by Jim Giorgi

I want to share with you my story of The Gift of the Katana as a way to demonstrate what I am teaching you about the Power of Intention.

I held an aikido seminar at my dojo in Ft. Lauderdale over the weekend.  My teacher came down from NY and a lot of visitors were there from other Nihon Goshin Aikido dojos, including Dave, a black belt from the NGA dojo in Georgia, whom I have taught whenever I was there for seminars over the past 9 years.  On Monday I taught my usual aikido class and Dave, who was still in the area, attended.  After class he came over to me.

"I have something for you," he said.

by Jim Giorgi

I have been very busy this last month making videos for "Power of Intention" and "Taste of Enlightenment" videos.  My old PC- an IBM ThinkPad R40 that I bought used over 5 years ago-is just too small and slow for what I want to be doing now…I am nearly out of storage.

From time to time it would cross my mind that I really need a faster computer with more storage and more “bells and whistles”.  The idea would rise out of nothingness and then... letting go of it... would fall into nothingness again.  I can't say it ever became a desire, or a concrete thought, certainly not a plan.  It was just a thought, like any other.

by Jim Giorgi

At the last Zen retreat that I went to at our temple here, in my interview with the Zen master, he said, “Zen is simply accepting this moment as it is."  That’s it.  Being able to accept it.  It doesn’t mean you have to like it.  It doesn’t mean you want to try to change it, at least in that moment.  You can do something to change it but you don’t resist it.  You don’t inwardly put up barriers to it and say, “I don’t like this,” or, “I don’t like that.”  It is essentially what Jesus said when he said, “Turn the other cheek.”

by Jim Giorgi

A series of co-incidences led me to revisit an article I read “by chance” 37 years ago - "Aikido and the Mind of the West" by George Leonard - and the powerful impact that article has had on my life.  This is another story about the Power of Intention, and what Carl Jung termed “synchronicity.”

by Jim Giorgi

I am not a big fan of any spectator sports.  I would much rather do than watch.  However, I always have had, and always will have a place in my heart for the New York Yankees.  Since I first understood what baseball was, I have been a Yankee fan.  I was born after Joe DiMaggio retired, but watched the Yankee greats of the late 50s and early 60s...the likes of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, Bobby Richardson, Joe Pepitone, and many more ex-Yankee greats.  Whenever the Yankees win, and especially when they are in the World Series, I am insanely happy.  Whether you consider them the greatest team in baseball, the "evil empire", are a Boston fan, or really don't care about it one way or the other, it is one attachment I have not yet transcended.

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How I got a Varsity Pin as a Freshman:
A Reminiscence of Cardinal Spellman High School

by Jim Giorgi

I recently reminisced about the unusual tale of how I was awarded one of the most coveted symbols of advanced athletic prowess at Spellman-the varsity pin.  My homeroom during freshman year was 1F, in room 108, and Brother Brian (Kelly) was our homeroom teacher (and also our Biology and Religion teacher as well).  Those of you who remember me will recall that I was about as far from the athletic type as one could get.  My elementary school, St. Benedict's, had no athletic program at all, and so for the first 8 years of my education, physical education of any kind was nonexistent.  My parents were not "sports-minded" and did not encourage me to join local sports teams of any kind.  So I had no experience with competitive sports.  One activity I did enjoy through my youth, though, was swimming.  When I got to Spellman in the Fall of 1967, I figured that it would be a good thing to "round out" my program by including some athletic activity, and since swimming was something that I had at least some familiarity with, I decided to join the Swimming Team.

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How the Continuum Concept is Applied Therapeutically

by Jim Giorgi

I have worked with very young children since 1982, as a psychological consultant to preschool programs.  My job was to evaluate preschool-age children (between the ages of two and a half to 5 years) who were suspected by their parents, or pediatricians, or other early childhood intervention organizations, of having significant developmental delays. 

