Some of you may be aware of the Fudoshin club that trains at Chapter Arts on Mondays: Dan Procida, who is kindly also hosting this site, hosts and maintains the Fudoshin club website, and has posted a few interesting articles.

So we thought that it would be worthwhile providing links and summaries here to some of the most recent articles for those that will be interested in his musings. A couple of them tie-in with sessions taken by Dan, and should be especially useful to those who were at those sessions, though of course they all make interesting reading as standalone pieces about the relationship of aikido to the wider world.

Nonviolent Communication

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a model of communication developed by Marshall Rosenberg. It aims to empower parties to an engagement (typically, one of conflict) to communicate effectively, which is to say without fear, force, guilt, shame, blame, or threats. Rosenberg’s NVC model provides a useful account of how Aiki principles work, particularly in wider contexts than we generally have an opportunity to practice them.
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Aiki, Lean and GTD: Praxis

If we can take the idea of parallels between such different systems as Aikido, lean thinking and GTD seriously (see Aiki, Lean and GTD: Lining things up) - which requires that we be prepared to countenance some higher-order similarities in them - then I think that there are other lessons to be drawn.
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Aiki, Lean and GTD:Lining Things Up

There is only one way to deal successfully with multiple things that need to be dealt with, and that is by lining them up to deal with them one at a time.

Holding the bridge

Horatius Cocles, according to legend, defended the Pons Sublicius single-handedly against the Etruscans, saving Rome. How did he achieve this?

Horatius, obviously, was not as strong as the entire Etruscan army, but he didn’t need to be. By choosing to engage with the Etruscans on a narrow bridge, he lined them up, so that he could deal with them one at a time. At any moment, he had only one problem: the Etruscan in front of him. The rest were harmlessly lined up behind the first, and the entire Etruscan army was reduced to the strength of the man at the front of its queue, a queue controlled by Horatius.
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Enjoy!