aemma.org
Informative, supportive, and to-the-point. There's...
Informative, supportive, and to-the-point. There's a lot of friendliness and genuine passion in this place from everybody, not just the instructors. There's also a surprisingly wide variety of members from all age groups and genders.
AEMMA feels like a diverse group of volunteer researchers working together to rediscover the lost arts through primary sources and experimentation. I use the word "volunteer' because it seems that genuine questioning and insights are more important to AEMMA than authority and tradition alone. It's made clear to beginners early on during training that the curriculum is merely the current "consensus" that can be and must be continuously scrutinized in the name of rediscovery. However, don't mistake this as a chaotic mess. You'll quickly realize that things make it to the curriculum usually because they're quite simple and effective. Even the moves that seem awkward to you (and perhaps EVERYBODY else) may one day suddenly make sense to you as a result of your own struggles or a fellow member making a breakthrough discovery in its application and sharing with everybody.
The mentality of this place is similar to that of a university research institute. Think House of Knowledge from the Islamic Golden Age as opposed to the bureaucracy of modern universities or the rigidity of traditional dojo's. There's also still plenty of room for old-fashioned combat and getting Medieval on each other (isn't that why most of us first come here?). There's something for everybody.
I would give AEMMA a 5/5 but the location has little available parking and is difficult to reach in rush hour.
