Author: hessam101

Even though the experience spans over a quarter century ago, it has a Pavlovian effect that still elicits a response today. Moshvegh Sensei would run these ridiculously intense classes, and ten minutes before the end of class, just as we’re about to collectively collapse, he’d signal what we thought was a break. He’d excuse himself for a minute and reemerge onto the dojo floor, complete with bandana wrapped around his head. That bandana became the symbol of fear and hate, renown to all who trained with him. In his typical casual seriousness, he’d say, “Ok, recess time” and he’d proceed with an intense kumite session for the remainder of class. The ten remaining minutes of class felt like an hour. We were so tired, that we couldn’t move. Our legs felt like cement blocks, so all that remained was the spirit of a warrior with the weapon of a counterstrike. Their was no escape. Either attacker or defender, had to commit 100 percent to what little remained in the tank, otherwise it was certain (and painful) defeat.

As years went by, I began to understand the value of those haunted classes. Moshvegh sensei would mercilessly drill a technique during the previous hour or so of class, and then immediately pressure test it…and the fact that we were exhausted, became an advantage to us. You see, we’d be too tired for any extraneous movement, both physically and mentally so what remained was only technique, and efficiency of movement. Despite the fatigue, everything was clean and essential. Nothing was wasted, and nothing was left behind.

In my own training, I try to recreate those “bandana” moments through kata. Kata is nice and beautiful while the legs are fresh. It looks elegant and graceful, but do a heavy set of squats and leg presses followed by kata, and you get an entirely different experience. The stabilizer muscles that help in maintaining balance are shot. The mind and body are struggling with inputs of pain and finding shortcuts to escape the work needed. Eventually though, with enough fatigue, one will find the line of proper technique and efficiency of movement, and one will learn not to struggle against, but rather accept and surrender to the inputs presented, and work with/around it.

In the early days of my karate journey, I’d look upon kata as a strange activity that made no sense. It was like meeting a complete stranger with whom you shared nothing common with, and yet sensei would force those repeated, awkward interactions on you. After some time, those kata became strangers that you’d find curious and exotic, like a pretty girl who spoke a different language, or someone who was from a different culture that piqued your interest. I remember Tekki Shodan, and the last few moves of Bassai Sho to have those exotic elements of “coolness”. I couldn’t wait for sensei to introduce me to those kata.

With good training, and I was fortunate to have the best sensei, sensei would teach you the principles that guided your karate, and defined movement in its varying efficient, graceful, and powerful iterations. Sensei taught feeling, and with time, you’d feel. Less and less was his need to correct you, because the kata would tell you when something felt right, or wrong. From being a complete stranger, Kata became a teacher. It would be this teacher, who stopped you in your tracks and forced you to repeat movements till you got it right. It would be this teacher, that you would have a love/hate relationship with. It would be this teacher who would frustratingly demand perfection… but with persistence and patience, the relationship became more relaxed and intimate, in a casual sense. Kata became a friend in times of difficulty, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and joy. It became as much a source of exploration and discovery, as it would be, a source of entertainment. Even whilst performing the kata, the internal dialogue was like good friend’s advice…”Hey, coming up, you should feel such and such”, or, ” Hey, don’t neglect this part, as you focus on that part”. Feelings moved from the technical/physical, to the philosophical and spiritual realm.

After almost four decades of near consistent karate training, I am now beginning to feel that one becomes the kata, and the kata becomes you. What once coexisted with some element of struggle or duality, now exists as my companion. We are free of dialogue and advice, and there is no future, to be warned of. There is no story to be told, in the kata. Instead there’s a “present” where we just “are” . I suppose I, and kata, have accepted my flaws, and in turn we have accepted each other’s limitations. Now we just submit to what the universe gives us, and we are grateful for it. Kata, like life itself, had been one of the best gifts of my life.

Even though the experience spans over a quarter century ago, it has a Pavlovian effect that still elicits a response today. Moshvegh Sensei would run these ridiculously intense classes, and ten minutes before the end of class, just as we’re about to collectively collapse, he’d signal what we thought was a break. He’d excuse himself for a minute and reemerge onto the dojo floor, complete with bandana wrapped around his head. That bandana became the symbol of fear and hate, renown to all who trained with him. In his typical casual seriousness, he’d say, “Ok, recess time” and he’d proceed with an intense kumite session for the remainder of class. The ten remaining minutes of class felt like an hour. We were so tired, that we couldn’t move. Our legs felt like cement blocks, so all that remained was the spirit of a warrior with the weapon of a counterstrike. Their was no escape. Either attacker or defender, had to commit 100 percent to what little remained in the tank, otherwise it was certain (and painful) defeat.

As years went by, I began to understand the value of those haunted classes. Moshvegh sensei would mercilessly drill a technique during the previous hour or so of class, and then immediately pressure test it…and the fact that we were exhausted, became an advantage to us. You see, we’d be too tired for any extraneous movement, both physically and mentally so what remained was only technique, and efficiency of movement. Despite the fatigue, everything was clean and essential. Nothing was wasted, and nothing was left behind.

In my own training, I try to recreate those “bandana” moments through kata. Kata is nice and beautiful while the legs are fresh. It looks elegant and graceful, but do a heavy set of squats and leg presses followed by kata, and you get an entirely different experience. The stabilizer muscles that help in maintaining balance are shot. The mind and body are struggling with inputs of pain and finding shortcuts to escape the work needed. Eventually though, with enough fatigue, one will find the line of proper technique and efficiency of movement, and one will learn not to struggle against, but rather accept and surrender to the inputs presented, and work with/around it.

I was on the gurney, being wheeled in for surgery yet again, and fortunately I had come to know most of the surgical team. The lead surgeon turned to the new anesthesiologist whom I had just met for the first time, and told him I was a karate instructor. He looked down on me and knowingly asked with that telltale arrogant smirk…” Oh, so you do karate? Do you do it as an art, or as self defense?” The question itself was legitimate. The manner in which it was delivered, with judgement and dismissive intent was offensive. I could tell in his mind he was sizing me up. It was the typical arrogant, western macho bullshit. He wanted an answer that would cater to his ego. If I answered “art”, he’d dismiss what I did as useless and inferior to him and his understanding of karate, and if I answered “self defense”, he’d want to up the ante to prove something seemingly important in his eyes, and the eyes of his cohorts.

I’ve met plenty of self absorbed people, after all I’m a karate Sensei whose had his fair share of interactions with other instructors and students. From the outset of my karate journey, my goal has been to hammer down the ego (mine and others) through karate practice, in hopes of revealing and discovering one’s true self….That is karate-do to me. In the ensuing years, spotting the “façade”, as I call it, has become second nature. The deconstruction of the underlying hubris of assumption and intoxicating blindness, has become part and parcel of my life’s journey, not only in karate, but in almost all aspects of life, because I’ve been afforded the path less travelled.

So there I was, minutes away from putting my life in the doc’s hand, with a choice to either kowtow to his arrogance and reinforce his ignorance, or to resist status quo, and present an alternative narrative. I set a reflective pause before answering the doctor with a question. I said, “Between the two, which do you think is the more difficult endeavor, the art or the self defense?” He was taken aback. I could tell from the unravelling of his pseudo confidence that he had never been challenged, let alone ventured to think beyond what he had parroted from others. As he was fumbling for an answer, I hit him again with another question that left him with the proverbial deer in the headlights look….I said, ” between the two, which is ultimately more effective in achieving its intent of removing violence and bringing peace, the art, or self defense?”

It is crucial in this day and age, where we are fed an agenda serving narrative that has promulgated all aspects of our lives, be it media, politics, religion, and sadly even basic human interactions…it is crucial and an existential necessity to soberly deconstruct every assumption, and look at the reality of things with a beginner’s mind. Soon enough we will see that whom we accused of being the terrorist is actually the victim, and whom we celebrated as free and democratic was indeed only manipulating us to think so, so long as we towed their narrative.

The bane of my issues with running a professional karate-do dojo, has been exclusively two things that are closely related. One is examination, and the other is the outcome of examination. Refining/fixing the former, has solved all the issues I’ve experienced with students of the latter category. Let’s take a walk through memory lane…

Throughout my near forty year karate journey, I have done it all. Big tests in halls with hundreds of other students, testing in Japan, little venue tests, and then the Sensei Moshfegh test. We’ll get to that one later. All of the tests, save for Sensei Moshfegh’s, had one thing in common…they were standardized. As with all things standardized, one essentially prepares and learns… how to take the test. What begins to germinate from this process, is an artificialness that is buffered and supported by the ego since it is results oriented…results that are not truly reflective of knowledge, but rather of ability…and an ability that itself, is not even the yardstick for proper discernment. I tell my students….imagine if I, Picasso, and Van Goh were told to draw a straight line. Can this determine who the best artist is? Now imagine that I drew the straightest line because I practiced drawing a straight line, and I buy into the idea that I am the artist de jur amongst my peers, because this straight line examination validates my superiority over Picasso and Van Goh! Do you see the silliness of it all?

A colleague of mine, a fantastic martial artist in his own right, once asked if I could come and assist with testing his students alongside him, since he had spent months preparing his students. I obliged, and what I witnessed was a robotic performance, perfectly executed, but lacking personality . Even the personal ticks and body quirks that were specific to the instructor, was unnecessarily and inadvertently absorbed by the student! By objective, standardized measures, the test was a success; however, one could easily observe that a slight deviation from the standard would have completely left the students at a loss.

When Sensei Johnston and I started the kids program, he wanted something structured, and would test students every three months. I pushed it out to every four months, and once he passed, I combined the classes into adult classes, and I pushed testing further to every 6 months. Currently, testing is done once a year. Sensei’s idea was to keep the students motivated by dangling the carrot of promotion. I, however; was never satisfied with testing because it didn’t reflect the results I was looking for. The scope was too narrow, and unrepresentative.

Today, as I’m constantly looking to improve the quality of what students I’m taking in, and what I am delivering t0 them in return, I’m on the precipice of making a revolutionary decision that will upend even Sensei Moshvegh’s progressive testing ideas. It all stems from distilling what I require from my students, and all I require is two things. My students need to be able to follow instructions, and they need to sincerely enjoy karate-do. If these two requirements are present, there’s no need for carrots and motivation. There’s no need for testing, or kyu and dan ranking. Here, there’s no ego, no materialism, no artificial judgment. You come, you train, you take what you earned, you return home and you repeat. The old system was a closed system where arbitrary walls were erected, where someone was being suckered and someone was milking a system. It all played into a façade of self aggrandizement and monetary gain. Look, lets be honest. Even the dan system which was extended from 5th to 10th dan, was unnecessary. If your training is done correctly, there’s nothing new to learn beyond your 10th-15th (or 4th dan) year of training. All the other rankings including “renshi”, “hanshi,” “kyoshi”, “sushi”….whatever…is a good ole boys insecurity blanket of back slapping, and winks.

Since I promised to reveal Sensei Moshfegh’s testing methods, here goes. Sensei would simply have a conversation with you. He would ask you questions and you’d have to answer them. It was novel, and it was much better than the typical karate examination, because one was forced to rely on knowledge rather than dazzle with physical ability. The problem however, was that this too became a standardized examination, whereby one would parrot terms and ideas without really having internalized them.

Look, ultimately to each their own. I’m just being brutally honest, and changing the way my dojo and students present themselves to the world. Present your true face, and you’ve achieved infinitely more than those who live behind a façade.

We used to have a guest visitor from France. He was an older gentleman in his mid to late sixties, sixty-six to be exact, and he spoke a little English, albeit with a heavy French accent, so I’d end up being the intermediary between sensei and this gentleman, on account of my crude familiarity with the French language. The reality was that sensei would rope me into these engagements when he had little patience for them, and I too would reluctantly oblige, as the dutiful senior student. The stories about their clash of personalities, stemming from centuries of Franco/Anglican pride and resentment, epic as they were, is for another humorous blog, unto its own. For now, I’d like to discuss the illogical approach and expectations in karate organizations, as it pertains to a particular conversation between these two elder karateka.

Sensei had a particular disdain for the French karate association (FFKMA), stemming from an incident that occurred in the early 1970’s when France was hosting the WUKO world championships. I can’t recall the details, but it had to do with poor judging, and the English contingent walking out of the tournament. Of course, sensei had to bring this up to our guest, as if he was the poor soul responsible for all of France’s maladies. Anyways, this set the tone for much of the evening, an evening that including jabs at the French wine industry, British culinary ineptitude, the British navy, French bathing habits, and the general plebian nature of their counterpart’s respective countries. As the middle man, you can imagine how I was the recipient of all the verbal kicks and punches, but somehow in the lull of barrages, a consensus was arrived at…sort of. Whatever it was, it changed the trajectory of my vision of karate-do, and the need to be objective and practical.

