Daily aikido routine provides strength, confidence after stroke
Daily aikido routine provides strength, confidence after stroke
Neighbors watched as Tim Sum showed off his steel samurai sword by slowly raising it over his head outside his apartment.
Speed and focus are skills he works on with an unrelenting determination.
Sum, 70, practices a Japanese martial art known as aikido at Washington Square, near where he lives.
Most mornings he is surrounded by groups of tai chi practitioners and tourists, few of whom talk to him as he runs through defensive techniques by swinging a sword in calculated movements.
For Sum, the tool he uses make no difference.
[...] Sum got a late start in this lifetime — most people start when they’re young, but his experience was different.
The right side of his face had gone numb, and he seemed confused.
Determined not just to survive but recover, Sum began practicing martial arts in Washington Square, where he serendipitously ran into Warren, a black belt in aikido.
When you study martial arts, it eliminates all fear.
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