When I teach a seminar, I try to show a technique with the toughest, most capable uke. Not the easiest, lightest student with graceful ukemi performed to make me look good. I want to mix it up with the guy who’s not scripted... rather he or she ‘gets it’. This way there’s...
Amazing time teaching in Los Angeles this past weekend, Koto Ryu Koppojutsu and Togakure Ryu Bikenjutsu. An enormous amount of material covered, and still a long way to go. I have so much gratitude toward everyone who attended along with those not in the photos, wish I could have captured...
Taken from the cover of a book, Adam Mitchell purchased at an antique book store in Japan, the "Kikusui" logo literally translates to “Chrysanthemum water”. It's original reference is to a Chinese legend and Japanese noh theater play, attributing eternal youth to...
"I am invincible" Maciej said as we were leaving the Dojo on Saturday morning. I knew what he meant, I think maybe more than he realized.
After morning training, I asked Maciej if he wouldn’t mind helping to film some Jutaijutsu forms we’d used that week as a sort of framework to...
練習, renshu. To train repetitively. Knowing with the mind and knowing with the body are different things. I’m not interested in talking about a martial art I can’t realize and perform physically. Talk is cheap.
In order to fully understand budo, it’s takes unreasonable amounts of...
In 2014, I was led into an old Japanese tea house, by Sensei.
Accompanying me were a dozen or so folks I really knew nothing about, other than I’d trust my life with each one of them without a thought.
Together, we were about to be awestruck by a timeless discipline we knew little about,...
Observing a student. You have to know each one in a way they do not know themselves. This is what separates a teacher from a charlatan, it’s the willingness to learn about the individual student.
It begins with seeing what type of learner they are. Then, pushing to uncover their limitations...
It just took some time to learn this.
“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others” - Confucius
I spent almost all of my life looking to fight, face some confrontation, defeat an unseen bad guy, to be mindfully prepared for the worse ... to find out...
