Presents
Shaping Our Lives
Living Wisdom from the Japanese Arts for Modern Life
A 12-Week Online Journey
July 9th – September 28th 2025
10 Live Workshops
Fully Downloadable
7 Expert Teachers
Dairik Amae
Tea teacher & architect
Katsuhito Imaizumi
Contemporary Tea Master
Mayuka Yamazaki
Founder of IKERU & Ikebana Teacher
Rev. Takafumi Kawakami
Zen priest & Abbot of Shunkoin Temple
Takahiro Yagi
6th-generation tea caddy maker, Kaikado
Hosai Matsubayashi
16th-generation master potter, Asahiyaki
Richard Strozzi-Heckler
Shihan in Aikido, founder of Strozzi Institute
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Meeting Life Fully
We shape our lives with every gesture, word, and choice.
But life also shapes us – through its rhythms, relationships, and surprises.
This program invites you into that space in between.
A space where intention meets surrender, where movement is paired with stillness, and where presence becomes a way to meet the world more fully.
Through the time-honored Japanese arts of Tea, Ikebana, Craft, and Aikido, you’ll explore how beauty, presence, and care can shape not just what you do—but how you live.
In a world that often prizes speed over depth and doing over being, this program is a chance to slow down and return to the art of living.
Learn from Visionary Teachers Bridging Tradition and Innovation
Over 12 weeks, you’ll engage directly with a carefully curated group of master practitioners—tea teachers, master artisans, an ikebana artist, a Zen monk, and a 7th dan Aikido teacher. Each of them deeply rooted in their respective tradition, yet fully engaged with the challenges and possibilities of modern life.
Through live workshops, hands-on experiences, short presentations and guided reflections, you’ll uncover how simple actions—like pouring tea, arranging flowers, shaping clay, moving with intention—can become powerful pathways for shifting how you show up in the world.
Why Join This Program?
Learn from Those Who Live the Wisdom – Engage directly with master practitioners who’ve devoted their lives to arts that bring clarity, beauty, and meaning into daily life.
Timeless Arts, Modern Relevance – Explore how pouring tea, placing a flower, centering the body, and other everyday activities can become pathways for navigating uncertainty, deepening presence, and finding grace in a shifting world.
Live with Care and Continuity – Discover how long-term thinking, relational leadership, and practices of attunement can reconnect you with what matters most—offering steadiness across time and transformation.
Embody the Learning – Experience guided meditations and embodied practices that awaken your senses, restore your rhythm, and help you show up more intentionally in life and work.
Move at Your Own Rhythm – Join live for weekly sessions and conversations, or move at your own pace with full access to all recorded sessions and materials.
A Journey into Embodied Presence
As you weave the insights and practices from these traditions into your daily life, you’ll discover how they all point to the same deeper truth:
How we do one thing shapes how we do everything.
This program invites you to cultivate a way of being where attention, creativity, and embodied presence guide your daily life.
It offers you a chance to shape—and be shaped by—what truly matters.
Join us and discover how Japan’s living arts can help you move through the world with more clarity, care, and quiet strength.
What You Will Receive
10 Live Online Sessions
Engage with the faculty in 90-minute sessions, featuring guided practices, Q&A, and interactive discussions.
Fully Downloadable
Access all session recordings, resources, and materials anytime, so you can revisit the teachings at your own pace.
7 Expert Teachers
Learn directly from a carefully selected faculty bridging timeless wisdom with modern life.
Workbooks & Transcripts
Deepen your learning with thoughtfully designed study guides and full transcripts of each session.
Insights & Practices
Explore profound teachings and practical exercises to bring presence, clarity, and resilience into your daily life.
Join Live or Go at Your Own Pace
Participate in the live sessions or follow the program on your schedule with full access to recorded content.
MEET THE FACULTY
We’ve carefully curated a faculty of master artisans, a Zen priest, and teachers of tea, Aikido, and Ikebana who not only embody the wisdom of their craft and tradition, but also actively bridge it with the realities of modern life.
Dairik Amae
Tea teacher & architect
Dairik is a contemporary tea teacher and architect living in Kyoto. He blends a deep embodied understanding of the way of tea with an open mind and a global outlook. Working with students at his tea house in Kyoto, as well as teaching tea online to his overseas students across the globe. He has a deep grasp of both the spiritual and the aesthetic aspects of tea and has been a student of both Zen and Shinto for many years.
