STUDENT COMMENTS(TESTIMONIALS)

I think it’s amazing that Mitzvah is so simple and yet I can feel my own body changing. By learning to be aware of my body, I’ve become more attuned to nature and my own body's condition. Mitzvah makes me supple and loose. It soothes my mind and body together.

I've been dancing for a while now, but since I started taking Mitzvah, I've let a lot of tension go and learned to move in a more relaxed way. I was shocked to see my body change even at this age, but so delighted. It's different from other kinds of exercise. Paying careful attention to my body during Mitzvah is really interesting. Mitzvah lessons have become a truly precious part of my life.

The most important thing I’ve learned through Mitzvah is the ability to directly experience the sensation of force coming from the floor. As I get better at feeling the great ripples of force continuing to circulate up and down through my body, the quality of my movement improves. I'm in the process of discovering my own balance between Mitzvah and dance.

Mitzvah is very important for me because it helps me fine tune my body’s balance. It’s very useful since I can do it anywhere, at any time, like when I’m traveling. By helping me develop the habit of paying attention to my own body every day, Mitzvah also seems to be helping me find mental balance. I want Mitzvah to continue to be a big part of my life.

“Ever since being subjected to radio gymnastics in elementary school, I hate exercise!” was my knee-jerk response when my wife persuaded (forced?) me to sign up for a Mitzvah class.
And how did it turn out?
Now all I can say is “Thank you Maiko-sensei!” But there’s a reason why a 50 year-old guy like me can say that.
Taking Mitzvah has all kinds of benefits, but they’re so personal I doubt anyone else will understand: the delightful drowsiness that creeps up during the lesson; the deep sleep on the night after the first lesson; the feeling of invigoration when waking up the next morning; and after taking lessons for a few months, maybe, just even, in the midst of sleep, lurking deep inside my mind, a chance encounter with my true self!?
As I took her lessons with an open mind and listened to her kind guidance “ Stop doing the exercise if it hurts”, somewhere along the way my frozen shoulder suddenly got better. Before I knew it, my neck, which I couldn’t turn around at all when backing up the car, was revolving smoothly. My body weight, which refused to drop no matter how much I walked—the metabolic freak that I am—had gone down ten kilograms within a year through a combination of Mitzvah and walking my beloved dog. I’ve got no before and after photo to prove it, so who’s gonna believe me?! (Thinking back, it’s amazing how I was able to go on living with so much discomfort!) If you keep taking the Mitzvah technique with an open mind, free from apprehensions, good things will just keep on coming. Thanks Maiko-sensei!

When listening to someone explain the Mitzvah Technique, I kept hearing words like “exercise” and “body work”, which I tended to associate with Yoga, Qigong, and other airy-fairy non-scientific things; or even worse, with mail order diet DVDs and similar kinds of cheap junk.
But the basic idea of the Mitzvah Technique, “to adjust our own body by our own effort” takes a whole different perspective than Western medicine, physiotherapy, chiropractics and other techniques that are currently widely known and trusted. While these techniques in some sense deal with problems after they appear, Mitzvah deeply implies preventative medicine, and is, moreover, rational. (Of course I’m not saying that one is superior and the other inferior).
It’s been close to a year since I started Mitzvah. Recently, my chronic lower back pain has become less troublesome, and I feel as though my body moves more smoothly. Moreover, I’ve been independently practicing the exercise routine Maiko-sensei taught me for the last six months or so, and I visit her studio much less frequently. It seems the Mitzvah Technique works too well: I have learned to “adjust my own body by my own effort”. This non-capitalistic thing Maiko-sensei is doing just might be a kind of charity.