31 Years of Making a Big Difference

Nine Cuts – Nine Powers! Festival 31 is a celebration of over three decades of making an impact for good in our world, and a warm gathering of the warriors who have carried the vows for all these years. We train in effective intelligent martial arts to create more peace, security, and joy for everyone. […]

Can a Child Really Fight an Adult?

Basic truth is simple. It is extremely unlikely a child could fight off an adult, even with years of martial arts training. A child is a soft and easy target. An elementary school child would be hard pressed to fight off an adult attacker, especially an angry or determined abuser or abductor. Except in the […]

An-shu Visits Phoenix Quest Center

An-shu Stephen and An-shu Rumiko Hayes visited the Phoenix Quest Center to teach a class in how to slip outside a powerful leading-hand punch or wrestling neck grab. “An-shu Rumiko and I have visited the Phoenix Quest Center before, and it was a great reunion with senior training members we see at Festival every year […]

Sunday Indian Magazine Interview

The Dalai Lama – WAR AND PEACE by Spriha Srivastava | December 5, 2010 17:38 What has a Ninjutsu Master got to say about His Holiness The Dalai Lama? A lot more than you know, for Stephen K Hayes was security advisor to His Holiness for the better part of the 1990s, and continues to […]

Really Far-Out View of 21st Century Chaos

A friend wrote me and asked my advice. He agreed to let me share our correspondence. “I am having a lot of difficulty finding my way through some tough times in my life. I am looking for a full time job, pressing on with my martial arts, managing a family crisis, and generally figuring out […]

Compassion and the Martial Artist

I truly believe you can only give as much compassion as you can afford. When you are very strong, you can afford to show a lot of compassion. Not very strong? You risk your compassion being perceived as weakness, and you are vulnerable to suffering intolerable loss. This is one irony of martial arts training: […]

"Ninja Sword" Non-Controversy

My friend Scott W. found a 20-year old issue of a ninja magazine with a quote from Masaaki Hatsumi that supports what I have said about ninja swords for decades. I do not own a copy of the magazine, and I had long ago forgotten about the article. A few silly people envious of the […]

Arjia Rinpoche "Surviving the Dragon" in Dayton

After I see the Dalai Lama at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, my friend Arjia Rinpoche, Director of the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center (TMBCC) of Bloomington, Indiana, will visit Dayton, Ohio, to promote his new book, Surviving the Dragon, published by Rodale Book Company with a forward written by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. […]