From Dawn:

 

My partner Andrew is happy for us to use his chart.

 

 

He was born into a military family that moved between Germany and various Canadian bases for his childhood and youth. His parents divorced when he was 10 (his father drank a lot) and his mother remarried a wonderful man with 2 kids of his own. They all lived very happily together, ("like the Brady Bunch") for over 10 years until his step-father, brother & sister were killed in a car accident in 1990. 

This sudden shocking event sent him down an existential rabbit-hole. He spent 3 years at University as a Theology major basically asking, "Why?" 

 

While at University he discovered Aikido (The Japanese "Art of Peace." A physical exploration of energy dynamics within and around the body). He began devouring everything he could (pre-internet) on Aikido and its history. He did not return for his fourth year but moved to California to be a live-in student of Sensei Patrick Cassidy's for 5 years. While there, he lived in a loft above the dojo and ate, breathed, slept and practiced Aikido - sometimes up to 14 hours/day - 7 days a week.

 

He returned to Nova Scotia & from 2000-2015 he was in a somewhat challenging relationship. They had a son together. During this time he ran a busy dojo and had a full-time job. 

 

He has been an avid practitioner & teacher of Aikido for over 30 years and is a 5th degree black-belt, a first degree black belt in Iaido and a long-time student and lover of Tai Chi.

 

Andrew & I met in Feb 2015 at an Aikido seminar and had a long-distance relationship for almost 2 years (we lived a 2 hours drive apart in Nova Scotia) before taking off to Thailand and Cambodia in late 2016 to "wipe the slate"  and start again, together.

 

Upon our return to Canada we moved to a village in rural Nova Scotia where neither of us knew anyone. We started offering classes in both Tai Chi & Aikido. This was always a financial struggle but we did grow annually for the 3 years prior to Covid.

 

Although he says he began studying martial arts as a form of "power-compensation" in his early teens, once he found Aikido (and its mystical founder - Morihei Ueshiba) he knew he had found his spiritual home. He realized he was far more interested in personal development and peace-making than in fighting or any form of "power over".

 

(Ha describes Aikido as "an evolved martial art". An alternative to meeting force with force;  aimed at evolving our response to stress/conflict).

 

He is deeply interested in the esoteric and energetic aspects of Reality. He does sometimes experience OBEs, lucid dreams and random precognition. 

 

In 2020 the public health response to Covid shut down our dojo and all classes for the majority of the year. In this down-time Andrew began to feel that after 30 years of being identified as a Sensei, he wanted to explore other aspects of himself and Life. He got a  well paying factory job ("while Saturn moves through Pisces") just to pay the bills and started studying Tarot, Magic & developing his Intuition, 

Right now he feels like he has no idea what the "next chapter" will look like. He is living a very liminal experience - redefining and exploring new directions and dimensions of Reality/Self.

 

He is incredibly kind, patient, and loving. His Piscean "go with the flow" often feels more like abnegation than just being chill though. If someone asks him what he wants or how he feels, he often gives superficial answers and/or turns the question back on them.

 

 

He has a British mother who has strong ideas about what is "right" and "proper" and what is not - there is a lot of emotional repression within the whole family.