Asante Lawla is a London-based inventor, corrective exercise specialist and a martial artist who is currently working on an edge alignment device to help people learn to cut better. He practises an Indian battlefield martial art called Shastar Vidiya, which translates as ‘the science of weapons’. Finding that getting hold of the materials needed for cutting training to be expensive, time-consuming and messy, he developed a prototype for a new type of tameshigiri trainer. It uses lasers attached to your sword which makes marks on a target so you can see your edge alignment – something you cannot do with tatami mats or water bottles. Asante has a crowdfunding campaign that runs until the end of August 2022. See the crowdfunding page for all the details of the tameshigiri trainer, how it works and the status of the campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tameshigiri-trainer#/
Tameshigiri Trainer Reveal from Martial Machina on Vimeo.
The yoga practice Asante refers to early on in the episode is this one: https://www.shastarvidiya.org/teaching/sanjam_kiriya_variyam.html
Asante’s Shastar Vidiya Brixton Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ShastarVidiyaBrixton