Our friend from France was discussing testing procedures and requirements for his latest fourth dan examination. The federation had selected the kata Unsu for him, and to make a long story short, they failed him because at age 66 he was not able to perform the jump in the kata. Without conceding too much of their pride and egos, both sensei and our guest agreed that this was the wrong call. Sensei, for his part, thought that that kata should not have been chosen for a person of his age. I, on the other hand, after years of reflecting, and pondering on what was said that night, and tinkering with the kata over the years, have come to the conclusion that picking the kata was fine, but not having a more reasonable alternative for the jump, was the mistake.

The jump in Unsu has always been the topic of disagreements. Even in it’s modern incarnation, their are significant differences in execution (Nishiyma Sensei does the jump along with the tatto shuto/haishu and mikazuki geri to the rear, while the current JKA and SKIF does the tatto shuto and/or haishu and mikasuki geri to the front). Demonstrating a basic, realistic understanding of what is actually being done is also a thing of the past (No one today even attemps to connect the mikazuki geri to the haishu, they simply lift the leg for takeoff). Today’s Unsu jump is simply an exercise in athleticism. It has become a circus act, akin to monkeys jumping through hoops, with whichever monkey that jumps the highest, gets the most bananas! What’s the use of jumping when the practitioner has no visible understanding of martial application? What kind of stupid karate is this? I would much rather have someone physically demonstrate their understanding of karate technique with some adjustments, rather than have an acrobatics show with no martial value.

At 55, it has been probably five years, if not more, that I cannot execute the jump in Unsu. That doesn’t mean I have to throw Unsu out with the bath water. I execute the the movements as Nishiyama sensei did, without the jump and a slight adjustment. I use tatto shuto to the north, followed by hidden knee/kosa dachi, with haishu to the south, then I execute mikazuki geri, actually connecting the foot to the haishu. Some days, seemingly fewer and fewer in between, I can get a little lift off the ground, and sometimes I don’t…but I know exactly what I’m doing, and I have tested it’s practical application. The adjustments I’ve made, allow me to continue enjoying Unsu while being sincere to its intent. I’ll get my bananas elsewhere, thank you very much.

Over the past 8 months I’ve been working exclusively on two kata. For the the first 6 months, my kata was Sochin, and for the past two months, I’ve switched to Gojushiho Sho. Let me just take the opportunity here to say how happy I am not have to worry about entertaining students. In the past, doing one kata, and one kata only for 6 months, would have guaranteed an exodus of bored students. Today, it’s a combination of having the right students, and me not giving a f**k. The training reminds me of what I went through with sensei, and in the same order. When I met sensei, I met him, actually, because I wanted him to review and critique my Sochin. Well, he sure did! For the next three years, after almost every class, he taught and drilled me on Sochin! After developing a precise, yet thorough hatred for Sochin, Sensei picked yet another kata… Gojushiho sho. At the time, I thought this choice of kata was random, but nothing with sensei was ever random.

I have a student who has trained longer than I have, training in the same circle of instructors that I knew, but by his own admission he says kata was always just a respite for him, to catch his breath for kumite…and he has excellent kumite, even in his mid sixties! In his youth, he would always stand in the back of class, and half heartedly mimic the moves of kata without much thought, or interest. He did; however, recognize the beauty and aesthetic of Sochin, and it was his life long dream to learn the kata. So as the saying goes, serendipity led him to me, and we took on the same journey that sensei led me on, all those years ago…

Let me preface a little about this student. We’ll call him Columbo for the sake of this story. Columbo, is very intelligent, educated, and has had a successful professional career. He’s married to a lady from a different culture, so by default he has the innate intelligence to understand nuance, and the art of managing differences and expectations. Nonetheless, he comes across as a basic, no thrills, hunker down, black and white kind of guy…and yet he isn’t. To give you a better picture of who Columbo is, I’ll give you this example. His karate training from the beginning, had one purpose only…to fight, and to fight with spirit and efficiency. Though he lacks a tangible awareness of detail, it is all there within him. You can see this by his almost accidental, yet profound insights into his understanding of kata. One day, Columbo came to me after class and said, ” Sensei, Heian Shodan and Sochin feel like a father and son kata, except I can’t tell which one is the father and which one is the son.” I remain pleasantly astounded by this near perfect description of the relationship between these two kata!

After working on Sochin for months and months and then transitioning to Gojushiho sho, I asked Columbo what he felt, and liked about his two newly acquired kata. Columbo responded in his typical fashion. He said, “Sensei, you know me. I’m a simple guy, and I love Sochin. Sochin to me feels like…well…have you heard of city mouse and country mouse? Sochin is country kata and Gojushiho sho is city kata.” You can see that Columbo is not verbalizing or intellectualizing the intricacies of the two kata, but he has captured the feeling, the essence, of these two kata. Sochin is big movement. It is all there to be seen, where nothing can be hidden. It is direct. In your face. Gojushiho sho is more nuanced and movement must be revealed, testified to, and felt in its minutiae. The “movement” between the movements is where the dialogue is taking place.

A high ranking instructor I’d invite to teach from time to time, from a formerly reputable federation, once commented to my students that Gojushiho sho was a useless kata that had nothing in it. I thought to myself, that I have an infinite world of wonder just sitting in seiza, let alone when I journey through kata, how can it be that this “high” ranking guy cannot find anything in Gojushiho sho? I realized at that point that this fellow, despite his years of experience, missed the point of karate-do, and lacked insight and intelligence where it counted most. I promised myself never invite him again. Gojushiho sho is an intelligent, reflective man’s kata. It requires a man to set aside his pride and ego, to rediscover himself through humility, authenticity, and truth. Gojushiho sho is the dialogue between the soul and the self. It is the physical practice of the soul’s purification, encapsulated in moving zen.

A colleague of mine was emptying his garage in preparation for his impending new life as a retiree. He was, at some point in his career, working for a major Japanese auto manufacturer in their quality control department. He was part of a semi secretive team of engineers that would investigate mechanical and engineering failures in the vehicles, after the vehicles were released to the public. As he was cleaning out his garage, he came across a memorable file on a particular claim. This is his story…

A dealership had received a complaint of a broken front axle from a customer who had just recently purchased the vehicle. It was a hairline fracture, but nonetheless warranted a look from the engineers. Inquiries revealed that the new owner had driven the vehicle in a normal manner, and was not at fault. As the team continued to investigate the cause of this broken axle, more and more claims of the same nature began to emerge, from all over the country. The volume of damage was steadily increasing. It was not every vehicle, but a few vehicles every month were being tagged as defective, and it was adding up, creating a reliability and PR issue. The team of engineers looked into the possibility that the cars were being damaged as they were being unloaded from the trailer to the dealership lot. They even went to the port, to see if the axles were being damaged when the vehicles were being offloaded from the cargo ships. They couldn’t find anything. They went back to the drawing board, to see if there was a flaw in the engineering design of the axle. Still nothing. they were utterly stumped. after nearly a year of exhaustive investigation, the team of investigators were able to track the vin number of the damaged vehicles to one particular manufacturing plant in Japan. They further narrowed their scope to one line of assembly in the plant. The team of investigative engineers set up a recognizance, and quietly observed the assembly workers on that particular line to “sus” out any malicious intent. They still couldn’t find anything, until they finally narrowed the damage down to one assembly line employee. By all intents and purposes, this employee was doing everything by the book. He would assemble the parts, and per protocol, would use a rubber mallet to gently fit the parts, snuggly together. Upon interviewing the employee, the investigative team found out that this factory worker was also a karateka. The team further discovered that the way this individual was striking the mallet, was causing the hairline fracture in the axles. He wasn’t hitting it hard, he wasn’t doing anything on purpose. In fact, he had no idea he was the source of the broken axles, but the engineers discovered that the “karate technique” he was using to strike the axle with the mallet, was enough to create cracks in an otherwise robust axle.

I typically try to end my blogs with a lesson, or some beneficial wisdom. In this case, this is simply an interesting anecdote in the annals of a karateka, and JDM manufacturing . I don’t know what happened to that factory worker. Was he fired? Was he reassigned? All I know is that this story will always entertain my students.

I used to have a student we call Dory, named after the famed Disney animation character, with short term memory loss. She was called Dory, not so much for her inability to remember basic kata, but more insidiously for her penchant for repeatedly forgetting she was married, with kids. The running joke was that while her husband was out riding his fancy English sports car, she would be out riding dudes…and she, at least, would have a new ride every few months. All jokes aside, it was/is a gut wrenchingly, sad state of affairs (no pun intended).

We live in a world of greed and deception, and we manipulate and rationalize to feed the narcissism. We present intricate facades to divert and obfuscate from the truth. We try to control the narrative, and rationalize our illicit actions, to justify our behavior. “I love you” has become a euphemism for, “I want to use you”.   We even pin our debauchery to past “trauma” to excuse us, just in case we get caught. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

An elderly Kyudo (the art of archery) master once recounted his budo journey. He said in his youth, when he was on the national team, all that mattered for him was hitting the mark. He trained so hard that his hands would turn black. He was consumed with technique and outcome. However, after many years of that hard, controlled training… at a point organically derived, perhaps due to the fatigue of carrying that burden, he gave up on being conscious of the outcome. Contrived technique fell by the wayside, and what remained was his humanity, expressed in the beauty of his art. Free from the need to acquire and control, his true expression…love, presented itself for all to experience. To those judging with the eye, he may have appeared as a novice, not yet able to hit the target. For those who see with the heart though, the scale is not material, but rather transcendental.

You see, we have two “Dorys” here. One who purposefully “forgets”, in an effort to acquire….acquire male attention, acquire ego driven validation, acquire some material or physical gain, often at the expense of someone else (a husband, the wellbeing of one’s kids and family, the other dude, etc…) and ultimately at one’s own expense… and then you have the real Dory. The real Dory, like the Kyudo master, forgets all that he/she has amassed, and is free from the burden of material gain and societal norms. the former Dory fills her cup, the latter empties it. The former is never satiated, the latter always feels content, united and present in divine purpose.

Can art be taught? Can humanity be taught? In my humble opinion these things are experienced. What is taught is only the material stuff, the stuff that eventually has to be cast away. Let your art, be it karate-do, kyudo, judo…whatever it is that has meaning and beauty for you…let it be the Dory that finds peace and beauty in relinquishing…in surrendering…. to our original, natural disposition. Our “fitra”, as it is called.

Not unlike most of today’s confused, and dysfunctional American bred women… and men, Karate-ka tend to obfuscate oi-tsuki and kizami-tsuki. Today we’ll give clear guidance to explain what characteristics separate the two, and the borders where each technique should reside. Just a quick note for those argumentative, cackling hens… we are talking fundamental rules here. I know there are exceptions to the rules…that’s why they call them “exceptions”, so please don’t bring up the exception.

A traditional oi-tsuki is defined as a stepping technique whereby the straight punch is delivered on the same side as the stepping foot AND the hips remain in shomen when delivering the technique. A step, silly as it might sound, is defined as one foot being behind another, and subsequent to the step, end ups in front of the foot it was trailing. The power of the oi-tsuki is derived from the forward momentum generated by the step. A kizami-tsuki, on the other hand (or foot…bad dad joke alert), refers to a jabbing technique where a full step is not taken, but the front foot can slide forward to deliver a jabbing punch while the hips are in hanmi position. A slide, silly enough, is defined as one foot being in front of the other and sliding slightly more forward subsequent to the slide. The power of the kizami-tsuki is generated by the rotation of hips since not enough forward momentum is generated by the silde. There’s much more invovled in generating power in the two respective techniques, but for our discussion here, this basic framework will suffice. The former technique is considered as a thrusting technique, while the latter is a snapping one.

So where is the dividing line…the border where the borderline personality of both techniques meld together? It is in shizen-tai. From this natural stance where the feet are parallel, one can deliver a technique in front stance that is either shomen (oi-tsuki), or hanmi (kizami-tsuki). If one foot is even one inch behind, or forward, it must become oi-tsuki with all the characteric personality of an oi-tsuki, or…kizami-tsuki with all the characteristic personality traits of kizami-tsuki.

I hope I, as your karate-do therapist, have given you the tools to show you the right steps, so you too can tread with clarity, as you march forward in life with single minded focus.

I had a student…a fairly good student, very intelligent, who once accused me of purposefully pitting siblings together in sparring, knowing full well that they would end up bickering. He was correct. Sadly, his insight ended there.

Sparring for me has one main component. How one carries oneself. It needs to have reciprocal decorum. All too often I’ve seen one side escalate at the expense of the other, in an effort to dominate, and exhort superiority, to satisfy the ego. That’s not the goal of sparring. It might be the goal of fighting…I don’t believe it is, but it’s definitely not the goal of sparring. Sparring is simply an exchange of technique done for one’s partner, not to one’s partner. There’s a sense of giving here. One forsakes one’s self for the benefit of the other, and it is reciprocated. This is sacrifice. This is love. There is no outcome of victory or defeat. Victory comes when both sides can exhibit selflessness and justice.

