We spend days – weeks even – preparing our recipes, fussing over the physical preparations, but how are we preparing to meet what is the most important part of a Holiday…our relationships with the people present? Here’s a few examples and ideas for conversation starters:
Rainy Mountain Quest 2025 on North Carolina’s Grandfather Mountain is now a grand memory… As promised, I will list notes from the kata taught over the August 2025 weekend. These are from the Kuki Shinden Ryu bojutsu collection Sabaki Kata GEKICHU KERI AGE TSUKE IRI GORIN KUDAKI (“Crushing the abdomen”) I did not include the description of what the adversary is doing with his sword in these descriptions. I don’t expect anyone to learn and apply this technique without having been there. It is listed as a reminder for those coached through the kata at Mountain Quest 2025.
I used to teach this a long time ago. But then I sensed that people could not really understand or grasp it. Anyway, here it
A friend wrote critically of codes and creeds in martial arts schools. He feels people just want fitness and self-defense and do not sign up
(A take on some thoughts from Dave Kovar) How would you breathe if you were totally calm and confident? Breathe like that. How would you
What is the biggest enemy we face? It may be fear. Fear that you will not know the right thing to do in an emergency.
Traditional martial arts training, back when martial arts prepared the practitioner for living accurately and safely, offers us a series of five states of mind
Some scholars have in the past ten years translated into English some of the ancient classic books of ninja reference. An-shu Rumiko and I never
After 50+ years of teaching martial arts, some things stand out. Let’s take a look at 12 bare-bones gotta-do-it To-Shin Do skills as minimal requirements.
I was asked how I define our work, and specifically, what makes the Quest Center To-Shin Do schools stand out. Here is what I ended
“An ant on the move is more powerful than a dozing ox.” – Lao Tzu Even though we start from humble beginnings, we can rise
Something I will be emphasizing in seminars this year is the differentiation between concepts, principles, and technique instructions. If our students know the concept of