students who missed practicing the art. CU Boulder classes were unfortunately not open to the public, only to students. Several of my former students expressed interest and were looking for a place to train ki-aikido in Boulder.
Being granted the permission to re-open the school in Boulder by Koichi Kashiwaya Sensei, who was Chief Instructor of Ki Society USA at the time, I began to look for a space to re-open the school in Boulder.
Boulder Ki-Aikido had its beginnings in the old home of Karate America, next to the Boulder Shaolin Center on Bluff Street. Tim Wolchek, Head Instructor, was kind enough to let me begin teaching Ki-Aikido classes after his full schedule of KA classes were finished at 8pm Mondays and Wednesdays.
For a period of time, I continued teaching at CU on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as at the new Boulder Ki-Aikido dojo -- that was in addition to 50+ hours of work at Wild Oats doing graphic design for their marketing department. After about a year of trying to keep up with the demands of my day job and my spiritual hobby, I began to only teach CU classes once per week. That only lasted one more semester after which I decided to give up the CU Boulder program completely to Derek Nabel Sensei.