Katsuhito Imaizumi
Contemporary Tea Master
Katsuhito Imaizumi is a contemporary tea master based in Paris who crafts modern tea experiences worldwide, often collaborating with pastry chefs, musicians, and other creatives. He previously worked at Sakurai Tea Experience in Tokyo and served as head tea master at Ogata in Paris. Trained in both matcha and sencha, Katsuhito blends tradition with innovation. On the program, he invites participants to use tea as a subtle yet powerful practice to awaken the senses, deepen awareness, and reconnect with the poetry of everyday life.
Mayuka Yamazaki
Founder of IKERU & Ikebana Teacher
Mayuka Yamazaki is the founder of IKERU, an initiative dedicated to bringing the wisdom of ikebana into today’s society. With over 20 years of practice, she teaches ikebana as a way to cultivate presence, restore a sense of wonder, and reconnect with the natural world. Drawing on her background in business and education, she works with individuals and global leadership teams to bridge inner and outer transformation through the art of flowers.
Rev. Takafumi Kawakami
Zen priest & Abbot of Shunkoin Temple
Rev. Takafumi Kawakami is the 24th abbot of Shunkoin, a Rinzai Zen sub-temple within Kyoto’s historic Myoshinji complex. With a background in religious studies from Arizona State University, he bridges classical Zen teachings with contemporary life. Known for his global talks on zazen and the evolving notion of self, he brings a bold yet grounded voice to modern spiritual inquiry. On the program, he will introduce Zen perspectives that challenge our default view of selfhood and invite a deeper sense of responsibility, connection, and presence.
Takahiro Yagi
6th-generation tea caddy maker, Kaikado
Takahiro Yagi is the 6th-generation director of Kaikado, Kyoto’s oldest metal tea caddy workshop, founded in 1875. Known for blending time-honored craftsmanship with contemporary design, he has brought Kaikado to global acclaim through thoughtful collaborations with architects, designers, and museums. Deeply rooted in the rhythms of family and tradition, his work is guided by long-term thinking and a sense of care that spans generations. On the program, he will explore how craft can become a way of being—grounded, attentive, and intimately connected to the world around us.
Hosai Matsubayashi
16th-generation master potter, Asahiyaki
Hosai Matsubayashi is the 16th-generation head potter of Asahiyaki, a 425-year-old kiln in Uji, deeply rooted in the Way of Tea. Shaping clay passed down through generations, his work reflects a quiet dialogue between past and future. Drawing on the aesthetic of Kirei-Sabi, he crafts tea vessels that invite reflection, beauty, and care. On the program, he will share how working with clay becomes a practice of presence—and a way to shape our lives through intergenerational thinking and embodied wisdom.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler
Shihan in Aikido, founder of Strozzi Institute
Richard Strozzi-Heckler is a 7th-degree black belt in Aikido and the founder of the Strozzi Institute, where he has spent over four decades pioneering the field of embodied leadership. Drawing from martial arts, somatics, and neuroscience, he has coached Fortune 500 executives, military leaders, and changemakers across the world. On the program, he will introduce core Aikido principles and practices that awaken a centered, resilient presence—offering a path to live and lead with greater alignment, awareness, and grace.
HOW IT WORKS
Join Live or Move at Your Own Pace
This journey is both immersive and gentle, designed to meet you where you are. Whether you crave live connection or prefer quiet reflection, Shaping Our Lives allows you to engage in a way that feels natural to you.
Live Weekly Workshops – 10 interactive sessions hosted on Zoom, where you can engage directly with expert teachers and like-minded members.
Flexible Access – All sessions are recorded and available to revisit anytime, ensuring you can follow the program at your own pace.
Guided Practices & Reflections – Simple, but profound exercises to weave the wisdom into your daily routine.
A Progressive Learning Journey – The program unfolds in four carefully structured modules, each exploring a different tradition and its relevance to modern life.
Integration & Reflection Sessions – The Musubi team will facilitate 2 additional sessions to help you connect the dots and deepen the learning, one midway and one at the end of the program.
The sessions blend storytelling, guided experiences, short presentations, and interactive dialogue, allowing you to move beyond concepts into direct experience. Whether through Tea’s quiet attunement, Ikebana’s practice of deep listening, or Aikido’s focus on presence in motion, you’ll find practical tools to navigate daily life with clarity and grace.
“Everyone is part of the human lineage, running through us from the past out into the future.”
Takahiro Yagi
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Sessions take place from 4:00-5:30 pm Japan time / 9:00-10:30 am European time. Exceptions for the final sessions with Richard Strozzi-Heckler, which happen from 10:00-11:30 am US Pacific time.
MODULE 1
The Way of Tea:
Cultivating Presence, Care and Connection
The Way of Tea invites you to slow down and return to the richness of the present moment. Through ritual, attention, and sensory awareness, you’ll explore how simple gestures—like making tea—can help restore connection to yourself, to others, and to life itself.
