This year’s Festival theme brings to mind high stakes, terrifying, gut wrenching conditions. That’s what real self-defense feels like. The definition of visceral is: “relating to deep inward feelings rather than the intellect.” In other words, forget about analyzing, calculating, and thinking your way through it. The way you have conditioned yourself, the way you […]
Archive | Teacher Insights
Ready, Willing and Listening?
I recently asked in our To-Shin Do Facebook group, what training question are you trying to get answered at this year’s Ninja Festival. This question is something An-shu Hayes is constantly reminding us to have so that we take responsibility for our training and keep progressing. But a conversation I had with some students made […]
37th Annual Festival – A Special Opportunity
“Visceral Training” is the theme of our 37th annual Festival coming up this October 6-8, 2017. This year you have a chance to focus on honest realistic feeling – inside and out – in your To-Shin Do martial arts. Kata teach us the mechanics of how to do the techniques and how to approach embodying […]
Cross Training; Yes or No?
People who do not practice To-Shin Do cannot figure out why there is so little cross training done by our students. Here are three thoughts as to why we find so little cross-training: Our base martial art is so old, that we predate the Meiji separation of martial disciplines into striking, throwing, sword, etc. specialties. […]
I Get to Do This
How often do we find ourselves griping about necessary tasks in our lives that should or must be done? If you are like most people, the answer is – far more often than you would like. Or, worse yet, you continue to procrastinate and avoid getting things done. Of course, some part of your mind […]
Martial Arts Magic
I read a book recently called Spellbound by David Kwong, a magician and New York Times crossword puzzle constructor. In it he describes illusion as an ancient art that centers on control: it is the ability to command a room (situation), build anticipation, and appear to work wonders. Illusion works because the human brain is […]
Train Your Mind To Train
Advances in neuroscience are making it possible to understand how our minds function. I like to use these modern science discoveries to put into perspective our ancient wisdom. The interesting part of studying these discoveries, to me, is that they continue to confirm concepts from our art, like Taizokai and Kongkai perspectives. When you train with […]
Visualization Training
In recent years many professional athletes and teams have discovered the power of visualization training. This is a tool I used quite a bit myself when my career at the time had me travelling to an average of two to three cities a week. Needless to say, my time in the dojo was very limited. […]
Clever for the Win
A relatively small raccoon can kill a much larger hunting dog with a surprising tactic. The raccoon can run up the front of the dog’s chest under the dog’s jaws and reach around the dog’s muzzle to scratch out the dog’s eyes. This is not specially taught behavior or a “raccoon martial arts secret”. It […]
Shito Ryu Approach to the Five Elements
A friend of mine who studies Shito Ryu karate relates how their founder developed a set of approaches to combat. Though he does not know about our 5 elements, he explains that the Shito Ryu approaches cover 5 different responses to fighting. It is debatable how many Shito Ryu students are aware of this. What […]
Advice for Younger To-Shin Do Students
I was asked what advice I have for younger martial artists. I’d have to reply: Take it easy on yourself! Be smart. In my 20s there was a kind of prestige implied in what we called “hard training”. We actually damaged nerve plexuses and joint tissues by hitting and twisting body targets too many times […]
The Most Important Thing
As many of you know, it is standard procedure in our training halls to do a short meditation at the end of class. If you are training on your own or with a small group we recommend that you do this as well. There are endless ways to turn these quick meditations into valuable exercises. […]
A Lawyer And A Scientist Walk Into Your Brain…
Okay if you read the title and thought I was going to tell you a ‘walk into a bar’ joke your lawyer took over and you’re half way to understanding my post. As you can see it says ‘brain’ not ‘bar’ above. Now we need the other half, your scientist, to keep going. I was […]
Why Do We Not Use San-Shin and Kihon Happo?
I am occasionally asked this question. The truth is I do not consider those exercises very important at all for new students looking for realistic self-defense fighting capability. The San-Shin kata were never intended for real fighting; not now or not never. No Japanese warrior ever fought using a kata from that set. They were […]
How Your Beliefs Affect The Outcome Of Your Life
We all believe in something. We’d like to think our beliefs are based on “rational thought.” But truth is we more often act out what we believe instead of what we know. Some of our beliefs are so iron-clad they turn into inflexible conclusions about life. This is especially true if they were unconsciously imprinted […]
