The reflections of a 47-year old beginner in Aikido, about training, learning, aiki, horsemanship, and life.
Linda Eskin is horse person (dressage/trails), user experience planner (Web/apps), and a student at Aikido of San Diego.
BROWSE POSTS BY SUBJECT
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
Most of the posts here are duplicates of my posts from
my blog on AikiWeb.com, a very active and friendly community of Aikido students and teachers. If you are a member of AikiWeb, and would like to comment, please do so there.
I am a beginning student of Aikido, a martial art that, like horsemanship, takes a lifetime to master. These posts are only my own observations on my own experience. You should not rely on anything I say here. Any inept or incorrect information is my own responsibility, and should not be a reflection on others.
I am grateful to
Dave Goldberg Sensei for being an extraordinary teacher, and for creating an engaged, thinking, and compassionate community of students and teachers at
Aikido of San Diego. If you are in the area, visitors are always welcome to observe classes. If you are a student at another local dojo, keep an eye on
our dojo calendar for upcoming seminars and other events.
Copyright 2009, Linda Eskin. Please feel free to share any of my poetry, online, or in print, keeping my name and any other acknowledgments with it. I will almost certainly be happy to let you use anything else I've posted here, with proper attribution, but please ask first.
Contact me via e-mail
Linda Eskin
MORE AIKIDO READING
Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and, once it has done so, he will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.
—
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Just another way in which horsemanship and Aikido are similar.
Aikido is obviously an art form that is expressed through the body, which gets information from our sensory awareness. That means feeling. … Feel what’s happening now, act on that information, and trust.
—
Dave Goldberg Sensei, from his blog post “The Case for More Body Awareness”
There is so much of value just in this one post from October that it’s worth reading again from time to time. And if you haven’t been following Sensei’s blog, here’s your chance to start.
A thought, in appreciation of my teacher, Dave Goldberg Sensei:
“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of arts.”
Henry David Thoreau
Happy Birthday Sensei!
No classes today (Sunday, day 10 of 16).
“The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here for no other purpose than to realize your inner divinity and manifest your inner enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.”
Morihei Ueshiba (O Sensei)
“The Art of Peace”
Day 3 of 16. No classes on Sunday. A quotation for the day:
“The delight of mountains, rivers, grasses, trees, beasts, fish, and insects is an expression of the Art of Peace.”
Morihei Ueshiba (O Sensei)
Create each day anew by clothing yourself with heaven and earth, bathing yourself with wisdom and love, and placing yourself in the heart of Mother Nature. Your body and mind will be gladdened, depression and heartache will dissipate, and you will be filled with gratitude.
—
Morihei Ueshiba (O Sensei), from The Art of Peace, translated and edited by John Stevens
[A month ago I would’ve thought of this as some lovely idealistic vision, but it’s becoming my real daily experience.]
By cultivating our concentration for staying with our sensations, we develop a kind of strength which enables us to stay in the present.
—
Wendy Palmer Sensei,
Aikido of Tamalpais, from her book “The Intuitive Body - Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido”