So yes, I do pit siblings and spouses together because in those relations, the veils of propriety are removed. There is no fake niceties as you’d initially have with a stranger. And yes it’s fake because within 30 seconds the egos kick in and one becomes privy to the uncivilized cock fight that is labeled sparring in most dojos. I digress. With siblings and spouses truth is exposed, so I watch, and I observe to see who can give with love and justice, and who can forgive the occasional lapses by sacrificing their body and ego, whilst being just.

Why do I do this? Because the goal of karate-do for me, is to build myself and my students into characters like my heroes on the plains of Karbala. Study this for yourself, and hopefully you too will come to understand what the peak of eloquence is, and how far we have strayed from the truth. In our modern world we have chosen greatness over goodness….ego over love.

More than a decade ago, perhaps even two, I went to visit a Japanese art exhibit in San Francisco with sensei. Of the many notable moments to me on that trip, was me commenting on the less than perfect condition of the porcelain tea and ramen bowls. Sensei explained how the bowls that are repaired, are actually more valuable than their original form, and that an entire art and beauty existed behind their repair and imperfection.

Karate-do is in many ways also, nothing but the art of repair and healing, the art of self therapy. It can be viewed as the art of Kintsugi (golden joinery), in human form.

The nature of traditional karate-do, with its precision and technical complexities and details, and our own human limitations and frailties, will never allow for perfection of technique… but their exists a beauty in acknowledging and accepting one’s imperfections, and lovingly tending to them. With a beginner’s mind, and the constant effort one puts forth in attaining technical excellence through repeated repetition and failure, one begins to bare the physical and emotional scars, and the marks of healing. The joinery left behind becomes a reminder and need, of not only our humility, frailty, impermanence, and fallibility… but also the hope, resilience, strength and loving acceptance of who we are. Nothing could be more golden than that.

Ok. It’s time to be very blunt. Hopefully the young men (and some older) will learn whom to stay away from like the plague, and women will take heed to not ruin their future. I believe I have enough experience, both direct and indirect to make these observations.

In the past, I have used karate-do as an analogy, hinting at how life mimics karate-do. I have mentioned, for example, the student who would come to me and tell me they wanted to train at another dojo and mine simultaneously…or the student who would get all his information from YouTube videos, only to use the dojo as his personal testing grounds rather than trusting the teaching and leadership of his sensei. I have also mentioned the student who wanted to do certain things, but avoid the more unpleasant (in his mind) aspects of karate practice. I have mentioned the students who were there to get attention rather than to get soberly acquainted with themselves to improve their lives. I have mentioned the student who was financially well off, but felt he shouldn’t need to pay karate dues. The list goes on and on. But It’s time to call a spade, a spade.

If you are a wife and you are not loyal to your husband, you are not a good wife. If you are a wife and you are not having sex with your husband (I mentioned this in a previous post) like the one out of every four Western/American wives, you are not a good wife. If you are a wife and you put your happiness and pleasure, above and at the risk of your family, you are not a good wife. If you are a wife, and you have a male friend that you hang out and communicate with independent of your husband, you are not a good wife. Either your “friend” is the backup, or your husband is. If you dress in a way that you show your body form to anyone except your husband, you are not a good wife. I knew someone that was trying to tell me she dressed conservatively and appropriately, while parading around in yoga pants! Get real. No husband wants another guy gawking at their wife’s ass, and if a woman needs that kind of affirmation and attention from guys other than her husband…you guessed it, she’s not a good wife. If you don’t allow your husband to lead, you are not a good wife. I am all for communicating and consulting your wife, and others, but the end decision, especially when it comes to your husband’s concerns, is the husband’s…he is the one who leads and protects his domain and the family. If you bring masculine traits to your relationship because you feel men and women are the same, you are a dim witted wife. Know that sameness and equity…equality and equity are not interchangeable. Men have strengths, and women have strengths that should complement each other, not compete with each other. A wife’s strengths and beauty are in her femininity and nurturing nature, not in her brashness to be and act like men. Finally, If you claim to be a follower of the truth, or of the people of the book (Jews and Christians) and you are not submitting to your husband per your faith, you are not only not a good wife, but a liar . Don’t take some parts of your religion and discard the others, if you are a true believer. And last but not least, it goes without saying…If you cheat on your husband, you are, to put it generously, not a good wife. Your problems are much bigger than that. You need to either leave the marriage, or fix all of the above, and more.

Know what you bring to the table. This life is short, and youth and good looks fade quickly, but character is something one can count on. Just as there’s good, solid karate and karate one would be ashamed of, there are good girls… and sadly, good time girls. May we all be aware, choose wisely, and may we all strive to be better.

In a few days time, Sensei would have turned 86. To say I miss him dearly, is a huge understatement. One of my treasured memories of Sensei was listening to him talk about his time as a Zen practitioner. He would recount the difficulties of the Zen retreats with daily, 6 hour plus sessions of meditation…a feat he readily admitted to being much harder than anything he experienced as a karateka. Some evenings, when it would be just me and him, he would drop gems of Zen knowledge that would shift one’s way of thinking and perception. I’d encourage sensei to share what he shared with me, with the rest of the class, but he always shied away. Not that he was shy. He just knew who had the intelligence and the openness to be receptive.

Sensei’s criteria for keeping students and teaching them, was Shoshin, The beginner’s mind. If you came to learn karate, he would teach. If you had other ideas, he’d chase you out. I’ve pursued the same philosophy, and have enhanced it to include openness beyond just the physical teachings of karate-do. You see, where sensei feared to lose students, I don’t. The beginner’s mind is not limited to what meets the eye in the dojo. Karate-do as most people know it, is only the gateway. There’s an entire universe of awareness and discovery to be had in that little, tucked away, humble dojo…but a mind that’s closed or limited…deaf, dumb, and blind, as they say, will never experience it.

What I encourage my students to do, is to question, and in that process there’s a struggle. A struggle against one’s own arrogance, one’s own comfort, one’s own narcissism, and the lies that one has been fed. It’s not an easy struggle….not with me at the helm. What I present to my students requires not only the determination to reflect and study, but also the courage to engage intelligently, and discuss core truths without cutting and running, or shutting down. Ultimately, if the heart is sincere and the fighting spirit is present, then one has either confirmed their path with thoughtful conviction, or one needs to change course. Either way, regardless, one has to constantly ask or remind themselves respectively….Why am I here? What am I doing? Where am I going? This is the spiritual pursuit of karate-do. It is a long, methodical, thinking man’s journey. True karate requires intelligence, reflection, purity of intent, and a sincere heart.

The students that I have today are few in number, but they are truth seekers in the fullest, most comprehensive terms. They do not settle for the status quo. They keep seeking, and searching, and questioning. They know there is a calling and a return beyond what meets the eye, and their struggle of karate-do is simply the physical manifestation of their inner struggle for truth and peace. And when they get there… these are the fighters one wants by one’s side.

President Johnson was once interviewed and he commented something to the effect that, the Vietnam war was lost because the North Vietnamese soldier would sit for as long as it took in a fox hole while the American soldier, after 20 minutes, would need to get up and go for a smoke.

In our affluent suburb in Orange county, we see the same. We have kids, incapable of fulfilling a task without being entertained, or without causing some sort of disruption by bringing negative attention to themselves. In adults, we see an inability to follow direction and an assumption that they know better, by doing something other than what is prescribed. I can’t tell you the number of times a student, be it an adult or a child, has come up to me asking if we can open the windows, or close the windows, or if we can do something “fun” in class, or asking me not to pair them up with a particular student. Just the mere fact that a student asks what we will be doing in class, is enough to know we have lost the war.

If any of you follow MMA, you’ll know the Muslim Dagestani fighters, chief among them Khabib Noormagedov. Outsiders who have observed their training camps have commented that the reason for their success, is that they have a no nonsense approach to life. All they do is pray, train, attend to family. They don’t drink. They don’t party. They don’t swagger in with pink and blue dyed, funky hair styles. They don’t bring attention to themselves, except through their devotion to the task at hand. Most camps have sparring on certain days. They don’t. Whatever is presented to them, they face and they don’t complain.

My dojo, is not a fighting dojo. Not because we can’t, but because we have not achieved the first step….the art of fortitude. Sparring when students don’t have self discipline… when students have not fully trusted their teacher, leader, sensei…is akin to sending those American soldiers to Vietnam and expecting them to do what war requires. No responsible sensei would do such a thing. It is a recipe for the disaster that has created the downfall of shotokan karate, and its merits and potential as an effective method of self defense, and as a spiritual path, and way for inner peace.

The only way back to the straight path, is submission. This is true in religion, this is true in karate. Get rid of the ego, get rid of the sense of self entitlement, and follow exactly what is told. In that struggle, there is an art. It is the art of fortitude. It is the art of Shotokan.

Let me start by saying that I am first in line for the forthcoming ruminations. Never do I absolve myself, and if I fall seven, I’ll get up eight, and keep striving in the path of sincerity and truth. But truth is a funny thing. We conflate and distort buzzwords and catch phrases from the ether, for truth. We call it “my truth”. Nothing speaks louder of fear and hypocrisy than this.

There is a real “my truth”, but that is a variance of at best 2%, from the universal truth. The other “my truth” that everyone flings around in their consciousness is actual bullshit. It is the excuse.

“Inside and outside must be same”…I say this to my boys, in my now infamous karate master persona, with appropriated looks and accent. I say it to them jovially, but I am dead serious. Unless you fear for your life, or are trying to reconcile two people for the greater good, what you present to the outside world must reflect your inside. Be firm, and don’t worry about being judged. Those who do, go the other way. They are lost. They parrot from the ether, to fill the void of their inside.

We are all created equal, with the same purpose, and the journey that we travel has the same destination. The straight path to the destination is truth…not “my truth”, but truth. Truth has some inconveniences and struggles. It requires being firm, being patient. It requires striving, and self sacrifice. “My truth”, on the other hand, is a fine tuned machine to bypass those tests, in favor of one’s insecurities and egoic, selfish desires.

The karate-do journey must also reflect the same truth. “Inside karate, must be same as outside karate”. It must be pure, otherwise it is for show, or for some other insecurity that derails one’s path of self discovery and self improvement. Your karate is for you, not for anyone else. It is a tool to align inside and outside, both physically and emotionally. If your karate has become material, something that you hold on to, you have lost your way. If your life has become material, something that you hold on to, you have also lost your way.

You have to know what you are doing. I mean that in more than one way. The problem with standardization is that it dummies the practitioner down, and in the process one loses the little gems of karate that really define it. I had a student whom after visiting an instructor elsewhere, thought we were doing the two back to back techniques after ude uke in bassai dai, incorrectly. He saw someone else doing it a particular way and without questioning or reflecting, he simply made up his mind, that that one way, was the only correct way. I don’t blame him. That particular instructor had probably never reflected, and simply copied his instructor…and hence we get the sorry state of affairs that is karate today. I had to explain to the student that many schools, in fact most, consider the technique after the rather grand ude uke, to be uraken uchi and as such their fist rests below the elbow in that technique, while our school considers the move as “uchi uke”. In other words, the ude uke catches a kick, and the following “uchi uke” throws the leg away, therefore we do not leave our fist below the elbow.

So you can see how application drives technique, yet many find this concept heretical to their dogmatic upbringing. And yet it is there in the most basic of stances and blocks. We have the standard front stance…and oh God forbid…we have a narrow front stance, or a stance that breaks posture as in the yama zuki in bassai dai! Or we can pick from at least half a dozen ways of doing rising block or front kick, each suited for a particular defense, and yet we turn a blind eye to its very existence in kata. I’m not saying standardization is bad. No. It is necessary. It provides a base and foundation that is of existential importance to karate; however, one must not blindly follow and have a soul less, robotic, one size fits all, let me not strain my intellect too much, karate either. And in fact, standardization can be detrimental in some cases. Take for example the last move of hangetsu kata. One has a tai sabaki followed by a pushing block (not a striking block) in cat stance. If the application of the move is to push something down, for example the back of the head, or gouging the eyes of someone shooting for you, then the standard, erect back, cat stance is a terrible idea. The better technique for that application would be to lean the upper body forward to apply weight and pressure…and I hate to make it clear like this because it furthers the standardization argument by creating yet another one…but for the sake of visualization, let me say… a Kanazawaesque cat stance.

Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that karate, like life, is not a one size fits all so I can cruise on automatic pilot and get by with minimum effort. To get to the gems of life, one must reflect and consider all the alternatives, and then apply the best technique to one’s perception of the challenges at hand…know what you’re doing, and why. Sometimes we’ll get it right, and sometimes we won’t, but at least we’ll own it.

