Takeda school conserves many therapeutic forms, techniques similarly with the martial ones, but performed in different sense. It is one of the great values of a traditional school,  the same techniques and principles which can be performed for both aims:

-to control an adversary (a victim of some problems with safety, with disequilibrium, at least of psychical order) and not to kill or harm…

-to control and restore the equilibrium of a suffering person (again an internal disequilibrium, energetic, ulterior transposed in diseases, even physically ones).

   Takeda Ryu Bujutsu Ido has many components but Goshin Taiso is the main discipline.

GOSHIN TAISO  -it may be translated through movements (taiso) for self protection (goshin), so a special interest is conferred to the prophylaxis part. In fact, Goshin Taiso consists of specific relaxing techniques, Zen type meditation, forms of correctly and completely respiration. The dynamics exercises of Goshin Taiso techniques are kinds of stretching which will help for unblocking the articulations … for many times, they even have forms which remind of martial art … displacements and Ukemi forms (soil contact).
It is essentially that, during the martial performance, the body be protected – Goshin concept again – and the Goshin Taiso forms just contribute to this permanent comfort state during the fight or in another situations. These techniques help even the body to receive better the shocks and not let the internal organs to be affected. It is about a kind of indirect massage, through movement and respiration (Kokyu) which enforce the body, lent, gradually, from the inside to outside, without any adverse effect.
      These kind of techniques exists in every traditional school, because the protection, the auto defense idea is a much larger concept that the simple blocking of the adversary attack and the launching a dazing attack. It is the art of keeping that equilibrium, that harmony (AIKI), who’s final result is the neutralizing the conflict even before its appearance … a so fine and subtle perception which just cancel the adverse action in a simple and natural manner…

Coming back to the Goshin Taiso practice, we rediscover these things:
    -body stretching and positioning for unblocking the backbone (it is said that we really get old only when the backbone become rigid);
    -breathing techniques (Kokyuho) in movement in order to facilitate the complete aeration of the lungs, the air circulation having direct link to the internal energy KI;
    -the searching of a mobile stability, finding that center (Haragei) wich control every action as in Dojo and outside it (Tai Sabaki);
   -stretching and unblocking techniques for articulations at different levels: joints, elbow, shoulders, knees, ankles, etc.;
    -energetic lines stimulation (the meridians) through press puncture forms (shiatsu) and specific massages.

Many martial arts Japanese experts, in Orient, teach this kind of disciplines as complete schools, teaching martial forms in Dojo, but acting also as physicians, performing in fact the same principles but in another form – therapeutic one. In many cases, the patients come to the treatment and discover the martial arts, realizing that they can surpass themselves … or inversely … they come to the training hall and transform their violence in something superior, in equilibrium, and become interested by therapeutic practices… We can say that martial arts are quite a real homeopathy of the violence!