The one of the most important Ki Principles of Ki-Aikido is "Mind moves body".
In the Aikido, you throw your partner.
Therefore, many students who study Aikido think about only the visible body and tend to forget about the mind, which is invisible. If you forget the mind, you cannot do Ki-Aikido.
We can touch and see our body to confirm its existence. However, mind has no color or no shape. Therefore, even though we know the mind exists, we tend to forget about it.
Everyone has the desire to control someone. With this state of your mind, you try to throw your partner with force, and the partnerﾕs mind resists against you.
You cannot throw or move your partner without thinking about the partner’s mind.
If you do Ki-Aikido based on the principle, "Mind moves body", before you think to throw you partner, you need to think about leading your partner with knowing and respecting your partner’s mind.
Others will not resist you if they perceive they are being led where they already intended to go!
If you do Ki-Aikido technique correctly, both Nage and Uke feel happy. Both of them have plus mind.
You can apply this Ki principle in your daily life.
If you study Ki-Aikido deeply, your view will be changed from body centered to mind centered.
You will realize that when we greet, talk, and bow to others, we use just our body not our mind in many cases.
When we educate human beings, we find that it is important to not try to change the person’s behavior but to change the person’s mind where the behavior comes from.
When we want to solve a problem, we must think about the state of the mind which created the problem.
It is very important to change from viewing the result to viewing the cause. Once you change your viewpoint in this way, you will realize many things about yourself and your communication with others.
Your posture, movement and communication with others will improve dramatically.
It is important to learn "Mind moves body" through Ki-Aikido and practice this principle in your daily life.
Koichi Tohei sensei started to teach Ki-Aikido abroad in 1953. Many foreign students became Tohei sensei’s student in order to change their own viewpoint in this fundamental way. As a result, there are many foreign people who continue to study Ki-aikido even over 50 years.
Let’s see "Mind moves body" from a different perspective.
You can think, "Body moves mind." If this is true, our mind is controlled by our surrounding situation and our mind never becomes calm.
For example, in the summer, some people are irritated by the muggy weather. In this state, their mind is being controlled by what their body feels.
When you are busy, you might ignore others that are important to you. This is also an example of "Body moving mind".
If you spend your daily life with the understanding that "Mind moves body", your emotion, your behavior, and the results of that behavior will be completely different compared to a life with the understanding that "Body moves mind".
Which will you choose?