Dairik Amae
Katsuhito Imaizumi
July 9
Session 1 – Dairik Amae
Cultivating Peace
- Experience how the quiet practice of tea can help restore your inner rhythm—and remind you that lasting peace begins within, then extends into the world.
- Learn how the four pillars of tea—Wa (harmony), Kei (respect), Sei (purity), and Jaku (tranquility)—can guide your way of being in a noisy, distracted world.
- Reconnect with the beauty of simplicity through wabi: the art of finding peace and richness in the unfinished, imperfect, and impermanent.
- Discover how small, intentional rituals bring you back to yourself—and ripple outward as calm, care, and presence in how you meet others.
July 16
Session 2 – Dairik Amae
Emptying Our Cup: Making Space for Presence
- Explore the deep connection between Zen and the Way of Tea—and how both invite us to meet each moment just as it is.
- Experience the freedom of releasing fixed identities, and rest in the spaciousness of being without comparison or rank.
- Learn how bringing care, curiosity, and grace to each encounter can foster genuine, heart-centered connection.
- Reflect on how space and atmosphere shape our experience—and how thoughtful curation can naturally invite deeper presence.
July 23
Session 3 – Katsuhito Imaizumi
Awakening the Senses Through Tea
- Join Katsuhito in a simple, shared act of making tea—an experience that gently reveals how presence, attention, and care can reshape the way we move through everyday life.
- Be guided in awakening your senses and deepening your awareness, learning to attune more fully to what is here—within and around you.
- Explore how mindful movement and touch—especially in how we handle everyday objects—can reconnect us to a quieter, more intentional way of being.
- Discover the concept of zanshin—the lingering presence of awareness—and how it can help you carry a sense of stillness and spaciousness into whatever follows.
MODULE 2
Ikebana:
Learning to Listen to the Voice of the World
Ikebana teaches that beauty arises not from control, but from relationship. In this module, you’ll awaken your senses, quiet your mind, and rediscover how to collaborate with nature. By letting flowers live, you’ll learn to meet the world with reverence, presence, and wonder.
Mayuka Yamazaki
August 6
Session 4 – Mayuka Yamazaki
Letting Flowers Live
- Discover the original meaning of ikebana—to “let flowers live”—and how this shift in perspective transforms arranging into a collaboration with nature that’s alive and responsive.
- Learn to listen with your senses, not just your mind, as Mayuka guides you into ikebana as a practice of attunement—listening to the voice of flowers and allowing their presence to lead.
- Witness a live demonstration and explore what happens when you’re guided by intuition and presence rather than design—then be invited to create your own arrangement between sessions.
- Explore what it means to create from presence, not performance—and how working with flowers can become a mirror for how we meet our lives.
August 13
Session 5 – Mayuka Yamazaki
Restoring Our Sense of Wonder
- Reflect on your experience of letting flowers live, and what it revealed about your relationship to control, beauty, and presence.
- Deepen your understanding of ikebana not just as art, but as a way of listening and being in relationship—with nature, with form, and with the unseen.
- Reclaim a sense of wonder as a natural state we can return to through attention, humility, and care.
- Explore how moments of imbalance—whether in life or in a floral arrangement—can become invitations to insight, reminding us that the way we place a flower reflects the way we place ourselves in the world.
MODULE 3
Craft:
Embracing Uncertainty & Thinking Long-Term
Traditional Japanese craft holds a quiet, enduring wisdom. It asks us to slow down, commit deeply, and shape our lives with care. In this module, you’ll learn from master artisans and a Zen priest who offer a different way of thinking—one rooted in intergenerational stewardship, embodied knowing, and trust in the unknown.
Rev. Takafumi Kawakami
Takahiro Yagi
Hosai Matsubayashi XVI
August 27
Session 6 – Rev. Takafumi Kawakami
No Center: Seeing Through the Separate Self
- Explore how the modern idea of a separate self narrows our lives—and how Buddhist and craft traditions reveal identity as something shaped by relationship, not held at the center.
- Through guided meditation, experience what happens when the boundary between you and the world begins to soften.
- Encounter the principle of jinen—nature not as something “out there,” but as the ground of your being—and sense how that redefines identity and belonging.
- Discover how loosening your grip on the self can awaken a different kind of responsibility—and a deeper awareness of time and identity as shifting, relational, and interwoven with all that surrounds you.
September 3
Session 7 – Takahiro Yagi
Crafting Continuity
- Discover how long-term thinking can shape not just what we make, but how we lead, grow, and care—for others, and for what comes after us.
