Giveaway - Video Presenting the Items you can WIN!

I am presenting you in this video all the stuff you can win on the GIVEAWAY! Hope you will join and good luck!

GIVEAWAY! Two Years of Beauty and Aikido

CELEBRATION!!!! YAAY!!

Another year of Beauty and Aikido has passed and just as last year, I want to celebrate this great event with a GIVEAWAY. I have prepared an awesome Beauty Prize and an awesome Aikido Prize.

I made it again really easy for you to join, you just have to perform the steps displayed in the Rafflecopter below. And here are some pictures of what you are getting. You can view the items in a youtube video that I have posted on my channel by clicking here.

The Beauty Prize:

• Hair Dehumidifier Spray (review coming soon about it)
• Yves Rocher Pore Cleaning Masque
• Yves Rocher Night Cream
• Several organic natural masques
• 2 necklaces
• 1 Catrice Lip Tint (tutorial coming up how to do cute doll looks with it)
• 1 Floral Perfume
• 1 Apple iPhone 4 Bunny Rabbit case

The Aikido Prize:

• This beautiful silver Aikido pendant offered by the courtesy of Aiki Trend

Aiki Trend Silver Pendant

Please make sure to perform all FOUR mandatory steps in order to qualify as a winner! THANKS! <3

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As seen on CashNet Sweepstakes

Two Years of Beauty and Aikido! GIVEAWAY coming SOON!



Source: http://katy-doll.deviantart.com



As I have already announced, I am having a giveaway for you guys this year, too. I would like to thank katy doll for making it possible to use this cute little picture for my second anniversary celebration.

In the giveaway, there will be again an Aikido prize and a Beauty related prize. The Aikido prize will be sponsored by the lovely Anne Marie from Aikitrend. You can read more about Aikitrend here. If you are a reader of my blog then you are already familiar with Aikitrend because we cooperate pretty often. The Beauty package will be sponsored by me and will contain a lot of nice goodies. Hope you are happy and will be celebrating along with me! Stay tuned for the details!

Tattooed Aikidoka - Gary's Story

-Guest post by Gary Fox

I saw this piece as a computer-painted image about 3-4 years ago on a website called Deviant-Art. When I finally decided to get the tattoo I had searched for the user who produced the art to gain their consent to have it tattooed but I was not able to find the user or the piece on that website, I'm still looking for him/her. As for the piece, there was something about it that caught my eye. I had been training for a few years already when I stumbled upon it and the theme correlated with my life so much so that I printed it out and hung it from my wall. It reminded me of how challenging the art of Aikido is, to take years of naturally acquired psycho-motor functioning that is gained from growing up and playing, pushing, pulling, shoving, fighting and then learning to just "let it all go" is one of the most challenging and ongoing internal conflicts that I face. It's almost as if I was reborn when the concept of blending with energy finally clicked. This piece spoke of the just how ominous some of these negative energies that we face in life can be and the oni reminds me of how much of a struggle it is to overcome myself at times. 

A few years back I finally had the opportunity to test the art in a real situation. Shortly after receiving my Ikkyū (brown belt), my little brother (Nikyū or green belt for us) and I were jumped at a concert by 8 guys in the middle of a mosh pit. I had never been in a fight before so I was scared at first but as soon as that first punch was thrown it became a game to me, all of the sudden it was randori with 8 attackers who had no training haha. After dealing with a few of my attackers and being pushed down by somebody in the crowd I looked up and saw my little brother getting wailed on by 5 guys who had a good hold on his sweater. I jumped over there and somehow managed to get 4 of them off of him. He went down with one guy on top of him and I just rolled my forearm across his forehead and the guy peeled right off. We just so happened to end up next to my friend Jace who picked up my brother who was a little dazed from being kicked in the face. After seeing that my brother was being taken care of I turned around and dropped in to hanmei (ready stance) waiting for the next attacker but they had all disappeared. I don't know why, maybe because I wasn't striking anybody and in between all the commotion they forgot that I was the one they jumped initially. We were essentially able to dog-pile all of them and diffuse the fight without performing atemi (strike), name a single martial art that can do the same. It was at that moment that I thought to myself "Holy shit, this is the real deal!" I came out unscathed somehow and my little brother got away with a busted lip, but we were kept out of the hospital and that's what mattered to me. 

Colors used

So earlier this summer after staring at this picture on my wall for about 3 years I decided to find an artist who could make this mine. About an hour away from my home an artist named Joshua Newman out of Fresno, Ca caught my eye after a referral from my cousin who has work done by him and after looking at some of his work on Instagram. I contacted him and got him the original photo and after about a week he had a sketch ready for me. It took me 3 sessions and 16 hours to finish it and I love it. It's helped me. These past few years have been a struggle for me, going through a complete lifestyle change, recently single from a long-term relationship and starting a undergraduate RN program with my ex would have broken me if it weren't for Aiki. It's given me the tools to blend and adapt with whatever struggles life throws at me. Hopefully with more time and practice I will learn a grace about it, just as those before me. So now everyday that I wake up and look at this piece of the mirror I am reminded that the training never ends, you cannot put a number to something that is infinite. Masakatsu agatsu.

The dojo where Gary trains