Shintaido of America Podcast

Imagine that you are watching a group of dancers, or martial artists, moving in synchronization, the group naturally breathing as one, timing synchronized to the microsecond, but not with military rigidity — they are moving with the naturalness and grace a school of fish or a flock of birds. The scene shifts to a classical orchestra, each section and each musician contributing a part, which the co...

Before Shintaido was created decades ago, its founder, Hiroyuki Aoki, was a young student of drama and visual art. It was only by accident — when his acting teacher suggested that he should study karate to improve his acting skills — that he met karate master Shigeru Egami. Aoki’s artistic approach to body movement gave impetus to the discipline that eventually became Shintaido. “As a lover of mus...

“As a mood or feeling, Shintaido is more religious and artistic than scientific. It is more emotional and primitive than rational,” writes Shintaido’s founder, Hiroyuki Aoki. “It involves cooperation more than competition in its movements. But it is cooperation that emphasizes individual expression, rather than passive group enjoyment.… Shintaido cannot be understood by trying to pigeon-hole it in...

Welcome to Shintaido of America podcast!  Shintaido is a unique combination of martial arts and body movement that cultivates the spirit along with the mind and body. It has been called a moving meditation. In Japanese, Shintaido means “new body way.” Shintaido’s forms exemplify openness and freedom. The movements of Shintaido provide a new way of experiencing our relationship with ourselves, othe...

Hiroyuki Aoki, the founder of Shintaido, has been called a “pioneer,” and the discipline he created with the Rakutenkai group in the 1960s has been called “an avant-garde martial art.” As children, Aoki and members of the group experienced the bombing of Japan during World War Two, and many lost family members to the atomic bomb. But even as the technology of war continued to increase its destruct...