Shintaido promotes a healthy mind and spirit as much as a healthy body. The benefits of practising include:
- Enhancing physical health
- Reducing stress
- Developing ki, vital energy
- Opening the mind
- Increasing communication skills
- Enhancing creativity
- Increasing concentration
- Strengthening individuality.
(from Gale’s Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine)
The 2022 Lecture, by Margaret Guay, is on the subject of “The Body is the Message of the Universe: Are We Ready to Receive the Message”. She looks at the forms and practices of Shintaido in the dual contexts of animal evolution, and infant development.
For the 2021 lecture, Peter Furtado spoke on the subject of the Mission of the Rakutenkai, 1960s-2020s. He considered what the group of practitioners who worked with Aoki Sensei to develop Shintaido in the 1960s were trying to achieve, in the context of politics and culture of 1960s Japan. He then asked how that original mission has matured and changed over the years, and its importance – and potential relevance to us today as we offer Shintaido to a new generation.