C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Cultivating Internal Energy in the Hara for Budo Training      The other day, I was having a conversation with a dear friend of mine—I won’t get into the details, as they are beside the point for the sake of what I want to discuss here—when he said something that I just couldn’t get out of my head.  He said that sometimes, when making a decision, you just have to “trust your gut.”  It’s a common idiom that you may have heard as advice throughout your life.      My friend has no experience, and certainly no interest, in my lifelong passion for the traditional Japanese martial ways.  Like most of my family members, and the friends I have who I didn’t meet through martial arts training, he probably looks upon my passion for the Budo—and physical training in general—as nothing more than a curiosity and perhaps an odd peculiarity of my personality.  What he doesn’t know is that in traditional Budo one’s “gut instinct” can...