Let’s try to look at the practice of a martial discipline from the perspective of balance. As training progresses, we soon realize that posture gradually changes and with it the ability to keep a certain balance. Over time, the two concepts somehow overlap and represent our ability to manage the body in the most functional […]
Categoria: Martial Arts
The power of an apple
Teaching, first of all, is receiving. When you have the privilege to be in contact with children, it often happens that you receive some gift from them. A drawing (where that “thing” with very long legs and black pants is you, next to children drawn with a thousand colors). Two candies. A colored pencil. These […]
Makoto Saito: The Dojo as a learning ecosystem
In June 2024, Makoto Saito presented a thesis of dissertation at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology titled “Learning Ecosystems for Club Organizations Promoting Member Retention: Personal Networks in Group Training at an Aikido Dojo – Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis.” We are always interested in a broad perspective on Aikido and Martial disciplines, […]
Tamers
Learning reishiki (礼式), the etiquette that regulates interactions on the tatami, is not that complicated. Those who observe as visitors an Aikido class are usually very impressed: you can feel commitment, you can see order. From the outside, a Dojo appears to be a world as we would like, especially outside the tatami. Reishiki and […]
The narrative of Aikido and its spectrums
Among other noticeable publications, Cardiff University Press stands out for promoting a Journal of Martial Arts Studies, a publication exclusively dedicated to studies and academic publications dedicated to the world of Martial Arts. Last July, a contribution by Greet De Baets, professor and researcher of Business Communication at the University of Ghent, Belgium, was published. […]
Keiko: the Art of Patience
When we go to the Dojo, we say we are going to train. Or that we are “going to keiko“. Saying “going to keiko” sounds very much like a professional in the Martial Arts. That kind of person who starts to interject an English word for every two Japanese words and who tears his/her clothes […]
The measure of success
What is success? And what are the ingredients needed to achieve it? Analysts from McKinsey asked this question to hundreds of PE CEOs. These people say they are successful managers (and therefore lead successful companies) because: It seems almost too simple. If you only need five ingredients to be a top manager with huge wages […]
Evolution and involution: the lesson of the spiral
Much has been written about the spiral, as a form widely spread in nature and as the foundation of movements in Martial Arts. In our practice, we are all committed to achieve personal improvement, which starts from an improvement in the technical movement that is proposed to us and that, if we teach, we in […]
Was your father a thief?
Excuse me, was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes… During middle school I was in an all-boys section and some claimed that these crazy sentences worked to impress girls. I had dismissed all of this as that kind of absurd attitudes -and terribly […]
Giving and forgiving
Any activity involving two or more people may be seen as an interaction, more or less complex. Since it is not possible to keep an interaction in a constant state of neutrality, the interaction itself generates an exchange of actions, a kind of giving and receiving. It is not possible to come into contact with […]