Aikido Off the Mat: One Woman's Journey Using Aikido Principles to Stay Sane in Body, Mind, and Spirit

Kathy Park uses stories from her own life to illustrate how the principles of Aikido can be taken off the mat and out of the dojo to help us cope with the many challenges of life in an increasingly chaotic world

Combining memoir with analysis, Kathy Park describes how the basic principles of Aikido can be applied to our daily encounters in order to live sanely and peacefully in an increasingly conflicted and disembodied world. Drawing from a full and wide-ranging life as well as more than forty years' experience as an Aikido practitioner and teacher, Park explains how principles such as embodiment, grounding, centering, extension, 360 degree awareness, entering, blending, and alignment can be applied to the problems and challenges found in relationships, stressful situations, leadership roles, and questions of identity and purpose. Candid stories from her own life not only bring a striking intimacy to the narrative but also illustrate with vital immediacy how the entire point of practicing Aikido on the mat is to take it off the mat and into the world.