Back in the last decade of the last century, before the dawn of “You Tube” and other internet based platforms, we were essentially beholden to the knowledge of our sensei. Yes, there were books and the odd seminar to corroborate technique, but those were not as readily accessible as the tools that we have at our fingertips today. I can clearly recall my own unscientific methods of keeping technical integrity… I would accept only techniques which overlapped between my current sensei and previous sensei. Any novel concept was viewed with much suspicion, and really was adopted only after much reflection and research…on “You Tube”!

If memory serves me correctly, You Tube came about somewhere in the middle of the first decade of the new millennium…shortly after I met sensei Johnston. I recall struggling with sensei’s concept of the direct hip rotation, when performing forward moving shuto uke in kokutsudachi…as we do in the kata Bassai Dai. It was novel. I had never heard of it, and stubborn me refused to adopt it. Sensei was so patient with me, I am guessing because he knew that I had a need to really believe before I could sincerely accept. For my part, I would quietly practice his move outside of the dojo. I’d think, and play with the concept, and play back his reasonings for doing the move unlike anyone I had ever met before. Then one day, as I was browsing through old black and white footage of Funakoshi sensei on You Tube, I saw it. There it was! The “novel” concept of direct rotation being performed before my eyes, by none other than the father and founder of shotokan karate! The very next day, I accepted and adopted the technique, and have since incorporated it in my own teaching and application to kata.

What followed from that discovery, was a frenzied desire to discover more and more. I’d constantly approach sensei with new found discoveries on a slew of techniques, most of which he’d patiently listen to and rebut with his two favorite lines…”Hessam, you think too much”, and “Hessam, don’t try to reinvent the wheel”. And he was absolutely correct.

Herein lies the double edged sword of technology. While there’s access to information that can lead to deeper knowledge, there’s also too much information that can inundate the integrity of one’s pursuits. What was once the bread butter of technique…simple, broad, efficient and generally effective, becomes the artisan version technical snobbery…complex, convoluted, and only effective in certain minority conditions. It becomes, really a pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake or worse yet, for ego’s sake. It takes karate-do practice away from its intended purpose, to entertainment…in this case intellectual entertainment. As sensei would often say… “you can’t learn karate from a book”, and as I say to my students, “you can’t learn karate from You Tube”. At some point one has to put the pontification aside, and one has to simply “do it”. Don’t think too much, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just do, and just be.

Tomorrow marks the sixth year of your passing. I have had a lot of people come and go in my life. With most, the missing subsides after a few a months. With you and a select few others of my family, the void has remained, and the irony is, I take solace in that void which reminds me, almost daily of your presence.

The dojo is doing well by our metrics. Both of us never cared for the commercial side, and therefore we were unclouded in our assessment of who truly wished for shoshin. Me more so than you. I know you had to endure students…pick up check as you would jokingly say…fortunately, I was in a more favorable (or stubborn) position. I know one of your big concerns prior to leaving, was that people would take advantage of my soft side. You’d often say politely, to “be disengaged”…and then again towards the end you said it directly…”Don’t take shit from anyone”. I’m happy to report that in spite of all, I didn’t take shit from anyone, and you’d be very proud of the stances I took.

What kept you and I, as different as we were, so connected, was our serendipitous connection to the internal truth of karate-do, a truth that between us was individually and inherently different… yet the mere fact that it was tapped, is what set us apart from others, and on that lonely journey. It has become my understanding that the dojo you left me, was you telling me that it was now my turn to lead the journey of solitude. It was never about the students and numbers, or keeping the legacy going as I envisioned. Those who didn’t want shoshin, or couldn’t access the internal truth, I let go, sensei. I know you would concur and approve. You would have rather had one good student, than a room full of “pick up checks”. I vividly recall almost 20 years ago, when you went to London for a month long trip, and you handed me the dojo keys to run it in your absence. My only desire at the time was that you would return, without me having lost any of your students. Twenty years later, I find I am chasing away students, much like you did. How our understandings change as we mature and grow! To be fair, I haven’t yet met another student, or high ranking sensei for that matter, with that elusive “internal truth” quality, and perhaps I never will. I have given up on looking for it in others.

Sensei, I know you had asked Mark and Jeff to help and support me when you were gone. I want you to know that while they have come several times, I have never taken a penny from the camps we set up. It was my way of returning the support, and supporting them, and the other students. You know I’d be too protective to allow anyone in that space. You’d be amused to know that sensei Yaguchi has left ISKF. A few years back I did a seminar with Yaguchi sensei, and frankly speaking, I was not impressed at all. That’s been the case with every sensei I’ve met since having you as my sensei. I remember complaining to you about Ohta sensei and Pich sensei, when I was going through my divorce in London. I couldn’t wait to get back to training with you. No sensei has come close to inspiring me me like you do. And you still do. Yesterday I was at the dojo, and working the bag. I had one of those light bulb moments that I would constantly get from you when you’d teach. Words that you spoke to me years ago, came flooding back and I had a new epiphany, a new awareness, a new discovery. Those far and few gems that you’d drop, that would reinvigorate my karate training. I thank you sensei. I want you to know that you are still present with me. I feel your presence to the core. When I walk into your room at the dojo, it still smells of your fragrance. After my workouts, I leave my belt right next to yours, until the next training…and crazy as it sounds, that one time soon after my surgery…I was going through a rough patch, so I came to the dojo as I usually do, to reflect and do kata. I saw you. I saw you sitting in your favorite chair in the corner. You were in your black sweats, and you were observing. It freaked me out at first, and I kept looking over to you. Each time I looked, it was undeniably you. You had your arms folded as you usually did. You were silently encouraging me with your presence to keep going, telling me everything would be okay, and just when my nerves and fears subsided, just like that, you were gone. I want to thank you sensei. You gave me the greatest gift of curiosity and love for karate-do. You taught me the right way…the shoshin way, and I have never stopped learning, feeling, at applying the lessons and mistakes, to my own growth and healing. I want you to know that I am doing well, and that shoshin is alive and well and on the right track. I believe, most humbly, that you would be proud. May you rest in peace, sensei. I miss you. I love you. I can’t wait to see you again. Oss.

I don’t know why I bother doing this. It’s more frustrating to me than to others, because others are blissfully unaware. I recently told an esteemed friend and sensei, that I was free from not to having to care anymore for students. Students who weren’t worth caring for. Why put in the effort towards a dead end road ahead, I explained? For me, the last part of the puzzle is this article. I still recall the animated frustration of my sensei, as he would reveal the long held stupidity of certain technical movements. Like me, he’d get exasperated, throw up his arms and just walk off, incredulous that people were like sheep when it came to an art that they proclaimed was so deeply important and impactful to them. He in fact (again like me) wrote an article about the first move of the first kata, Heian Shodan. I’ve promised myself not to fall into sensei’s frustration trap. Perhaps I’m more selfish and lacking patience, wishing to be free of pointless engagements with less critical thinking people.

At a recent seminar, I heard a sensei proclaim that in the kata Sochin, whilst moving into the second move of the kata, the hip should remain at shomen. This is a typical refrain from most karateka who have heard it and adopted it it without much thought, just as they’ve blindly accepted that the first move of Heian Shodan should be a reverse rotation of the hips (See the article: Heian Shodan and the karate expert). I am not saying that they are wrong and I am right. That’s a futile and pointless exercise in dogma. What I am asking, is what I ask of all my students….to look and reflect and ponder the possibility that something else could also be true. That the narrative we’ve been feeding ourselves, and comforting ourselves with, may not be the entire story. The other point I’d like to stress is that there are gradations. Not everything is black or white. Not everything is shomen or hanmi. Hanmi has degrees of hanmi. Take the first move of Sochin. One is not in shomen, in sochin dachi….and yet one is not in a full hanmi either. it is a slight hanmi. Continuing from there, if one’s hips are natural (relaxed), as the feet come together for the second move, the hips are again at a slight hanmi. The body is straight, it must remain straight, but the hips are ever so slightly in hanmi, and when the move is completed, it is in gyaku hanmi.

Am I splitting hairs? Possibly. But to me Heian Shodan and Sochin are mirror kata’s of deep discovery and refinement, really of the self. And as sensei would often say, words matter. How one teaches, microscopically, makes a difference over the course of time. How else did we get from Heian Shodan being direct rotation to reverse rotation? There’s nothing fancy to hide in both Heian Shodan, or Sochin. The truth is there. It is bared, and if one is aware and reflects….one feels. This is karate-do. Be compassionately critical of your life.

Karate-do can be very beautiful. There’s a visual grace and fluidity… a power and drama that belies it’s intended purpose. One can easily be mesmerized by its aesthetically tranquil, peaceful flow. For those of us unfortunate enough to need to defend ourselves though, karate is anything but beautiful. It is ugly, devoid of grace, and the only peace one gets, is the peace that one was genuinely lucky to survive the outcome.

There’s a time for beauty, and love, and peace. But there’s also a time to contain, neutralize, and fight for yourself and loved ones. As men, it is in our genetic make up to protect; however, one’s fundamental character trait shouldn’t change when switching from peace to war. One’s intent certainly does, but know that if a person abuses or exceeds the limits in containing the threat, that person was flawed to begin with. A person’s response should always be concomitant to the war, or peace presented before him.

The phenomena of switching from peaceful to warrior and back again, takes place all the time. We all do it. I’ll give you two real examples of varying degrees, in areas that you may not be expecting…

You have a kid who is struggling with let’s say geometry, and it’s affecting his wellbeing and confidence. You go into lock down mode and find a tutor, or talk to the teacher, or try to help him yourself, or let him drop out of the class after a period of time….whatever it is, you see a threat and you contain it. We’ve all had these micro “threats” that forced us to switch gears and intensity temporarily, to solve a “problem”.

You have cancer that requires surgery. Simultaneously, your seventeen year old son is going through a severe existential threat after losing his best friend to suicide… and a pedophilic, married person tries to take advantage of the situation by using her own kids to get close to yours, to attempt to groom him.

This is no time to be peaceful. You’ll go into a hyper alert war mode, and stop or neutralize that threat to protect your son and family! That’s just what you do, no questions asked. You drop everything, give up body, and fight like hell. Peaceful, is the last thing on your mind! Peaceful is what the opposing side wants and hopes for, so they can continue their depravity! You give them the exact opposite.

But once the threats of cancer, your son’s life threatening vulnerabilities, and the deranged predatory actions of an unsuspecting middle-aged woman are dealt with… go back to a peaceful yet vigilant existence. There’s no need to do anything else. Your job is to be the protective shell, to the pearl that is your loved ones. That’s it. Return to being that beautiful clam shell that’s hard and protective on the outside, but smooth and comforting to its pearl on the inside. Remember, one’s response is always positively correlative, and proportional to the threat. There’s no need for retribution, but there is a need to forgive, be aware, and to restore peace and equilibrium.

So, do beautiful karate in the dojo. Feel the peace, and bask in it’s beauty that you create…but be ready and willing to make it ugly, when you need to. Sometimes war. Sometimes peace. There’s a time and place for everything, so long as you return to peace.

My dojo purposefully omits the name “Shotokan”, because Funakoshi sensei wished the same for his dojo. His intent, I presume, was to prevent the polarization of karate schools through segmentation and fragmentation of styles. The truth; however, is a little more nuanced that this. Funakoshi sensei did have a style of his own. Proof of this is that he borrowed kata from Shito Ryu’s Mabuni sensei, and adapted it to his version and vision of karate-do.

It is important to keep to the fundamentals of a particular style, because sometimes techniques are taught and practiced in opposing ways. Some styles, Inoue-ha Shito Ryu for example, teaches to land on the heal or rear third of the foot, while Shotokan teaches to land on the ball or front third of the foot. Or, as an example, old school Okinawan styles may advocate to step first then strike, while some other styles, Shotokan included, teach to strike slightly ahead of the foot settling. Now I understand this last example may also be a timing issue that is situation dependent, and that one should never adopt a “this way only, all the time” dogmatic view, but you can see how building a framework requires picking a lane and sticking with it, as they say. Fundamentals are so important, that if neglected, you’ll see someone with even decades of training, lacking the solid foundation that yields clean, polished, karate. Each style of Karate speaks a certain language, and if we diligently stick to the ethos of that sensei’s way, we can hear the language clearly. Don’t conflate this with athleticism. Don’t let the eyes fool you. See if the body mechanics and body language is conveying that style’s philosophy, particularly in its basics and fundamentals. Incidentally as a side note, this is one reason why I am opposed to tournament style kumite. It is at best, a failed attempt at fitting a square peg into a round hole. It doesn’t fit the ideals of self defense, nor the fundamental techniques of Shotokan karate. And unsurprisingly, you’ll see those who lack solid fundamentals, push and espouse for kumite (I would begrudgingly give an exception to old school shobu ippon kumite).

While I teach karate…when I look at my students, I have to predominantly see the Shotokan in them. If I see only karate, it is as if they are speaking out of both sides of their mouth. Like religion, like relationships, like karate… to be able to succeed, one needs to know and ply a clear cut way. The steps for awareness and progress must be communicated systematically, so students can go back or move forward with clarity and accountability. And finally, a reasoning should be presented so that people don’t blindly follow, but accept truth with free will and volition.

