Today we had another wonderful Shodo (Japanese calligraphy) workshop, and my heart is very full. The energy in the room was fantastic, and I want to share a little bit about our beautiful time together.

This workshop was extra special for us. We recently went back home to Japan to catch up with our family, which was so lovely. While we were there, we visited some of the best traditional stationery stores in Japan and bought brand new, high-quality calligraphy brushes.

Today was the first time using them, and the students were so excited! Many of them even wanted to purchase their own authentic brush straight from Japan to keep practicing at home, which made me very happy. Having the right tool makes such a big difference.

In Japanese calligraphy, beauty doesn’t only lie in the black ink lines. It lives just as deeply in the empty spaces—the Ma (間).

Ma is more than just “space” or “pause.” It is the breath between strokes, the silence between sounds, and the stillness that allows movement to exist. Without Ma, every line would clash, and every word would lose meaning.

In the 15th century, in a quiet temple on Japan’s western coast, a young monk named Sesshū Tōyō was wrestling with the art of shodō — Japanese calligraphy. The temple was part of a strict Zen order where silence, repetition, and self-discipline shaped every day. Monks woke before dawn, meditated for hours, and practiced brushwork as a form of meditation rather than art.

For Sesshū, this discipline was both a calling and a struggle. He had natural talent — his brushstrokes carried energy and movement — but his teacher saw them as undisciplined. To master shodō, one had to quiet the self completely, letting the brush move without ego or emotion. Sesshū’s strokes, by contrast, betrayed too much spirit.

Japanese brush writing, a powerful moving meditation, uses the uncorrectable stroke to demand 100% present focus, enabling you to quiet your mind and channel your life energy; at Orizuru, we teach this process in our monthly classes in Brisbane to help you find inner harmony.