- Learn what it means to innovate without abandoning tradition—and how honoring the past can be a radical act of stewardship.
- Reflect on the quiet strength of relational leadership, and what it looks like to grow a business like an extended family rather than a machine.
- Explore how a simple, well-made object can carry memory, emotion, and meaning—and how crafting with presence becomes a form of care.
September 10
Session 8 – Hosai Matsubayashi XVI
Welcoming Uncertainty
- Explore how embracing uncertainty—rather than resisting it—can deepen both your creative process and your relationship with life itself.
- Reflect on the Japanese concept of un-son—thinking eight generations ahead—and how it invites us to live as bridges between past and future.
- Uncover the subtle wisdom that lives in your body—beyond analysis or intellect—and how craft invites us to trust what we feel more than what we know.
MODULE 4
Aikido:
Harmonizing Self, Others and the World
Aikido is a path of integration—of body, mind, and spirit. In this final module, you’ll explore how to move through life with centered presence and graceful strength. Through physical and contemplative practices, discover how to meet conflict without resistance and find harmony in motion.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler
September 17
Session 9 — Richard Strozzi-Heckler
Returning to Center: Aikido as The Practice of Presence
- Learn what it truly means to be centered—and why it matters in how you show up in moments of stress, conflict, and everyday life.
- Explore how Aikido cultivates presence not as stillness, but as aliveness—through movement, grounding, and rhythm.
- Learn to recognize when you’re not centered—and how that awareness can become a gateway to transformation.
- Practice simple, powerful centering techniques you can return to anytime, anywhere—to shift from reaction to responsiveness.
September 24
Session 10 — Richard Strozzi-Heckler
Blending with Life
- Discover Aikido as more than a martial art—as a path to spiritual depth and interconnection, rooted in the teachings of its founder, Morihei Ueshiba
- Explore the stages of the visible, the invisible, and the sacred—and how you move between them in your daily life.
- Experience the principle of musubi—the art of deep connection—through movement, attention, and the felt sense of joining with others and the world around you.
- Learn how blending, rather than resisting, can become a gateway to resolving conflict and living with greater alignment.
What We Hope This Journey Will Offer You
A Renewed Sense of Presence – Slow down, tune in, and experience how beauty and awareness can infuse even the smallest moments of your day.
A Deepened Relationship with Life – Through practices that awaken your senses and soften control, you’ll begin to feel more attuned to yourself, others, and the world around you.
Inner Steadiness & Clarity – Shift from overwhelm to steadiness by integrating timeless wisdom that helps you navigate life’s uncertainties with grace.
A Unique Tapestry of Living Arts – Tea, ikebana, craft, and aikido, each speaks its own language of presence: through gesture, silence, form, or movement. Together, they reveal complementary paths to meet life with more grace, clarity, and care.
Wisdom from Practitioners Who Live Their Practice – Be guided by those who have not only studied these paths but live and evolve them—making them deeply relevant to our time.
Shaping Our Lives
Living Wisdom from the Japanese Arts for Modern Life
Step into a rare opportunity to learn from master practitioners and reconnect with what truly matters. Shaping Our Lives is an invitation to pause, reflect, and cultivate a way of being shaped by care, presence, and quiet strength.
Join us and discover how the wisdom embodied in the Japanese arts can support your journey in today’s world.
10 Live Online Sessions
Fully Downloadable
7 Expert Teachers
Workbooks & Transcripts
Insights & Practices
Join Live or Go at Your Own Pace
Book your place
Early bird ends in:
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The 10 sessions that form the core of the program are live and take place via ZOOM video conference. Recordings of those sessions become available a day later so you can also move at your own pace if you prefer, or revisit the sessions.
Yes, English is the main language for all sessions. For a few of the sessions a skilled interpreter will be there in case the faculty members need support in expressing a more complicated or nuanced idea in English.
You’ll have guaranteed access for twelve months following the completion of the program. To retain them longer than this we advise that you download them onto your own computer.
We offer a 12-day money back guarantee. If you are not satisfied with the program for any reason, simply contact us at info@musubi.academy within 12 days of the start of the program and we’ll offer a full refund.
We’ve carefully curated a faculty of master artisans, a Zen priest, and teachers of tea, Aikido, and Ikebana who not only embody the wisdom of their craft and tradition, but also actively bridge it with the realities of modern life.
Yes, you can receive a certificate of completion for the course. If it’s for business usage it’s good to check if your company approves the program as continued learning. We can offer a certificate for the 16 hours that make up the total duration of the sessions on the program. Just send us an email if you would like to receive a certificate once the program is completed.
If you have any questions about the program, you can email us at info@musubi.academy.
