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Aikido The Peaceful Martial Art Stefan Stenudd |
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AIKIDO PRACTICE Aikido Basics Attacks in Aikido Ikkyo complete Tantodori - knife defense Ki exercises Koshinage Kotegaeshi Yonkyo Nikyo Sankyo Jo 31 Kata Aikibatto sword exercises Aikido Video Clips Nishio videos Aikido Photos My seminars AIKIDO THEORY Aikido Glossary Ki energy Tanden, the Center Running a Dojo Aikido is True Osensei and Einstein AikiWeb Columns Book: Attacks in Aikido Book: Aikido Principles My Aikido Book in German My Aikido Book in Czech Books about aikido Aikido Links About me Visitor Response Aikido på svenska STENUDD.COM  Attacks in Aikido How to do kogeki, the attack techniques by Stefan Stenudd. All the attack techniques in aikido explained, and how to do them correctly. Get the book at Amazon.  Aikido Principles Basic Concepts of the Peaceful Martial Art by Stefan Stenudd. Aikido principles, philosophy, and basic ideas. Get the book at Amazon.  Aikibatto by Stefan Stenudd. The aikibatto sword and staff exercises for aikido students explained, with practical and spiritual aspects of the sword arts, equipment for training, and more. Get the book at Amazon.  Qi Increase your life energy by Stefan Stenudd. The life energy qi (also chi or ki), with exercises on how to awaken, increase, and use it. Get the book at Amazon.  TAOIST SOURCE The Taoist source. The complete Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.  SHINKEN Shinken - live blade. Get a sharp steel katana sword for your iaido or aikibatto solo exercises. Here is how. |
 Foreword to the Swedish book "Aikido - the peaceful martial art" by Stefan Stenudd, published 1992 and 1998. I was seventeen when I first heard about the remarkable Japanese martial art Aikido. It was Krister, a friend some years my senior, who told me that he had practiced it. Just how seriously he regarded Aikido, I understood partly from how long he had taken to reveal his knowledge of it - although he must be convinced that it would impress a teen age boy - and partly from his elaborate and solemn way of talking about it. What Krister described was something completely different from a series of tricks to defeat an opponent of twice one's own size, also something different from the concept of athletics for a sound mind in a sound body. What Krister described was a way of living - an art, a philosophy, yes, kind of a religion. After listening with widening eyes to Krister's equally fascinating and incomprehensible elaboration on the subject, I had to make him show me just how it worked. Also with this he was remarkably reluctant. When I had repeated my wish over and over, he conceded and showed me one of the simpler techniques, nikyo, wherein my wrist was turned in such a way that I fell to the floor in sudden pain. My wrist hurt as if it were broken, although it was unharmed, and surely my knees had been bruised from the sudden fall to the floor, but I was overcome by one thing only: the beauty of the technique. Krister had only turned his hand around mine, as simply as the butterfly, when sitting on a straw of grass, gently flaps its wings. That was all. And I fell to the floor as abruptly as if I were hit with a blacksmith's hammer. It was delightful, in the midst of the pain. It was magical, incomprehensible although it looked so simple. This I wanted to learn. When the beginner's course started in the fall, I showed up in my blue gym suit, anxious and excited. Me as an adolescent, experimenting wildly with training buddy Lennart Linder, at least equally mesmerized by aikido, c.1974. Like a darkening sky, where one star after the other becomes visible to the eye, Aikido has through the years revealed increasing riches to me. Yet I think that the teen age boy who fell suddenly to the floor by Krister's nikyo, really saw absolutely everything that the years of training have since made me acquainted to. Everything was present in that first, painful encounter. What followed was neither more nor less than confirmations - delightful confirmations. The aikido technique nikyo, from a seminar in the Czech Republic. However exotic some of the Aikido movements may be, they are permeated by a sense of recognition. When you pull it off alright and the technique works somewhat, it's not at all like a foreign term you've finally learned by heart, after hours of repetition. No, it's an old friend making his entrance, or a small muscle that has rested for a long time but is once again put to work. All the secrets of Aikido are dèja vu - they are recognizable. How can this be? Maybe we must say like Plato, that man cannot learn anything he did not essentially know from the beginning. All wisdom is contained in our heads from the very moment of birth, we only have to be reminded of it. That's not a bit more odd than the thesis that something must come out of something, never out of nothing. Such a conception of reality is not strange to me, but more precisely I do, from within, perceive it so that the recognition springs from one firm condition: what I can initially recognize and see clearly - no matter how little I have practiced it - is true. What is true, completely true, is immediately recognized by every human being - if he just wants to. So, if my senses were at all to be trusted, I knew from the first moment: Aikido is true. Stefan Stenudd
stenudd.com |
 Stefan Stenudd is an author and aikido instructor, 6 dan Aikikai Shihan, Vice Chairman of the International Aikido Federation. He also teaches the sword art iaido. He has written several books about aikido and other Japanese and Chinese traditions.  Secret Teachings of Aikido Osensei Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, about the philosophy of his art. Get the book at Amazon.  Life Energy Encyclopedia by Stefan Stenudd. Qi, prana, spirit, and other life forces around the world explained and compared. Get the book at Amazon. More on this website: Aikido Aikibatto sword exercises Myth Greek Philosophers Aristotle and his Poetics Taoist source Qi - life energy Fiction by Stenudd Art by Stenudd Astrology and horoscopes Another great Aikido website:  |