Explorations in Quilting and Life

While I was heavily involved in mind/body work with Thomas Crum, a favorite colleague of mine was Judy Ringer. She trained with us at Aiki Works, Inc. and the two of us have continued a natural friendship through the years. Judy now has a highly successful training company of her own and maintains a blog.

I always enjoy her posts and the latest post is one that I am sure we can all identify with - a difficult customer service call. Judy describes her process of starting to lose her patience (and center) and then having an aha moment where she regains her balance and the words flow to dissipate the unpleasantness of the call.

There were several inspirational quotes in Judy's post from the art of aikido, which we both study, and related material. I thought I would leave you with them and hope they will inspire you to check out Judy's tale:

All things change when we do.
– Kukei, Eighth-Century Zen Master

To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. 
To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.

– Morihei Ueshiba, O Sensei, Founder of Aikido

Aikido masters say that opposing an attack directly feeds it. You may stop the other person temporarily, but you don’t stop his or her intention to attack.

— Andy Bryner and Dawna Markova, Ph.D., An Unused Intelligenc

In The Dance of Connection, author Harriet Lerner writes that in difficult conversations the task is not to “be yourself” but to “choose your self.”