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Your book ''Ki no Kakuritsu'' is a personal biography of what you learned from your 3 main teachers in life. What you teach in the Ki Society today draws on what you learned, but is different from that of your teachers. What was the most important thing you learned from each of them, and how did you put them together in a brand new constellation?
My first teacher was Tetsuju Ogura, a student of the Meiji period Sword Master Tesshu Yamaoka. The training involved rigorous Misogi breathing and chanting, as well as long hours of Zen meditation. Tesshu was a man whose his entire way of life was based on the idea that once you decide to learn something, you should thoroughly test it in action. Test every theory in experience, and from experience you learn to absorb the good and reject the bad. Everything I teach today has been developed in the crucible of experience, my own and that of my students.

I studied Aikido from Morihei Ueshiba, here again doing everything first and questioning later. Ueshiba Sensei was a master of Ki, as well as the founder of Aikido. However he was also a devoted follower of the Omotokyo Religion, and this influenced the way he taught Aikido. Often it was impossible to make any sense of his esoteric explanations. I rigorously trained in all of the exercises he had us do, though many came from the Omotokyo Religion, and made no sense to us. For example, we were expected to recite the alphabet in a different order. Rather than saying the vowels of Japanese as ''AIUEO'' we were made to repeat them over and over as ''AOUEI,'' as if this new sequence had a deeper meaning. He would tell us that we should become one with the Ki of Heaven, but not how we were to do this. You could learn much more by watching him do Aikido than you could by listening to him explain it. The one essential thing I learned from Ueshiba Sensei was how to relax. He was always relaxed in the face of conflict, which is why his Aikido was so strong. He would do this himself, but he encouraged his young students to hold with as much strength as possible. In Aikido if you are not relaxed you cannot throw a person. It seemed a mystery to us that Ueshiba Sensei could always throw, could always get out of a hold. He would lead your Ki, and could always throw his opponent in the direction he was already going. I began to make rapid progress after I started copying what he did, and paid less attention to what he said. I ended up only keeping about 30% of the techniques I learned from Ueshiba Sensei, changing or dropping the rest. What I really learned from him was not technique, but the true secret of Aikido, non-dissension; not to resist your opponent's strength but to use it.

After the War I learned from Tempu Nakamura, a well-known yoga master and psychologist who taught that the mind leads the body. I had seen this often on the battlefield. When we were under fire no one complained of stomach problems; yet once we reached safe ground people began to take it easy and everyone got sick. The mental state of being careless can actually bring on illness. Nakamura Sensei's teaching that mind moves the body helped me to understand the essential principle of Aikido, which is why I called my form of the art, Aikido with Mind and Body Coordination (Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido), now popularly known in the West as Ki-Aikido. I diligently tried everything that Nakumura Sensei taught. As a result, from experience I learned that some of it worked and some of it didn't. One technique that did not work was a meditation technique he taught from Yoga called Kumbahaka. This involved tightening the anus, putting strength into the lower abdomen, softening the solar plexus, letting the shoulders drop down, holding your ears in line with your shoulders, and keeping your lips pressed against your teeth. This was actually an exaggerated and awkward way of trying to explain what natural posture was. Nakamura Sensei himself did not do this, but this is how he explained it. Many ancient oriental methods use exaggerated expressions to explain a natural state, and end up producing completely the wrong results. But I tested everything thoroughly in order to learn from experience. I found that if I did Kumbahaka while farming I would get a sore back, if I did it while walking I would become exhausted, and if I did it while doing Aikido none of the techniques would work at all! The most important thing is ''how to do,'' not how to say. By following natural principles, and doing as Nakamura Sensei did, rather than as he taught, I learned how to do it correctly and consistently. He noticed this and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was doing Kumbahaka. He knew that and wanted to know how I was doing it. I showed him that even his senior students were easily pushed over because of the tension created in their bodies by trying to follow those complicated instructions. In his later years he changed the way he explained it, but after he died his students went back to old explanation, and it is no better now than it was then.

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