Shadowfax
06-13-2011, 03:20 PM
For those of us who love horses and aikido a new book coming out this fall by Mark Rashid. :D
Nature in Horsemanship: Discovering Harmony Through Principles of Aikido
http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Horsemanship-Discovering-Harmony-Principles/dp/1616083506/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307992751&sr=1-11
Shadowfax
09-26-2011, 09:49 AM
The book is now available. I received it on Thursday and finished reading it yesterday. What a wonderful book. Horse loving aikidoka will really get a lot out of it. I was kinda disspointed when I got to the end that there wasn't more. :)
Below is one small excerpt from the book that I enjoyed. From chapter 13 Distance/Spacing.
"However what I didn't really understand was that ma-ai could actually be considered a phrase, not a word. When broken down ma actually means 'space' or 'interval' and ai means 'joining together' or 'coming together'. So ma-ai actually means "the joining of shared space," not just physical distance, as I had always believed. Perhaps another way to look at it might be that ma-ai is the coming together of time, space, and energy between two individuals."
"You see distance between two individuals is still just distance, particularly if the individuals are not brought together somehow. And if the two individuals are brought together, such as during an attack, or perhaps in the case of a hrose that does not understand boundaries with people, then whoever is in control of the ma-ai (time, space and energy) usually ends up in control of the situation."
"Ma-ai is indeed in every aspect of horsemanship."
Mark Rashid- Nature in Horsemanship~discovering harmony through the principles of aikido.