Régis Soavi begins to practice a traditional and supple type of jūdō around the age of twelve. In the 1970s, he starts training in aikidō with Nocquet, Tamura and Noro, later becoming an instructor in the schools of those three masters. In the same period he also teaches within the French Aikikai Federation.

In 1973 he encounters Master Tsuda Itsuo in Paris and begins to follow his teaching, practising with him Aikido and Katsugen Undo (Regenerating Movement) for ten years, until Master Tsuda‘s death. Parallel to that, Tatsuzawa sensei introduces him to the arts of his school, the Bushūden Kiraku-ryū: Iaido (the sword), Kenjutsu and Jūjitsu. During the same decade, still taking part in a number of seminars and courses, he has the opportunity of meeting several masters among whom Ueshiba Kisshomaru, Yamaguchi, Kobayashi as well as Shirata for example.

About 1980, he turns away for good from this official vision of Aïkido, as Master Tsuda‘s teaching is much more deeply in accordance with the path he wants to follow: the practice of the “Non-Doing” through Aikido and Katsugen Undo. As a matter of fact, one of the distinctive elements of this teaching is the link established by Tsuda Itsuo himself between the understanding of Aikido he developed throughout the years he spent with founder O-sensei Ueshiba on the one hand, and the practice of Katsugen Undo he had already discovered with Seitai foudner Master Noguchi, on the other hand. With Master Tsuda these two practices become so to speak complementary.

In 1982, having met his master’s approval to do so, Régis Soavi decides to dedicate himself, as a professional, solely to Aikido and Katsugen Undo (he had already been teaching Aikido since 1975). In the following years, he founds his first dojo in Toulouse, in the south of France, and starts holding seminars in Paris, Toulouse and Milano.

He is now carrying on conducting regular workshops in the dojos in Milan, Paris and Toulouse, and more occasionally in Rome, Amsterdam and Ancona.