Anything other than submission and commitment to the fundamentals, is a wandering silliness, that only a fool would take seriously.

I was speaking to a very attractive, middle aged lady who was telling me what she wanted in a potential suitor. She said she wanted to travel, and enjoy fine dining, that her love language was receiving gifts and compliments, and she wanted someone who wouldn’t tell her what to do because she didn’t like to be controlled. Before she could continue, I stopped her in her tracks and said, “lady, you’re not looking for a suitor, you’re looking for a sucker. You want someone to spend on you so you can enjoy all the things you want to enjoy, and if he says peep, you want him to shut up so you can continue controlling him, and keep on using him.” Needless to say, my blunt approach was received with some sort of fake indignity, and the fastest ghosting in the history of ghosting!

Sadly, many people are like this. I knew a married lady whose husband provided for her and her kids, exquisitely. She didn’t have to work, she was taken on exotic vacations, went to the best restaurants, she drove a fancy car, the kids went to private school… you name it. And what did the hard working husband get in return? Nothing! The woman wouldn’t even give the most minimal of wifely pleasures to the poor guy…for 15 years he was sleeping alone! I don’t know the specifics of the husband, if he has others providing for his needs, but, if he were aware and had courage, he would have kicked her to the curb years ago.

For me, it’s about three months (mind you, it works both ways) for my partner to make me feel like I’m a priority again, before I start looking elsewhere and shutting her down. I’m not being braggadocios. This is just the way men work. If they aren’t getting it from you, they are getting it elsewhere. No excuses, no exceptions. I had cancer, in hospital, organs removed, and I was delicately charming with the nurses. Sensei was given two weeks to live, and I saw with my own two eyes his valiant attempt at wooing his female oncologist! 15 years??Really?? Don’t be a sucker. When you see someone is just a taker, don’t allow them to manipulate and control you like that.

And the real lesson here is not about specific people. People come and go. Most are not worthy. But the lesson here is that the taker is the one who ultimately loses. How many times have we lamented the small business that no longer stands? The little café that we used to frequent, that can no longer afford our cozy, intimate encounters? The sensei and dojo who was such an integral part of our lives, has closed his or her heart and doors to us…or the love and light of friendships that no longer shine due to our own greed? Reflect on this deeply as you train karate. Are you a giver or a taker? If the balance of the equation is on the former, you will grow. If it’s on the latter, you will blindly venture into your own loss. It’s hard to be selfless, but believe me what it pays in respect and dignity is immeasurable.

Two events came across my mind, as I opened my latest email from Italy. The first was years ago, when I was training with sensei Moshfegh. I had been training with sensei for some time, and he had a Japanese student who was returning from a long sojourn from Tokyo. The Student did not speak English, and I of course, did not speak Japanese. When I entered the dojo the customary half hour before the start of class, I sensed sensei wanting me to introduce myself to his student, who was busy diligently practicing kata at the center of the dojo . There was a moment of truculence as sensei was trying to find the words, and best way to make the introduction, but to sensei’s surprise, I walked right past him and placed myself next to his student, and began practicing his kata. Move by move, we worked together, and other than the brief visual connection we made when I first set up beside him, nothing was said, and focus remained on kata. One kata repeated over and over again led to another kata, and yet another. I could feel the connection between me and him as we synchronized movement, timing, and rhythm. Natural tension slipped into relaxed familiarity. Sensei called out the five minutes that we had before class would start. Me and my new friend, stopped, we bowed to each other, and I took leave for a sip of water at the fountain. As I walked past sensei to the water fountain, he looked at me incredulously. I smiled, and told him (in hindsight, with incredible presumptiveness) that kata was the language of friendship.

The other event took place with sensei Johnston. My sensei. Sensei and I were out for lunch, and we were sitting and discussing an upcoming camp. I had taken it upon myself to organize and galvanize as many interested karateka as I could, to join in on our free weekend karate camp and seminar. As sensei sensed my dejected mood, I proceeded to tell him that whilst most karateka from other styles had expressed genuine interest and friendship, karateka from our own style either outright rejected the invitation without consideration, or had some panicked, defensive reaction, as if I was violating some unwritten non compete clause that was robbing them of some imaginary…something. Sensei, in his typical calmness (although I had learned to read him well by then, and could see his disgust at the pettiness of others) said, “Hessam, if the intention is correct, they will come and they will benefit. If it is not, they lose and we don’t have to deal with the headache. It’s a win, win, win situation.” He smiled his famous beaming smile, and proceeded to enjoy his al dente vegetables.

This brings me back to my email from Italy. About a year prior to the Covid pandemic, in early 2018, I received an email in Italian. It was karate related, but since I do not speak Italian, I had no idea what it was about. I could have ignored it. I could have responded negatively or sophomorically, but I didn’t. I responded with purity and kindness…with my true nature…which is everyone’s true nature, if they remove the veils and coverings of fear and hubris.

I told Claudia that I was a shotokan sensei based in California, and that whilst I couldn’t understand her email, and didn’t know if she could understand mine, I was always here to help and be a friend. Some weeks passed, and I received a response from her, in broken English. She apologized, and said that she was a shito ryu karateka and assumed I was a dojo in Italy. This was the beginning of our now almost five year correspondence and friendship. The ensuing years has brought laughter, support, sharing of karate experiences, and even a few contentious debates as to who has the best pasta and pizza (Unless from Naples, they just might reluctantly acquiesce to the pizza…the pasta is non-negotiable)! Today, she invited me to teach at their organization’s annual seminar. What an honor!

When it’s done right, this is what karate-do should produce. When both sides have a heart that is pure, and intentions are selfless…karate-do paves the way for the bonds to be formed… and conversely, any atoms weight of “self”, will only produce a veil of loss and blindness.

I recently met an artist, a lady who makes her living through the art of painting. I had this image of an artist being on the hippie side of things…just someone who one day decides to pick up a canvass and brush, and nonsensically paints away to her heart’s desire. I was wrong. Utterly wrong. Thankfully. You see as my friend explained, there is a process even to painting, and the process is quite a difficult one at that, too. Just like religion, just like karate-do, just like life itself, and anything that has value and merit at the end, one must go through the gauntlet of the hard, technical basics. In religion it is the Sunday school grind. In karate-do it is the hammering of repetitive basics. In painting it is the honing of its particular fundamentals, and technical skill. The freedom and beauty one sees in art, is really the outcome of the angst…the interplay between the years of hard discipline, and the need for self expression. What emanates from that struggle, is real. Is value. Is truth. Is art. Anything other than that is child’s play. If I, with zero technical experience, took up painting today and presented it to the world, it would be empty. It would be the grade school drawing your mom put on the fridge door, only to make you feel good about yourself.

Sadly, the feel good about yourself and believing in your own bullshit type, are a plenty here in Orange County. You know… the dime a dozen nouveau riche, miserable in their marriage, who’ve gone to a few tourist traps abroad, and have read “Eat, Pray Love” type books and come back thinking they have spiritual insight. They’re cute, talk the talk, and put on a good show, but they’re still miserable and confused…and they still cheat on their husbands. It’s because they are empty. Like me attempting to paint, they are grasping at straws. There’s no solid foundation. Even their religion is a self created, ad hoc, pick and choose what feels good, and lets ignore the unpleasant stuff, guide to life. Life my friends, doesn’t work that way. Even religion doesn’t work that way. With compassion and love, their must also be justice. Deluding oneself by chasing the fleeting, feel good side of things, the worldly pleasures that have an expiration date, only adds to confusion and loss.

To be a free thinker, a hippie, an artist, a painter, a karateka…. a human being with worth and respect…one must do, what even an artist does.

Be still. Listen to your soul’s calling, and reflect carefully on nature, for indeed the signs of divine guidance are generously presented within and without. It is our hubris that prevents the heart from seeing, and our fears manifested in insecurities, that lead the mind’s eye to hold us back with faulty conclusions. When hubris and insecurities are shed, the pathway to surrender and submission is illuminated. And where there’s submission there is, ironically, freedom. The process must take place without compulsion, like religion…like everything in life, but the inception of the journey begins with the flicker of humility in the soul’s sincere call for help from the highest source. There is no greater vision of courage and strength than this, and no greater vision of fear and weakness, than one who casts aside divine guidance and the love that comes with it.

It is, as mentioned above, our lack of depth in reflection, driven by hubris and insecurity that holds us back. It is this arrogance, presented in the garb of knowledge and confidence, and most often perpetuated subconsciously, that attracts and misleads the soul to attachment and enslavement. Putting politics aside, I present the Trumpian persona as the poster boy of this camp. And sadly, unbeknownst to him and his ilk, he is deluding himself as much if not more, than he is misleading others.

When we can truly absorb that submission is freedom, that reflection is wisdom, that letting go is gaining, that acknowledging deficit is strength, that humility and not knowing is confidence…then and only then will we sincerely seek the highest source, place full trust in it, and know through verification, that while we give utmost, unassuming effort, it is the source that determines the destiny.

Please make your karate-do more submissive and free, less enslaved and delusional. Don’t worry about the outcome, just be still, and allow divine destiny to take shape.

We used to have a black belt psychologist that would train at the dojo. I would tell her my views on Karate-do and its connection with mental and spiritual health. She’d be intrigued, nodding approvingly. Right or wrong, it encouraged me to feel more, and share more.

Recently, I met someone that was going through a difficult time with depression and loneliness. This person was telling me how they felt their friends were not present and supportive of them during their time of need. There was a palpable feeling of being the victim, and in an effort to find answers for this person, I turned once again to my years of karate-do practice.

Karate-do practice essentially starts with what is big, and then slowly, and methodically whittles technique down to its essence. Inefficiencies are cast aside and what is not beneficial is discussed, explained, and ultimately discarded. It is hard work, and it takes many years of discipline and recognition to hone movement to its bare essence. In the end though, what one experiences is a light, transcendental movement that combines all the attributes and ideals of shotokan karate-do. Commitment, decisiveness, effortless power, and peace.

When talking to this friend, I used my karate experiences to pare things down to its truth. What dead weight was he carrying that was burdening him? The answer was surprisingly simple. I told him a true friend that loves you should make excuses to be with you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If they are not making excuses to do so, they are making excuses to do the opposite. There’s no in between, just like shotokan karate-do, one is either committed, or one is not. I jokingly told him that “friends” who try to circumvent being around you, supporting you, being connected to you…God forbid if you marry them they are like the women who every night make excuses, and say they have a headache! What a miserable life! Who wants to waste time chasing after that? The real indication of true friendship and a proper relationship, has to have the shotokan elements of commitment, decisiveness, effortless power (insert passion here), and peace. Otherwise one is carrying dead weight that needs to be cast aside. The right friends, I told him, will make every excuse to be with you… physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the meantime, one must not think one is a victim. One must believe in ones goodness, what they bring to the table, their love, their worth and their value. This needs to be repeated just as we repeat karate techniques over and over again. This is the discipline of honing and whittling to the bare essence…and in time, with experience, one will recognize the unnecessary burden one has been carrying, and rather than feeling the victim or lonely, one will thank the heavens and feel gratitude, lightness, power, and the essence of truth…shotokan’s ikken hitatsu. So I encourage you all to look at your lives and see what is it that you are unheedingly carrying, that is bending your back and creating anxiety. Quickly address it. Shed whatever it is. Guilt. Anger. Shame. Insecurity. Fear. And for those relationships and partnerships where there’s no presence…inform them. If they are not willing to remedy themselves, remedy it yourself and know that your future self, and the loved ones who witness you, will thank you for it, and for the example you’ve set.

I hesitate to write about the technical aspects of karate, because it is irritatingly complex to write about, and extremely boring even for karate nerds. And yet, here I am. Maybe a point can be gleaned by the end of this blog, we’ll see. Ok, here goes…we begin with what I call the novelty drill. One is left leg forward facing an attacker who is also left leg forward and about to step in to punch…chudan oi tsuki. You, the defender, swing your rear leg (the right leg) to the outside and execute a reverse down block…gyaku gedan barai. to give you a better visualization, if you were facing north before the attack, you’d be facing north east “ish” after the attack. The reason why I call it a novelty drill is that we are taught to block in hanmi, and here we are taught to block in gyaku hanmi. After the reverse down block, in reverse half front facing hip position (my irritation levels are about as high as yours now), we execute a jab punch or kizami tsuki and rotate the hips from gyaku hanmi to hanmi. The feeling is great. The power derived from the rotation is inebriating. Bock, punch….over and over again, gyaku hanmi to hanmi. It makes you feel like superman. But it’s not the most effective. The more effective drill is combining the whole of that drill, so that rather than having a two step process of bock followed by punch, one has a one step process where one blocks and punches simultaneously. Here comes the problem…try punching kizami tsuki in gyaku hanmi. It doesn’t work. to block and punch simultaneously, the hips have to remain in hanmi at all times. The sum of the parts, don’t make the whole.

