Aikido is a martial art unlike any other. It contains no attacks, only defense, and this defense should be so gentle that even the attacker is delighted by it. There is no competition, since each participant should be a winner. It's an art that takes a lifetime to learn.
This book presents the principles and basic concepts of aikido, which is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophy and the refined ideals of the samurai. It is not a technical manual, but an exploration of the thoughts and theories at work in aikido practice.
The book elaborates on the ethics involved in practicing this martial art, the philosophy on which it's founded, and the attitude needed to progress in aikido. It also goes through the many significant Japanese terms used, explaining their meaning in training as well as in the martial arts context and theory.
Among the terms explored are the three words that make up the name of the art: ai, joining, ki, the universal life energy, and do, the way. Tanden, the center, is also explained thoroughly, as is kiai, the concentration of energy, takemusu, the ideal of improvised martial arts, and many other concepts used in aikido as well as the other Japanese martial arts.
One chapter is dedicated to kototama, the cosmology of sounds that the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, studied intensely. There is also a dictionary of the terminology used in aikido.
Later editions of the book are published as Aikido Principles: Basic Concepts of the Peaceful Martial Art.
Stefan Stenudd is a Swedish author and 6 dan Aikikai Shihan aikido instructor, Vice Chairman of the International Aikido Federation, member of the Swedish Aikikai Grading Committee, and President of the Swedish Budo & Martial Arts Federation. He has practiced aikido since 1972. He is also a teacher of the sword art iaido.
In addition to his aikido life, he is a historian of ideas, researching the patterns of thought in creation myths and cosmological beliefs, as well as Aristotle's Poetics.
His books span both fiction and non-fiction. Among the latter is one about the cosmology and religious beliefs of the Greek philosophers, a little encyclopedia of life energy concepts, and several books about the martial arts and the principles behind them.
On the subject of aikido, he has also written Attacks in Aikido, presenting all the attack techniques used in aikido training and explaining how to improve them, and Aikibatto, presenting and explaining a system of exercises with jo, the staff, and ken, the sword, for aikido students. Also his book Qi - Increase Your Life Energy, with very simple exercises for developing one's qi (ki) and explaining this concept thoroughly, is highly relevant for anyone practicing aikido.
I was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1954, and grew up in some of its suburbs. In 1991 I moved to the city of Malmö in the south of Sweden, where I still live - much to my surprise. I thought I was more of a vagabond, but the years pass with increasing speed. Also, with the Internet one's geographical habitat is of less significance than ever before.
At the start of the 1980's I spent a year in the USA - first in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with a winter climate that was quite familiar to me, and then New York as it approached the long, hot summer. I fell immediately in love with that magnificent city, entering it through Washington Bridge in my Chevy '69 Station Wagon just hours before a strike had closed all public transport and cars to the city were stopped.
If I can muster up the energy to move again, New York would be the ideal goal.
Since childhood, my main means of expression have been writing and art. Actually, as an adolescent I entered an art school, but had some clashes with the principal and left after only a few months. School and art - aren't they contradictions in terms?
That same year I wrote my first novel, getting the impulse by an opening sentence appearing in my mind. The first version of the script was 19 pages. The first rewrite expanded it to 90 pages, the second to almost 200. It's still unpublished. Instead, I had my literary debut with my fourth script in 1979, winning a Scandinavian literary competition with a science fiction story that the Norwegian publishing house found so weird that they rejected it, in spite of the competition rules. It was published in Sweden and Denmark, though.
There have been some books since, novels as well as non-fiction, probably most of them too weird for that Norwegian publisher - either in plot or in subject-matter.
Like so many writers, I have also done some journalism through the years, mainly as a critic. Writing reviews one needs to have integrity, a lively relation to experience, and the ability to put words even to subtle impressions. That is very close to fiction.
So, I've been a critic of literature in the tabloid Aftonbladet, a rock critic in the morning daily Dagens Nyheter, and the very secret restaurant critic of the Malmö newspaper Sydsvenskan. These last few years, though, I focus solely on writing books. Not that it brings very much bread on the table and certainly not of the kind I got used to as a restaurant critic.
In this new millennium I started writing books in English. Well, I had tried it during my year in the US, back in 1980. I even got an agency, Sanford J. Greenburger, which was the first one I approached (because it was the agent of Kurt Vonnegut, a favorite author of mine). They were almost ecstatic about another science fiction story of mine, with the drastic title All's End. The agent told me that after a US release they would use their contacts to get the book published in Japan! I had thought that America was the thing, but the agent insisted with emphasis: Japan!
Later, a pop song would make the same statement. It might still be true.
Anyway, the agency was unable to get a publisher for the script, so they dropped it and its author. Years later I could easily understand why. The script needed a lot of editing, which was something the agent didn't have to bother with, but surely a publisher.
So, a few years ago I picked up that script and another one in English, polishing their language as much as I could. Soon other books in English followed. You find them all on Amazon. Mostly non-fiction, but often on subjects that some would call fictional. Well, that's where the human mind dwells.
Apart from the arts, my life has since the teens consisted of aikido, which is a Japanese martial art, a particularly peaceful and inspiring one. It took me surprisingly long to write a book about it, although I have a tendency to turn things that catch my attention into books. In the martial arts, you're supposed to be humble and shut up - an ideal diametrically opposed to that of literature. After twenty years of training and a few black belts around the hips I finally got the courage.
After the initial leap, writing more books about aikido and adjacent subjects has been less of a struggle.
