The Union Of Meditation & Aikido

Do you meditate or practice mindfulness? Do you also have a physical practice, like Aikido, yoga, dance, bodywork, sports, or art? Now here’s the big question… do your meditation practice and your physical practice come together for you? Or, like most people, are these two parallel paths for you? Two paths completely related, but not completely coming together. In this blog post, my special guest and I take a look at the Union Of Meditation & Aikido.”

The following “Dharma Bite” is an excerpt from a longer discussion I had with Dr. Ginny Whitelaw. She is an Aikido Sensei, and Zen teacher, a Leadership facilitator, and a former NASA Biophysicist.

In this Dharma bite, Ginny and I reflect on how meditation is the fundamental practice for reaching the peak of your game in Aikido, in Leadership, in life… in anything.

The Union Of Meditation & Aikido

My own experience of the “union of meditation and Aikido” has been that it allows me to access the fundamental source of Aikido. That deep, inner space out of which all movement and all response arise. So it was such a wonderful affirmation to hear Ginny describe her experience similarly.

She says that “the beauty of meditation is that it stops. Aikido is always in movement. In Zen, we go to that still point, out of which all movement emerges.”

She goes on the say “to get to a lower frequency you have to stop the body. Stopping the body changes the frequency of the brain, it changes how insight emerges, and it changes what fields we are able to resonate with. From a physics point of view, it changes the inner conditions so that suddenly new states are opening up for us.”

I hope you will take a few minutes to watch the short clip below. I am sure you will enjoy it!

For more on Dr. Ginny Whitelaw go to her website at the Institute For Zen Leadership.

Question: What challenges do you find with integrating your meditation practice with your physical practice? Please write your comments below!