So what’s the point here? I guess the point is, like karate, life’s minutia has a way of being a certain way, (or we are taught to believe a certain way) but it’s parts don’t necessarily translate to the best reality, or truth, or effectiveness, or love, or whatever that bigger picture is. It is up to us to tear apart, to question, to reflect, and to ultimately figure out how to make things work outside of what we are taught, outside of the individual parts. This is why spirit is first, technique is second.

Sensei used to have a drill in sparring where we were not allowed to to take more than two steps back. One either had to step to the side to counter, or alternatively, we were afforded the two step retreat only because it tactically presented a better advance. There was no retreat in karate, no going back. My karate never took shape or became serious, until I fully adopted this philosophy. Sensei’s idea was to instill decisiveness, and to seize on opportunities when they presented themselves. He would often tell me, that it was better to not engage at all, than to waver. when you are in, you are all in, he’d say.

The damage caused to oneself and others by wavering, by not recognizing opportunities that may not present itself again, is something I often see outside the dojo, be it at one’s job, one’s relationships, or even one’s health. The foundational ethos of shotokan, the decisiveness in intent and execution, is the antidote for todays excessive flakiness, and hedging bets to be safe.

I’m not saying this path easy. I’m not saying that it will remove the fear, but I am saying that if one is intent on engaging in change (assuming one wants change because one is not content with the status quo), the “always forward” commitment of shotokan is one’s only hope for success. Most people will talk a good talk, but they will take a step forward only to soon beat a hasty retreat. I’ve seen it time and time again. If I had a partner like that, I wouldn’t have faith in that partner. If I had an illness and dilly dallied with it, I’d probably be dead by now. If I had a dojo and wished it to encapsulate the real essence of what I wished, I would never achieve it by compromising, cutting corners, or selling myself to the safe bet. I would rather not have that partner. I would rather not be alive, than be continually sick due to my negligence. I would rather not have a dojo, and self train in peace, than know what I have is fake.

I thank sensei for the life lessons he gave me. Though difficult, he gave me what is most important. clarity and integrity, or as it is said in shotokan karate-do, the purest form of ikken hitatsu.

“Karate is like boiling water. If you do not heat it constantly, it returns to its tepid state”. I can vouch for this statement of Funakoshi Sensei, not just in karate terms, but on many fronts. Today, I will try to make the case to show how karate ideals can influence, and shape your personal relationships.

Outside of my preteen years, karate has come pretty easy to me. I have always had an athletic side and had a good sense of proprioception along with a spiritual and philosophical depth, that nurtured and advanced my karate interest and abilities, beyond my peers. As I grew older, and particularly when Sensei Johnston passed and I took over the mantle of teaching, I noticed the subtle changes in my personal karate practice. I no longer had the presence of sensei pushing me, nagging me, and irritating me to give more. In hindsight I regret not sufficiently appreciating his efforts. He didn’t have to do it. He certainly had many other priorities, including his battle with cancer, among other things. He could have simply turned his attention to another student. But he didn’t. He gave, and while it was hard on me at the time, I’d like to think I gave back equally. I was present, and while I too had important priorities of my own (being a single father to three very young boys), I found a way to keep connected with sensei, to keep the water boiling. I of course gave 100% in the dojo, but it was also selflessness in the little things…sharing a look, a smile, or finding an article about a topic he was interested in. We’d go out for a meal, or no matter how busy I was, I’d call him in the middle of the day to say hi. I’d take him shopping, or we’d go zipping in his car to and from the doctor’s. At it’s core it was a labor of love, but those who know sensei, know that he was not an easy guy. It required effort. Five years has passed since sensei left to another abode. Losing sensei was difficult for me in a myriad of ways, but what I wish to discuss here is the loss of his boiling water in karate terms. Those with foresight will easily be able to interpret and extrapolate to greater and larger perspectives, i.e. their interpersonal relations.

Without sensei’s “insecure nagging”…without his demanding attention, the first thing that went was my physical fitness. I was able to mask it with the exquisite timing and command of distance sensei had “irritatingly” drilled into me, but soon that sharpness and acuity fell by the wayside too. There would be sporadic, successful comebacks, but with age, injury, and a cancer scare of my own…the outlook was very tepid indeed. A comeback looked unlikely, and soon interest and passion began to wane….

Your relations are the same way as karate. Even if you believe your relationship is divinely inspired and gifted, like I believe my karate was/is, it still demands attention. YOU must demand attention. You must keep the water boiling. It is not insecurity to demand attention. It is passion. It is care. It is the natural quid pro quo whose roots are organically based in love, but requires equal and constant effort, just like proper karate-do. The way you look at your partner, or hold a hand…the way you talk or text…. these require giving, and selflessness. Nothing in life is so consuming that a person cannot express love, gratitude, and appreciation. In the midst of suicide and cancer, fear and confusion, I did it. And my sensei did it too. So there are no excuses. Passion means demanding, and fighting for attention, even if it means arguing about it…..rinse, wash, repeat. I see relations where the connection is lost, the effort to keep the water boiling is taken for granted, even if momentarily. They are like people living separate lives. Project that relationship into the future. What I see is a tepid, dispassionate and sexless relationship where interest and passion waned long before, and successful comebacks are not be. Just as karate-do is in the details and being present to it, so too are your relationships. Demand attention. Give back equally if not more, like I did with sensei. The fruits of that labor of love will give back exponentially, and know that life is too short to live without passion.

     To give credit where credit is due, the following observations stem from the saying of Ali, the commander of the faithful. The imam says, “ Everything has a foundation, and the foundation of Islam is love for the prophet and his holy progeny.” He also says, “Everything has a face, and the face of this religion is prayers.”

Karate-do also has a foundation, and the foundation of this school is finding peace through commitment, submission, and surrender of the self. It is the practice of the willingness to die before you die, to give up body, to have one and only one objective without reservation or hesitation.

The face of this school and what should be organically projected, is humility and the ever-presence of a beginner’s mind. It is the nurturing of deep reflection, the vulnerability to comfortably say, “I don’t know” and the ability to wonder, “what else can be true.” The face of this school is “shoshin”.

Whilst it may seem that the foundation and face of this school are antithetical…that “decisiveness” and “not knowing” are a paradox…it is in fact the very conundrum that makes karate-do so exquisitely felt by those who properly walk its path. 

It is my belief that all that is created, is created with degrees of consciousness…that what is created, be it animate or inanimate, with free will or not, acknowledges or should acknowledge the majesty of its creator. It is my belief; therefore, that the birds, mountains, trees, angels, rocks, etc…, even our shadows, prostrate in recognition and loving submission to that which is greatest. We may not understand or recognize this cosmic chorus, but like the rapid flow of a river, it takes place constantly and incessantly. The beauty of joining the cosmic chorus, and surrendering to its natural flow, is what contributes to inner peace and positive energy.

What happens on a cosmic spiritual level, beyond the minds imagination, beyond the universes and the veiled realms, also takes place in more quotidian settings…hence the birth of communities, nations, religions, places of worship, teams, extended families, and even basic husband and wife relationships or friendships, etc… These relationships exist because there’s some level of unity of belief and cooperation…a chorus, if you will. Otherwise they wouldn’t exist.

One such community, is the dojo. Whilst techniques ebb and flow according to the needs and whims of the time, perhaps even improving from generation to generation, the CORE principle is not chasing the latest technique. Technique is important….but as Sensei Funakoshi warns us…”spirit first, technique second”. And here, spirit is defined as that river’s flow. The bends. The ups and downs. The changing flow of the currents, from fast and furious, to slow and enduring. Like life itself, it has a duration and an unknown destiny. Those who submit to this way, doggedly and stoically, enduring years of repetition before daring to express opinion…these are the ones who truly experience, not on an academic level, but on a transformative level. The given path for these seekers, belies the newest, latest, more improved technique. That, my friend, is karate-do’s core principle. Karate-do is entering the dojo with the cumulative chorus that we strive through the struggles together…. because it is the shared experience of the struggle…the journey that is important…not the technique or end result.

Students have asked me if karate-do has the best technique. It does not. If it did, Ray Dalke would not say the best technique is ” front kick…crow bar”. He’d just say front kick. And yet, we do front kick over and over again. I have told my students that the importance of stance diminishes over time…and yet we do stance work all the time. It doesn’t mean that I am teaching something I do not believe in…It means the process of forging spirit through unity and tradition is the core principle of karate, and that is where the deeper understanding of karate reveals itself…after decades of quiet repetition. So yes, if you are joining a chorus, but wish to sing a different tune because you think you understand things differently and cannot change, you are indeed being selfish and a cancer to the those on the way. Such a person needs to….as I often said…either open their own dojo, or quit.

Sensei once told me that two karateka under the same sensei, should ultimately have different looking karate because they have different abilities, bodies, understanding, etc… This process comes about naturally, from years of training, and not from looking at videos or books, or intellectualizing. At about the 4th dan level or 25 years of training, one can establish ones own ideas and enter the early phase of “Ri” in the “Shu Ha Ri” process. Many from the JKA did exactly this. Kanazawa Sensei’s karate was starkly different than Kase Sensei and Enoida Sensei’s karate. Ultimately each formed their own organization with their own ideas, because they (ideally) believed their chorus no longer matched the community they belonged to. One may look at this phenomenon with chagrin, ruing the fact that the JKA is a shell of what it used to be. I; however, look at it and see it couldn’t have continued, because salt water and fresh water can never blend.

The other day, I was pondering on my reflections of the horrific images of the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, that befell Northeastern Japan. Amidst the chaos and terror, one image vividly stands out. It was the perplexing footage of a highway, packed with cars, headed away from the rear approaching tsunami. From above, you could clearly see the empty, unpaved median, which would have been easy to cross, with a desolate, other lane, designed for those going the opposite direction.

At the time, I thought it was very odd. I stared and questioned why these people would just sit there, inviting a literal tidal wave of death sentences, while they could easily jump the median, take the other side, and escape to safety.

Just one hour of reflection can save one from wasting years of stubbornly consistent misguidance, because a closer examination leads to a more clear conclusion. It couldn’t have been any other way, and that honor in death was/is better than greed, at the expense of others.

One of the key elements of the Japanese character, and a reason for their success as a nation, particularly at times of strife, is their almost innate, disciplined nature to conform, to work as group. The concept of “I” does not exist, and if it does… the entitled “I” learns to quickly submit, and quell his desires for the greater good. As the saying goes, the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down. And for good reason.

Imagine for a second, if in 2011, someone decided to “do their own thing” and skip over to the other side of the highway and make a run for it. I guarantee you, that by the time the sixth car decided to follow suit, pandemonium and chaos would have ensued, ensuring the complete destruction of the organized escape plan…and further, poisoning the the well of trust and order for generations to come. One man’s greed and selfishness, at the expense of everyone else. Can you feel the distaste? The abhorrence of such destructive narrowmindedness? How it tears at the fabric of everything? If one person does it, it emboldens the next, and the next, until nothing is left but an insignificant scattering of material gain, usurped by lowly means.

There is also another side to this. I am not saying that one must conform or follow the masses in their collective, negative, slanted, agenda pushing-thought. I am speaking of conforming when one chooses to; for the Greater Good. For religion. For tradition. For Love. For family. For others. For your Sensei.

Perhaps there could have been another way. Perhaps someone could have crossed the line to protect their family and created some kind of order in an attempt to help the others escape safely. I don’t know why anyone didn’t cross. I just know that as I consider it, I am using it metaphorically to explain this idea of selfishness, greed, “I’m going to do it my way, because I know better,” and how my actions affect others, is of no concern, mentality.

Karate-do is a Japanese art. It is an art of discipline with a minor outward physical goal, and a more lofty, understated objective to perfect the character of those who choose this austere and arduous path. As with all things Japanese, it begins with an understanding that one has chosen, and is willing to submit to the way, the “do”, the untransmuted “do,” handed down from generation to generation, for centuries.

This proven path to perfection of character, begins on the first day of entering one’s karate practice and the physical dojo. One agrees to give up the “I” or “me”, to trust their sensei, and as Yaguchi sensei says, to “give up body” for the greater good. When choosing karate as a way, one forgoes any notion of self, in order to sacrifice; be that time, blood, sweat, ego, or whatever it is that your chosen sensei sees fit to exercise. Without accepting this premise wholeheartedly, and without giving up of the “I,” the objectives of karate-do become moot. Anything short of that, and I mean anything, makes the karate practitioner, that one guy who thought he/she was more deserving than others. He is the one I am guessing would jump the median and drive the other side of the highway, not looking back or having any concern for the lives of the ones left behind.

