Aikido practice coordinates physical and cognitive resources toward a common goal. Research shows that exercise improves executive function which is crucial to complex reasoning, memory, and skill mastery. Aikido practice provides the additional resource of meaning, the source of motivation required to sustain action. Continue reading Promoting Executive Function; Teaching What Aikido Teaches #1
How you use your body can facilitate or inhibit your goals. Blending in aikido or in personal interaction starts at the connection. If you look down and have a fist or a claw, you are holding onto opposition which certainly doesn’t support positive interaction or resolution. The following three elements are central to every aikido technique and are also movements that can profoundly change day to day experience. Continue reading Dropping your opposition
Aikido movements have meaning… or they should. Mary Heiny Sensei is the foremost example of teaching aikido through a broader metaphor of relationships and resolution. If you practice in this way aikido can be the place where you figure out what needs to change in your life to change the impact of stress, anxiety, and conflict. Continue reading What is the meaning of practice today
Meditation should occur in a place of safety and security. If your house is on fire, if something is about to happen, if you have a wound that needs imeadiate attention (physical or otherwise) goal-oriented action is a better move. Continue reading Don’t meditate under fire…