Posted 2006-11-20 08:41:36 by Jorge Garcia
The Shudokan Aikido Association has initiated a book club where the members study and discuss a book about Aikido as a budo. Our book club for 2006 featured the book, The Spirit of Aikido by Kisshomaru Ueshiba. To help the students follow the teaching of the book, a Study Guide was created for the book using a system of questions and answers. The guide has questions for every chapter and the page number where the answers are found. In the book club, a copy of the questions to be researched was emailed to those participating in the study. We met once every two or three weeks for a two hour session once a month. The format was to watch a video or DVD about Aikido, O Sensei, or Japanese budo for 30 minutes and then have about an hour of reviewing the questions along with everyone's answers.
The students found the email attachment format helpful because they were able to type in their answers on the computer between the questions and email the answers back to the leader for a general review.
If anyone is interested in using the Study Guide for your personal study, we would be glad to send you a copy by email. If you want to start a book club in your dojo, (be sure to ask your Sensei's permission) we would be glad to send you a copy of the questions along with the answers to help the leader. Our students found the process of using the questions to look up specific answers very helpful to retaining the information presented and gleaning new insights into what was being presented. It is our hope that others in the Aikido community will also start book clubs in your dojos in order to help remember the philosophy of the Founder.
We are now working on our next guide for a book we will study in 2007.
For a free copy of the Spirit of Aikido Study Guide, email your request to
JGarcia@ShudokanAikido.com
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