So, if you were a student and casually trained whenever you felt like it, whenever it was convenient for you; once every six months, once every month, once a week, whatever; you didn’t sacrifice. You took advantage. You were that guy mentioned above. Worse yet, if you came to the dojo and did your own thing, consistently; if you came to the dojo and thought “I” want to stretch My way, “I” want to do kicks my way, “I” want to do something different than what my sensei is instructing me to do, “I” want my kime and kiai to be “my” way, or not at all even when asked, then what are you doing in my dojo? You do not take any responsibily for your actions. You only blame everyone and everything else. You are not the victim you portray yourself to be. There is no “I” in “do.” You took advantage. Your selfishness poisoned the well and affected others. Your disrespect spoke more truth about your character than your, “consistency.”

These are all examples of nails sticking up; requiring a collective, hammering down. Typically, it’s the hammering of a few for the benefit of the many. In extreme cases, where the lack of self discipline and awareness spreads its cancer, it becomes a case of hammering the many for the benefit and safeguard of the deserving few, and more importantly, for the preservation of the way.

Alas, for the unaware “me” minded, karate is a material transaction devoid of the beauty and richness, of the beginner’s mind that could have led to perfection of character. Sadly, their transaction has only netted them ego and some diminishing physical tricks.

I am so grateful for this clarity. I shall continue on carrying out the tradition and legacy of those before me, particularly of my Sensei, who truly had this mind I am speaking of; in it’s purest form. He didn’t have tolerance for the ones who weren’t committed, present, humble, grateful. He demanded respect, but even more so, demanded purity in heart and attitude. His time, was just as valuable as yours. He would give you everything of himself, if you would only show him that you possessed this humble willingness to learn, to give up self. Contrarily, he would kick you out, if you showed anything less.

I stand firmly beside him, and those placed on my path, who choose to respectfully follow me, as their Sensei. The emptiness of the empty hand way, is far different for those who continually strive with the purity of Shoshin, beginner’s mind.

I run a small dojo in an industrial, isolated part of a small, sleepy town. I don’t have many students, and I don’t run classes on Friday evenings, so when a young lady called and said she was coming from Colorado on a Friday to train, I had to scramble. I had to first scramble to find students…any student to come to the dojo on a Friday evening. I mean who wants to come all the way from Colorado to train at an empty dojo, right?

Second, and more importantly, I had  to scramble to find a female student. I kept imagining this poor young lady, a visitor, a stranger to my town in an isolated, empty, industrial complex, being creeped out by a singular, hairy, middle-aged sensei…or worse yet, by a pack of unfamiliar men.

With panic on my mind, I frantically called around and finally  secured a few students, among them a lady.  I was set, now the only thing I had to do was to make sure I got to the dojo a bit early to make sure my visitor would not get lost in the midst of empty buildings.

It was important for me to make a good impression on my visitor. she came recommended from a sensei of whom I have the highest regard, and she could have chosen from a plethora of dojo in my area, so this was an honor indeed, and with that protective mindset, I set out for the dojo, a few minutes ahead of class to do my best teaching.

As I drove the long driveway to the dojo, I spotted a car in the empty parking, and panic set in. Here she was alone, warming up outside the dojo,  in an unknown place, vulnerable due to my negligence. Why couldn’t I have arrived earlier? Why did I put this poor soul in such a compromised position?  What was wrong with me? I sped up to park the car, to simultaneously greet her and apologize for my shortcoming.

To this day, I don’t know what exactly happened. I know the feeling, but I can’t explain it. As I approached her, she seemed a step ahead. She approached me too, and from there it was all over. She had full control. She looked ME in the eyes. She shook MY hand. I was not receiving her at my dojo. She was coming to my dojo. She had the upper hand. She wasn’t mean. She wasn’t aggressive, in fact she was quite pleasant…really pleasant,  but she had that something that reminded me of the times I would face off with sensei in jiu kamae, and I knew in an instant, before anything could even happen, that it was game over. I was already defeated. Done and cooked as they say. She had me at “hello” literally and figuratively, in the best karate sense!

That moment has stayed with me over time, and I’ve discussed it with my students, sometimes joking that if anyone needed back up that day, it was me, not her! For one, I learned that I shouldn’t make assumptions. More importantly, that karate is not just in the dojo. That first step into jiu kamae should be no different than that the first step in meeting someone. It’s not mean, it’s not aggressive. It’s silent confidence in the way a person is when they are in the moment…I think. I can’t explain it, but I’ve sure felt it.

Let’s get this clear from the get go. Karate-do is not transactional, at least not in my book, and not in my dojo. If it were, I’d be charging thousands per student. Fortunately it’s not transactional and I don’t charge thousands. What a sensei is, and does is really beyond monetary valuation. A sensei occupies a place unfamiliar to modern material living, and his impact on his students, if carefully observed, is equally transcendental. Now I know that some of you are scratching your heads and thinking I’m being opaque…saying to yourselves, what’s the big deal…I pay you, and you teach me how to kick and punch. And yes, you have a point if that’s all the 1% you want to get out of karate-do. But I can tell you from experience that you won’t last very long (at least in my dojo) if that’s all that you want. And you won’t last because your objective is material and/or ego based i.e. transactional, and ultimately void of the intended meaning and spiritual richness that prevents the walls (of continued training) from collapsing from within.

Years ago I recall a story told to me about Master Nakayama and a young Leslie Safar. For the sake of brevity I’ll just summarize. Mr. Safar was interested in starting karate, so he visited Master Nakayama’s dojo in Japan. He had saved up his money, and figured he’d pay and start training. Master Nakayama politely asked him to sit (properly, in seiza) outside the dojo and observe class. Mr. Safar obliged, thinking it was not an unreasonable request for him to sit and approve of the class before coming the next time to train. The next day, he eagerly arrived ready for his fist lesson on kicking and punching, but Master Nakayama politely requested him to sit and observe again. Thinking that his approval is imminently of important significance, he agreed and sat and watched again. This transaction went on for a quite awhile, weeks maybe even a month, until Mr. Safar realized that, it was not his approval that Master Nakayama wanted, but an insight into his humility and determination. Mr. Safar’s approval was immaterial. The barriers to entry were made painfully difficult to ensure that Mr. Safar’s interest in karate-do was beyond an ego transaction. The story continues with more humor and depth, but I think the point is clear. Incidentally, some many, many decades later Mr. Safar is still training and is one of the most renown karateka of world today.

Sadly, the modern sensei rivals the used car salesman in his zest to sell at any cost, to any person, at any age…often using dubious schemes and contracts. Even more disconcerting; however, is the student, not willing to “sit seiza and observe”….assuming that they can pay and simply adopt a cash is king cavalier attitude towards what should be a life long pursuit of self discovery and perfection of character.

Recently I had a mother come to the dojo, wanting her six year old kid to try out class, claiming he had been training since age two. Immediately, the red flags came up and I asked her to sit (on comfy chairs) quietly and observe the class with her son. I also told her to make sure to look at other dojo in the area, to make sure she knows exactly what she is getting. For me this has always been protocol, a slight take on Master Nakayama’s idea of  making the barrier to entry a little less transactional. Anyways, she was taken aback by my candor, incredulous to the fact that I would be turning away a paying client by not jumping on the opportunity to score a sale. The long story short, she stayed for the class, watched and never showed again. Easy come, easy go.   I don’t lament the fact that this person didn’t return. I’ve been on this journey long enough to know that like Leslie Safar, if you don’t want it bad enough, it’s just a trophy occupying space….and at this dojo, we’re all about emptying space. After all, this is the empty hand way.

One of the most profound insights I have gained from Sensei Johnston, came at the most inopportune time. It was after a particularly frustrating and tough class for me.  I had been struggling with the inequities of life, especially as it pertained to my impending divorce, and Sensei could see it in the forced nature of my karate practice.

In typical fashion, without fanfare or any pretentious gravitas, and forever stripped of all future romantic notions of zen teachings in the midst of nature, Sensei accompanied me to the “loo” where he disappeared behind the stall.

As the changing area cleared out, and I was the only one left, dragging my heels to the more domestic frustrations and fears at home, he cleared his throat, and said….”Hessam, you need to be a little more detached from it. It will help you, greatly.”

I wish I could say a beam of light was emanating from the occupied stall, but I simply looked over to the bland, stall door and thanked Sensei as I walked out to what was to become an unintended, slow seeping, life changing process.

To be fair, Sensei had been training us to be detached whilst in class. During “Mokuso”, when facing our opponents in kumite, and even while performing kata. Sensei’s idea of focus was that it ebbed and flowed. At times it needed to be laser sharp, followed by periods of retracted, generalized focus. With meditation it was the same. He would say to observe the inputs, be aware of them but don’t try to control them and don’t be attached to any one of them.

This idea of being almost “outside the self”, observing  realities from a different/neutral vantage point, without a need to control, did indeed help me greatly, as Sensei predicted. And it has helped tremendously in many other stressful and emotional situations since. I am forever grateful for Sensei’s words of wisdom, even from beyond the “loo”…I just wish he were still here to answer my new conundrum…

How to deal with detachment, when detachment becomes the attachment!

My three boys will often coyly approach me, invariably in the presence of their rival siblings, and ask who the favorite is….

My answer has always been, “You three are like my favorite three flavors of ice cream…sometimes I’m in the mood for vanilla and sometimes it’s chocolate or strawberry, but those three flavors will always be my top best picks!”

Many people ask me what I like best about karate, or they ask me to define what I mean when I say we teach traditional shotokan karate-do. This is a simple yet complex question, with equally varied and opaque answers…and the questions and answers  can similarly be reduced to ideas within karate…for example what is “fighting spirit”? To me, fighting spirit is the voice that tells me to get up in the morning and fix my bed. To others, that may be a joke and it may mean something entirely more physical or macho.

So what is traditional karate? Does the fact that we, at Shoshin,  have eliminated competition and tournaments from our curriculum make us more traditional…or conversely those who participate in tournament karate, less traditional? What is it exactly that makes shotokan karate traditional, especially when shotokan itself is a mishmash of shurite, nahate, tomarite….of Okinawan sensibilities mixed with mainland Japanese values?

I know I might sound like a used car salesman when I give different answers to the same question, but in all honesty those answers are not to placate the questioner…they genuinely reflect my sentiments at the time. Maybe an example would help.

Sometimes I go into the dojo and just feel like hitting the bag…violently. I use my elbows, knees, I slap it and have even head butted it. I don’t care if it looks pretty or if its precise. I just hit. Its ugly, but you should see how the bag looks!

At other times I go to the dojo and fixate, and obsessively repeat the minutiae of a movement requiring fine motor skills…knowing full well that in a “real” situation all fine motor skills (hell even control of my bowel movements) will be lost, and therefore utterly useless. And yet, I’m there man, deriving manic pleasure like a man with ecsema and his pumice stone!

And then there are those unicorn and rainbow days…The dojo is all mine, I shut the shades, and off I go to la la land with my katas. I am zen. Broke? Pfft…Divorced? Pfft…Permanently looking the exact opposite of Brad Pitt? Pfft…(come on sing the tune, you know it) ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough…you get the picture…

So what’s my point with all this silliness? Karate needs to be relevant to the practitioner, and that relevance can change from time to time. On days that I want zen and peace, I may not want to head butt anything. A good karate school will harness those few flavors within the framework of honesty, hard work, and mutual respect. The fact that shotokan karate can extract relevance is what makes it traditional to the practitioner, and assures its viability for the needs of the next generation.

Now ask me next week, and I may be lactose intolerant and give you a completely different answer!

I recently conducted our bi annual testing for the students. Typically I use the  “B” pass or full pass method to measure my students progress. Rank is awarded not on athleticism or physical prowess, but upon an assessment of   (1) time spent  training at the  dojo, and more importantly, (2) whether the student has pushed himself or herself to the limits of their personal potential.

I often tell my students, the actual test is just like the period at the end of the sentence…the sentence itself, the crux of matter, is all the time and effort, and attention to detail you spent in the dojo honing your skills (physical and otherwise) for the previous 6 months.

In fact, testing is as much a testing of me as sensei, as it is of my students, and as my students will vouch, I am an ornery, nervous wreck for the month preceding testing! A student can have a one off and perform poorly on an examination, but knowing that he or she has diligently plied his craft and trade to maximum potential, he knows exactly where he stands. For me however; the test is a deadline for assessing if I was able to tap into whatever it takes to motivate my student to reach their potential.

For me, the test is a moment of truth…did I convey the message I was tasked to convey….or did I fail my student?

I would often ask Sensei for updates about so and so’s training, abroad.  Sensei would look at me with a sense of sadness and resignation and say…” Well, he is training…but he’s picked a dojo, conveniently near his house where after training, he and the “blokes” go out for a drink. You know… the atmosphere is casual and fun, like a club.”

Sensei’s look was enough for me to understand. He was teaching me, warning me, and rightfully so. Here in sunny California, the casual style is part and parcel of our identity. you know…flip flops, shorts, maybe a T-shirt… Oh no, I’m not kidding!  Just think about it…you don’t see signs warning people “no shirt, no shoes, no service” in the UK, or the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world? So it is an unexaggerated reality.