Aikido is intriguing, as are the cultural and philosophical traditions behind it. This is indicated by the many books published on the subject. I wouldn't hurry to call it a sport, although it's done by exercises that can consume a lot of calories. No, it's an art. That's why you can spend a lifetime on it, never getting bored.
So far in life I've found this to be a universal truth: with the arts you never get bored.
Another longtime interest of mine is Taoism, as it's expressed in its original source the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, the legendary father of this philosophy. I was introduced to it by my first Japanese aikido teacher, who gave me a copy of it in English - the Feng and English version with sweet calligraphy of all the chapters. Since then the text has been a constant companion. It combines the wisdom of a Salomon with the simple and direct language of, say, a Hemingway - or, for that matter, Vonnegut.
My first version of it, in Swedish, was published in the early 1990's. I've made several revised editions of it since, but I never dreamed of trying it in English. Tao Te Ching is poetry, the greatest challenge of all for a translator. But at length I couldn't resist. I felt that in spite of the countless English versions of the classic, there's room for one more aiming at the simplicity of the original text and still staying true to it - as much as can be done with a book dated to several centuries BCE.
I was not a persistent art school student, but in the 1980's I enrolled in the history of ideas department, where profound learning is both commonplace and a delight. Oh, how much knowledge some people (not me, with my poor memory) can amass! Lao Tzu, who was wary of formal knowledge, would have expressed concern. But the history of ideas studies wisdom through the ages and in all fields of science, culture, and society. It's the history of thought. What can be more fascinating? It's the mind studying its own manifestations.
Years ago, I started working on a dissertation treating the patterns of thought in creation myths around the world. It's still in the making, but other books have been born in the process, e.g. Cosmos of the Ancients, an inventory of what the Greek philosophers thought about the gods and cosmology, and Life Energy Encyclopedia, discussing and presenting the many ideas, old and new, about a life force of some kind.
Sooner or later I just have to write a book about creation myths, whether it is a dissertation or not. But the subject is big and I've explored it too long to be concise about it, so I hesitate.
And of course, there are still several novels in my head, struggling to get out. Fiction is what this writer started with and it's still the essence of my attraction to the keyboard. Oddly, it's by products of the imagination we grasp that elusive thing we call reality.
This review is from: Aikido: The Peaceful Martial Art (Paperback)
What you will notice immediately when you start reading the book is how easy to read it is. Or perhaps you will not notice at all, only to find yourself in the middle of the book after what seemed like a short while.
After reading, or at least peeking into, several books about martial arts and eastern philosophy, I can tell that this alone is a remarkable achievement.
Some books about martial arts are filled with unexplained terms, some are terse or even enigmatic, some focus on more or less precisely describing techniques, etc. Based on what one expects from a book about aikido this additional burden on the reader may be justified, but it certainly does not mirror the experience of aikido training in practice. The spirit in which this book is written comes very close to this natural, immersive and fun experience, and this makes it a perfect book for an aikido beginner. It is not a manual, instead it focuses on the principles and basics and does it very well. I believe that anyone doing aikido, no matter how advanced, can enjoy it. It could also be a great book for someone wants to have an idea what aikido is about without or before practicing it.
Now you are probably wondering whether this book isn't just a watered down version of the other more technical books. It is not, it just focuses on different parts and is written to be read from cover to cover. There is a downside to this: I'm not sure whether I would really benefit from reading the whole book again and it also isn't very suitable for looking up specific bits of information. At times it also seemed a bit too repetitive, but that's alright, and even helpful, as long as you read it for the first time. That shouldn't stop you from buying the book.
That said, there are parts of the book that I will return to, to name at least two: for practical reasons-the glossary (about 18 pages) which covers more vocabulary than you will encounter in the main text and one chapter that stands out: Kototama - the soul of words. It makes for a wonderful ending and it made me curious to learn more about how aikido was developed, about kototama and Osensei.
I'm giving the book four out of five stars because: (1) I probably won't reread it (packing more information in the 200 pages wouldn't make sense, but I can imagine a bit longer version I would return to). (2) The quality of typography and print (especially the cover) doesn't make justice to the content, that's a shame.
I've been learning aikido for about two months and I feel that the book helped me to have a more complete picture and to know what to focus on during the training. At the same time it was fun to read. If you are in a similar situation, don't hesitate and buy it!
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This review is from: Aikido: The Peaceful Martial Art (Paperback)
Nowadays there are many books available on the subject of aikido. The greater part of them is more technical, with lots of pictures showing the visible part of aikido. But aikido (all martial arts) has also the invisible part, inner elements, difficult to catch when only watching and that is what this book is about. It definitely belong to the smaller group of aikido books, which try to deal with subjects like Ki, Ai, Do, Tanden and lot more - that what may call the very principles of the art. I am not afraid to say, that author was quite successful thanks to being both - profound martial artist and writer.
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This review is from: Aikido: The Peaceful Martial Art (Paperback)
Stefan Stenudd's "Aikido: The Peaceful Martial Art" is patently clear--more so than any other Aikido books, DVD's, and/or articles which I have studied and to which I have been privy to benefit from their tutelage--about the imperative truth of the CENTER as the source and the ultimate return destination of all Aikido movements, after they have traversed their elliptical and spiral-configured paths. This abiding awareness itself is what makes Stefan Stenudd's insights golden. The reader then is able easily to fit into the otherwise confusing dynamic context of the pragmatic art of Aikido the over-arching principle of CENTER. When this is done by the reader's holding the concept of CENTER uppermost in his/her mind, the art and practice of Aikido congeal into a fusion that brings you to the realization that it is your opponent who unwittingly guides your way to the unification of self at your CENTER.
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