Based upon the results of my evaluations, I would determine if the child was sufficiently delayed or disrupted in his or her intellectual, emotional or behavioral development to warrant placement in a special education preschool program.  When my evaluation was complete, I wrote a report, shared the results with the child’s parents or guardians, and made recommendations as to what types of remedial interventions the child required. 

During my years working for public school systems, I also provided psychotherapeutic interventions to those children who required such treatment once they were placed in those preschool programs.  In the years since 1997, when I read the book The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, the advice I have given to parents of children with significant emotional and behavioral disorders has derived from that theoretical premise.

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by Jim Giorgi

An analogy can be made between meditative practice and a whitewater rafting excursion.  Most people are familiar with scenes of the Grand Canyon.  The Colorado River, which flows at its bottom, is as turbulent and dangerous a watercourse to navigate as any in the world. The river comprises stretches of incredibly dangerous, chaotic rapids punctuated at intervals by stretches of placid, pond-like areas on which one may lazily drift among awe-inspiring scenery.

Wilderness adventure outfits conduct rafting trips down the river, and “shooting the rapids” of the Colorado is one of those excursions eagerly sought by “city folks” who feel they need more challenge and excitement out of life.  Let’s say you are one of these modern-day adventurers, and in while you are in the midst of the rapids, the raft bumps and lurches and you are thrown out of the raft and into the river.  This is not only disastrous, it is potentially fatal.  You are being tossed by the rapids and pummeled by the rocks in the river, and your life is in serious peril.  Your goal is clear and urgent.  You must get out of the river fast in order to survive.

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Planet of the Chatty Apes: How I made a talking chimpanzee jealous

by Jim Giorgi

In 2002, when I was working with a previous incarnation of the soap company in which I am now a partner, my business partner, Kaylin, mentioned to me that one of the customers of our nontoxic soap was the laboratory of the Language Research Center at Georgia State University in Atlanta.  They were using our soap to clean the lab and living quarters of the Bonobo Chimpanzees with whom they were doing anthropological research in the development of language and speech in primates.  One of the researchers, Holly, had heard of our soap and because it was so effective and yet still totally nontoxic, she wanted the safest product possible to use with the chimps in their living and working quarters.  Kaylin told me that Holly had called to say that they were about to run out of soap and needed to order more.  It happened that I was going to be driving to New York via Atlanta in a couple of days, and Kaylin suggested that I could drop off the soap directly to Holly instead of having it shipped up to her.  I readily agreed.

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The Rise and Fall of the Dysfunctional Ego: How the Continuum Concept nipped a Childhood Neurosis in the Bud:

by Jim Giorgi

I have a very dear friend who is a Kiwi.  No, I don’t mean he’s a small, odd-looking flightless bird or a fuzzy, juicy green-fleshed fruit.  Richard was born and raised in New Zealand.  I met Richard during an extended trip to Maui in 1996, where he was studying to become a Feldenkrais (a form of bodywork) practitioner, and we have been friends since.  At the time he was a professional musician, a tympanist (kettledrum player) in the Auckland Philharmonia. In 1998, the Philharmonia hired a new concertmaster, a French-Canadian violinist (and what a marvelous musician she is) from Montreal named Marcelle.  Richard’s and Marcelle’s professional relationship in the orchestra grew into a friendship and very quickly from there they realized they were meant for each other.

The Perfect Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer: An Interpretation for Modern Times

by Jim Giorgi

The Lord’s Prayer is the perfect, complete statement of existence, of how the universe and all creation “is” and “works”.  It may be understood in the following manner:

“Our” means Universal, of everyone and everything, of “All That Is”, and not just of an individual or isolated group.

“Father” means Creator or Source.  “Mother” or “Parent” could also have been used, but remember that in Jesus’ time it was a patriarchal society.  “Father” means the conscious, loving source energy that is the matrix out of which the entire universe, material and nonmaterial, is created.

“Who art in Heaven” means that this creative source energy exists as the pure spirit of potential creation.  In other spiritual traditions it is termed “emptiness” or “the “void”.