From Durango Shin Budo Kai, a resource for aikido exploration, insights, inspiration, and recommended readings from four practitioners spanning 5th kyu to yondan.
I didn’t know it would feel like this. It’s been two years now that I’ve been practicing aikido, and while there have been ups and downs, generally speaking it has been a relatively low-stress situation. Now my 3rd kyu test is days away, and I feel as if I’ve stepped into a pressure cooker and…
Aikidoka talk about unifying body and mind. It is a target we train for, but I still balk at the phrase. I couldn’t articulate why until I was recently re-reading The Aikido of Shin-Budo Kai. The phrase “coordinating body and mind” stuck out to me. Unity, to my mind is an ideal or abstract state of oneness. …