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Visit Aikido Dojo San Francisco

By Roger Williams


When it comes to different martial arts, it's true that most of them try to balance body and mind, some more efficiently than others. They all thrive to self-improvement and provide excellent defense techniques as well. All eastern techniques have this spiritual part within, and it would be hard to imagine them without it.

All Eastern martial arts require training as well as balanced mind and body and you will benefit whichever you choose. Even so, if you find out more about the philosophy practiced in Aikido Dojo San Francisco, you might fall in love in this particular martial art instantly. This one really deserves your attention, and for a good reason.

So, like many other Japanese names, Aikido is also composed from a few meaningful words. In this case, it is especially interesting name, because 'Ai' means harmony, 'ki' means energy or spirit, and 'do' means path or way. Well, you can translate it as the way of spirit and harmony, or maybe the harmonious spiritual path. Anyway, you will find highly efficient ways of defending yourself and really appealing philosophy and environment.

This is, actually, the youngest of the traditional Japanese martial arts. It was founded by The Great Teacher, or O-Sensei, Morihel Ueshiba. He was an expert in various other traditional Japanese discipline, staring with Jujitsu, Kenjutsu and Sojitsu. But, he was also really interested in religion and spiritual part of the training.

O-Sensei soon became famous, because he was able to conquer his attackers without even touching them. He developed his non-violence technique, basing it on defending yourself without direct confrontation, avoiding causing harm to your opponents. His basic philosophy is harmonizing the movements of your body with the movements of the universe.

You don't have to be young, strong and especially fit to start practicing this technique. The training itself will be beneficial in so many ways, starting with physical strength improvement, as well as the improvement of your flexibility, balance, concentration and coordination, and even significant improvement of your general health condition, especially your cardiovascular health.

And another thing. This type of balanced training have a great impact on your self-confidence, conditioning your mind, body and spirit, and, as a result, you will start feeling better in your own skin, finding your own life path. If you are primarily interested in building strength and fighting with others, this might not be something for you.

So, the point is in defending yourself efficiently, but without seriously harming your attacker. Everything is based on circular movements, and since most attacks are linear, this is the way of using different techniques, such as arm pins or maybe wrist locks, in order of making your attacker helpless, and avoiding any direct confrontation at the same time. The point is to unbalance the attacker.

Well, Aikido is certainly the true Budo. This extraordinary martial art unites Samurai battle tactics, ancient Japanese martial arts techniques and harmonizing your body and mind. O-Sensei said the secret is in harmonizing with the universe. He also said that the real victory is the one over oneself, and this is probably the main principle of his philosophy.




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