Category: Uncategorized

Reflections on Children’s Testing by Kim Gold

Congratulations to all of the kids who recently passed their belt tests! And parents: thank you for your commitment in supporting your children’s training. They couldn’t do it without you. I had the opportunity to help some of the children prepare, as well as watch some of the tests. This is the sixth year that…
On Power by Steve Kanney

Let’s look at power for a moment. Power in the animal world may come mainly from physical strength. But as humans, as soon as we emphasized intelligence, physical power became obsolete. In the context of human existance, we will look at two types of power – authentic and temporal. Consider for example Stalin and Mohatma…
On Money by Steve Kanney

Money is an important aspect of our society that lubricates the wheels of commerce. Looking at the history of barter and the gold standard, fiat currency is clearly better. In this sense money is undeniably a good thing. But our culture revolves around the accumulation of money, so how important should we view it in…
What Exactly have we Stumbled upon Here? by Steve Kanney

We are all very busy in our lives. We need to earn a living, take care of family, etc. In the midst of our busy lives, we suddenly stumble upon a practice that teaches us viscerally to respond to violence with compassion, and not just on a superficial level. As we have seen in previous…
The State of the World: The Legal System by Steve Kanney

In this blog we will take an approach that is more casual and looks to relate Aikido principles to our experience in daily life. We will start out observing the state of our world and comparing it to the principles of Aikido noting the differences. Later we will move into more practical individual problems in…
Video…MMA fight between Randy Couture & James Toney…What strategy did Randy use?

This is an incomplete video of the fight. You can see the entire 2-3 minutes here http://www.boobootv.com/2010/08/30/randy-couture-vs-james-toney-full-fight/ if you give it time to load and start at the 3 minute mark. It ends in about 3 minutes. So can you figure out which strategy he used? How many different strategies? If you want to know about…
“True Budo is love” – Morehei Ueshiba…was O’Sensei just some kinda hippie?

This realization captures the feeling the founder had after the profound experience of gaining genuine insight into the discipline of his art. Yet, for most of us who read this statement, we will think of it in very idealistic terms. The founder’s realization, however, was anything but idealistic. If we take our ordinary state and…
Respect – The First Step Towards Practice

As for the actual practice of Aikido, think about the first act in every class. As soon as we enter the dojo, we bow. When we get on the mats, we bow. When we start class, we bow and when we engage a partner, we bow. Aside from exercising our hip joints, what is the…
Testing Children in Martial Arts

Some questions came up with the recent children’s tests that I thought should be addressed for everyone. The questions are along the lines of “If a child is being lazy because they think they can get away with it, how/when do we ‘get tough’ on them. How come children never seem to fail their tests? …
Aikido and Self Defense – How to Acquire the Skill

All martial arts talk about self defense benefits, yet they can be very elusive. Some people offer self defense classes where you learn a couple of techniques in a day and go off certified as equipped to handle yourself if someone out there really attacks you. Chances are the student will become overconfident in their…