Meditation should occur in a place of safety and security. If your house is on fire, if something is about to happen, if you have a wound that needs imeadiate attention (physical or otherwise) goal-oriented action is a better move.

Therapy,meditation, and yoga are excellent forms of self-intervention and are useful practices that establish a space to return to your center. Aikido is unique in that it can be a practice that applies strategies and techniques for maintaining centered, non-oppositional engagement in moments of conflict. “What you do with your body” i.e. your posture, breathing, and muscles has specific effects on your ability to think, feel, respond, and express yourself. If “what you do with your body” supports neutral and adaptive behavior your experience will be different then if “what you do with your body” supports anger or negativity. Aikido is an exciting opportunity to practice “what you do with your body” to remain positive and connected to someone who is attacking you as an alternative to fear, anger,or other automatic reactions to conflict.

Here are several research articles that demonstrate the effects of bodily changes on experience:

Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis (Strack et al. 1988) Showed that simply by holding a pencil in your teeth (simulated smile) vs. between your lips (simulated frown) you unknowingly are more likely positive or negative.

Supine body position reduces neural response to anger evocation (E. Harmon-Jones et al. 2009) demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining anger if the body is lying down instead of up and ready to “be angry.”

Embodiment of Sadness and Depression—Gait Patterns Associated With Dysphoric Mood
(J Michalak et al. 2009) shows that posture, stride, pace correlate to an individual’s ability to be present in the moment vs. remain in moods produced by a broader negative outlook.

In the practice of Aikido awareness of “what you do with your body” is central to improving and lends to a better understanding of how you may also be effected and what you can do to change off the mat.