How the Body Reveals Habit Nature

Basil & The Habit of Effort

I wrote two essays that were published in my book, Water Shed: Aikido Tanka back in 2004. In re-reading both today, I see how much is still true within that writing. Often what we’re working on just keeps showing up, doesn’t it? Maybe in differing guises and in varying strengths, but nevertheless, present.

What brought me to this path of learning through the body, affecting change through the body, and writing with and through the body is meeting a teacher who has an unusual way of seeing and reading the body. It was through his observations and assessments on the aikido mats that I came to experience aikido as an art of body-centered learning, knowing, and transformation. I’d always felt it was that way, but none of my teachers had spoken of it in this manner until I met Robert Nadeau Sensei. A long time ago.

He was teaching an aikido class and I was

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