Posts by: Jonas Ellison
I work in an environment where, at times, we get a high-maintenance customer or two. I love the challenge though. At work, when a customer comes in bent out of shape, it seems natural to try to place myself on a throne of authority and make the goal of the interaction to [...]
A great thing about Aikido is that you can’t “buy” great Aikido. I happen to work in the golf industry, and what infuriates me is that people will drop $5k, no problem, for all of the top of the line equipment, etc., in order to “buy” a great golf game. [...]
Some people are so impressed with themselves that they don’t ever change and grow. I’m sure we all know these people who are, a lot of times, big fish in a small pond type people and who are very comfortable in their surroundings.
It’s the bully at school, the biggest [...]
What, exactly, is ki? Ever since I started reading about Aikido, many years before I started actually training in a dojo, the books I’ve read have said that it’s very difficult to translate the Japanese word ki into English. It’s mostly equated to energy and the Japanese symbol for ki resembles steam [...]
Every once in a while, in our dojo, Vince Sensei is kind enough to host some of the world’s best Aikidoists for a weekend seminar. This past weekend, we were fortunate enough to have Mary Heiny as our guest teacher. Here is not the place to go into Heiny Sensei’s history, if [...]
“…I have discovered even if you are a self-made man, you can unmake, and even re-make yourself just the same with no ill-consequences—in fact, quite the opposite.”
This is something I said to myself very recently, and in particular, about my Aikido. Allow me to explain the significance of this statement to [...]
It’s so easy to get stuck in ways of doing things that you look back and see that you’ve been doing things a certain way for far too long, for really no reason at all other than that it felt comfortable. Comfort zones are dangerous and I think we all need to [...]
The old ways of doing things are dying, and I say good riddance. When I say “the old ways” I mean the industrial, top-down, what’s in it for me approach to life. As we look around us in the world today, we can clearly see that all of that is [...]
First of all, please don’t think that my blog has changed into a Harry Potter fan club. It’s just that Harry exemplified exactly what I’ll be talking about in this post, especially the facial expression, so bare with me:) I think it’s so interesting how you can take one basic, [...]
Before I signed up for my first Aikido class (and was hooked indefinitely), I was a staunch gym-goer. For about three years, I’d head to the gym 4-6 days a week and lift weights for hours. Growing up a scrawny kid, this was cool, I thought, feeling my muscles getting bigger every [...]
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