Aikido/NLP/Feldenkrais Method

Aikido, meaning the "way of harmonising energy", was founded by the Master Morihei Ueshiba, who comes from a small city in Japan, called Tanabe (Wakayama Prefecture).

Among the Japanese martial arts, the one which is the closest in philosophy to such a mystical school as Taoism in China, is Aikido.

Incidentally, the tomb of Mr Ueshiba who died in 1969 at the age of 86, used to be just on the right side of the tomb of Guhen's family who come from Tanabe, and many Western disciples of Aikido used to visit their great master's tomb to venerate him. Mr Ueshiba's tomb has since been moved to another place within the same cemetery with a very big tomb stone. This small Buddhist temple belongs to the "Shingonshu", or the "Mantra Sect", founded by Kuukai in the 9th Century AD, and has the tomb of another great person, Mr Kumakusu Minakata, a naturalist and ethnologist known world-wide, whose work has begun to be re-appreciated recently among the Japanese, only thanks to the promotion made by Guhen's old friends (Mr Sogabe, etc.).

NLP is often described as "Mental Aikido", in the sense that NLP enables us to achieve mentally in the interpersonal as well as intrapersonal communication, what Aikido achieves in the physical and psychic (meaning "vital force" here) levels.

Further, the physiotherapeutic method called Feldenkrais Method (also called Postural Integration) founded by Moshe Feldenkrais would be equivalent to Aikido or NLP in the field of physiotherapy.