Admittedly, while there is a comfort and ease to being casual, there’s also a lurking danger with being too casual. It is the natural danger of being lulled into complacency.

The separation of ways must be made in some place. A place where  paths diverge from one’s norm. It may be a church, it may be a temple, or a mosque. Equally so, by its definition it must be the dojo. “Do” meaning the way, and “Jo” meaning the place of, suggests  a place, not of destination, but of travel. A place for the way. A place for the way (dojo) suggest one is pursuing change, betterment, enlightenment. Otherwise we’d call it a gym or studio, or a club, and Sensei would be called, God forbid, a coach or a trainer.

We take measures to ensure that “the way” is enforced. We remove our shoes, we wear our dogi (again the term “do”), and we perform zazen. All these are changes from our norm, prompting us to pursue the “do”.

If one lacks this understanding, and continues the usual casualness, one has lacked the fundamental premise of why they are doing karate-do, even before they have stepped foot in the dojo! Lacking a respect and understanding for the dojo and its way, means believing one has no need for a way, presumably because one already believes they are all that and a bag of chips! For such people, the only way… is the way out. Leave. Find the exit. you’ll be doing yourself a favor by not wasting your time.

Camaraderie may be a by product of the dojo, not the reason for going to the dojo. Camaraderie  comes after the dojo, outside the dojo. In the dojo it’s all about formality, and seriousness and introversion. Even those who train to get a “good workout” at the dojo, have completely missed the point. One comes to the dojo to submit oneself and one’s ego to the way of karate with the help of their sensei, for the betterment of one’s character; therefore, if all you’ve satisfied is a physical workout, you’ve lost.

I encourage myself first, and then all karateka to be mindful and aware of the sanctity of the dojo. From the very moment you wear your dogi you should feel as if something has changed. when you  bow to enter the dojo, feel as if you have entered a different realm, and feel that a way with tremendous depth is about to be presented to you. Follow what your sensei teaches, and submit to the way.

This latter statement will be the topic of my next blog, namely the need for a skill called emotional intelligence. Stay tuned!

Every once in awhile, a Sensei is lucky enough to have a student that fully grasps the ethos of traditional karate-do, its structure, its intent and its relative significance to themselves and others within the larger scope of life. Such students, by virtue of their awareness, become quite close confidants to their Sensei.

In a recent conversation with my student, (to save him embarrassment, I’ll leave him anonymous) I lamented the fact that not one of the students in the kids class were there to train on their own volition…and if given the opportunity they would all quit posthaste, including my own sons.

The response he gave was quite revealing and insightful, and I must say I agree. He said it was important to communicate to the students in class, the reasons why they train…the reason why they are pursuing a traditional karate curriculum where training is difficult, austere and repetitive, rather than fun, exciting and entertaining. Furthermore one has to constantly set bars and goals, and remind students that at such and such a stage much more is required and expected of them. Those bars, for example, can be their belt, and one can say…” you are now a yellow belt and I expect yellow belt stances from you”.

He continued by saying (and I am partly surmising and adding my own feelings)  that for him and his family, karate-do represents a microcosm of life, and the struggles one faces in life are played out on a smaller scale on the dojo floor. Overcoming the challenges in the dojo…facing fears, frustrations, boredom, failures even, helps to face similar challenges later in life. But this must be communicated and explained to the kids. If a child wants to quit, for example, one can remind them that their actions today will reflect on how they will cope with challenges later in life.

As the parent and Sensei of three boys, I am in an even more difficult position to get serious training out of my kids. It is no wonder that traditionally, Sensei have sent their kids to train with other Sensei. I have bribed, chided, argued, threatened, rewarded, and “friended” and “unfriended” my boys to get them to the dojo…until recently.

It all began with my 14 year old son. After 5 years of training, reaching the rank of 1st kyu, he met his first big challenge…and came up short (I personally think this was the biggest asset he gained, but that’s for another blog). I awarded him a “retest” for his shodan in 6 months. His initial reaction was that he wanted to quit…and frankly I was so tired of “forcing” the boys to train that I stopped resisting and told him and the other two, that the choice was theirs. I had done my part, and if they wanted to quit, they could do so. I walked away and didn’t address issue.

The next day, as I was preparing to come to the dojo “solamente”, to my surprise, I saw all three boys up and ready to come to the dojo. Nothing was said, and I haven’t since, pried to see why they decided to come back…but they have come back, for now.

Maybe I was lucky…maybe the kids really do know that karate is good for them, but I do think, I could have saved a lot of grief…and bribe money… had I explained the reasons and benefits of traditional karate training for their future challenges and endeavors.

Not completely satisfied, I called up a famous and high ranking Sensei, and told him that none of my young students were there to train, because they wanted to train. He beamed and he said, “that’s a good sign, Hessam”. He continued by telling me that he himself and many other senior karateka, started karate because they were forced into it by their circumstances or parents, and boy were they grateful for it today. It was his feeling that kids are too young to grasp the significance of their training, and sheer discipline was the way forward. He said the nature of traditional karate-do training will leave one  with few students anyways, noting that he himself only had less than a half dozen or so students, and that most other famous traditionalists also had very few students. He finished by saying, “In a world of commercial dojos, where people have to cut corners to increase enrollment to feed themselves, I should see it as badge of honor that I have few students, and that I’m carrying a torch that few can carry.”

…Now to find a way to get back all that money I used to bribe my boys…. :))

Years ago when I was training with Sensei Moshfegh, I recall a particular moment when he corrected my front stance. As I was in stance, ready to vigorously move to the next stance, Sensei Moshfegh kindly looked me up and down and said…” Your front foot toes, what are you doing with your toes?” Recalling my conversations with students of Nishiyama Sensei, I responded…”Sensei, I’m gripping the floor with my toes. Like a tiger, I use it to pull and push into the next stance!” He smiled, and said, “Relax your toes…” As I did so, I felt a slight imbalance in my stance, and recovered.  Sensei smiled again and said ” When you relax your front toes, you lose balance, but if you engage your core instead, you regain balance. That is better for the body and better for balance.”

As years went by, that simple lesson had a profound impact on my own personal training, and I tried to observe the minutiae in others as they perfected their karate . Watching them encouraged me to try different methods to improve my own karate.

One method that has been particularity beneficial to me, has been the use of non stick socks whilst training on wood floors. The socks obviously create more slip, forcing one to slow down moves to prevent falls, but also creates a fluidity to one’s motions.

Mostly though, I’ve noticed that the use of socks forces extra work on the core muscles, especially in outside pressure stances like front stance or back stance. In these stances, with socks on, the feet no longer are the sole (no pun intended) stabilizers of the stance. Since the feet feel like they are slipping, one has to rely on the tightening of the core and gluteus maximus muscles to maintain balance.

I encourage others to try different methods in their personal training, be it the use of elastic bands, weighted vests, or ankle weights. My experience has been that performing kata in socks, more fully engages the core, and forces the body to control the muscles that are being used, by moving a degree slower…it is also a great way to clean the dojo floor!

The notion seems counterintuitive at first glance, but intention is everything, here. One might kick and punch to exercise one’s ego and reinforce one’s inferiority complex, or conversely,  one may do the same to exorcise the ego in hopes of attaining  superiority over the self.

The repetitive nature of karate-do, the continual breakdown of techniques to its most elemental form and the insistence of rebuilding it with perfection, with awareness,  all lends itself to becoming the ideal tool for transformation. But as with any tool, karate-do can be used to build or to destroy.

Sensei Moshfegh used to tell me, “karate is therapy…the kick and the punch, and what you see is like the surface of the ocean viewed from the beach…but the ocean isn’t what you see from the beach. The ocean is all that life and activity, deep under the surface that you cannot see, and karate is the same.”

At the time I was young and immature. When Sensei Moshfegh told me karate was therapy, my mind only fathomed physical therapy. What I pictured was my limbs, and I assumed the depth of the ocean was my, at the time undiscovered, ego driven infatuation with the depths of my sinewy muscles, which I all too often wanted others to admire! Oh what a waste of precious time!

But thank God I matured! Through karate-do, through the insistence of my Sensei, in particular Sensei Johnston, a transformation occurred. Repetition, specifically solitary repetition, where the only stimuli was internal, forced me to look at myself. One move of a kata, and more often, one part of one move of a kata was “mind numbingly” repeated to exorcise the idea that I was there to be entertained…that there was anything there other than me.

With nowhere to go but within, I began to pair the external technique with the internal feeling. For every move that Sensei made me repeat because it wasn’t  good enough, I peeled away a layer of my ego, and in time…a  long time, I noticed a more relaxed and humble self…a self that I began to actually like and enjoy. As Sensei pushed me to become more present and aware of technique at that moment in time, and only that moment in time, a picture began to emerge of a true me, a real me. A me that was sincere and not hiding behind a facade.  A me that could transact a relationship in the moment as it unfolded, just like the technique, without preconceived notions or barriers.

As awareness of the “me” grew, awareness of “other than me” began to diminish, and reaction turned to action, hardness turned to softness and  I noticed qualities in me that I had long admired in my sensei over the years.

Though the process is always ongoing, and my progress has been just a drop on the bucket, to this day I smile and debate to myself whether the repeated physical movements made me more humble, or, the discovery of my insignificance relative to the world, that made me more physically relaxed. Either way, I can most assuredly say, if the intention is right, you can kick and punch yourself to a devastatingly more softer and gentler self!

Karate-do is many things to many people, and yet there are certain truths to one’s training that are inescapable. One of those truths happens to be the idea of conflict resolution.

On some level, be it small or large, internal or external, manufactured or organic…karate-do brings the practitioner face to face with discomforts that need to be addressed. Sensei Ed Ottis says (and I paraphrase), karate-do is not meant to be practiced in preparation for ideals. In fact, it is meant to be practiced for a time when everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong. Your karate training should prepare your mind and body for a time when, for example,  you are confronted and accosted while you’re  stressed, late, stuck in the rain with your two little kids complaining of hunger, and you’re struggling to hold on to heavy, finger numbing plastic bags of groceries, while nursing an injury.  That’s when you need karate, not when everything is hunky-dory! How one deals with those types of conflicts, are directly related to the discomforts provided to you in the dojo.

From the beginning, karate-do training is arduous and austere, gently pushing the limits of physical, mental and psychological comfort. The student is constantly cajoled into zones of discomfort by the sensei  who manufactures the conflict through (among other things) increasingly complex physical movements that stress the mind, or increased pace and repetition of movements that stress the body, or by creating an environment of relative heat or cold that stresses the psyche, etc…

These incremental stressors provide an arena for conflict resolution for the student, and the student’s success at addressing these discomforts has a direct and positive correlation with that student’s ability to properly resolve conflict in the real world.

I have seen it first hand, where a student’s insistence on making excuses and being the exception in class,  has later led to a complete inability to accept responsibility and properly address organic, real conflict…be it in the dojo, or outside. Invariably the student has a melt down, blames others, or simply “packs his toys and goes home”, leaving the conflict, and growth opportunity unresolved.

To those students who feel frustrated, who feel stress, who feel like karate-do is too demanding, or too boring, or too whatever….I say keep pushing yourselves and don’t give up. Sincerely and methodically apply yourselves to the challenges ahead, put your nose to the grind and crush your ego. Your  sincere effort is a step in the ultimate conflict resolution against the self. And really that’s all there is. We are simply mirrors to one another, reflecting our own flaws.

Your growth under duress is building not only physical strength, but a wisdom to properly cope with future conflicts… and isn’t that the very definition of Mekyo?

By David Johnston

The word ‘jutsu’, as in “ju-jutsu’, means ‘skill’. The purpose of’ karate-jutsu’ is to learn techniques, in as short a time as possible which can be put to use in combat. The word ‘do’, which is the same as the Chinese word ‘tao’, means ‘Way’. The purpose of karate-do is to use those techniques as material to work with in a lifelong endeavor to approach perfection. Patience, determination, and courage are required and developed in the process. Other qualities that are developed, through interaction with the dojo, are humility and consideration for others. So, through striving to perfect technique, one indirectly – little by little – strengthens and refines his or her own character.

There are objective standards which the student must strive to meet; they are the subject of this handbook. However, since the important point is character formation, it is the trainee’s performance in relation to his natural abilities which is assessed, for this is what reflects the effort he has made. One student’s combination may be sharper than another’s but the latter may have worked harder to achieve this level of skill. Since this relates to character it must be taken into account.

All this might seem idealistic. On the other hand, the person with strong character is the one you want by your side in a “real” situation. Good coordination or flexible joints are useful, but less important than strong spirit.

I repeat, though: there are objective standards which the student must strive to meet! We should never easily excuse ourselves! The human capacity for growth is unlimited and this is the most important lesson that karate-do can teach us. ‘Osu!’ means ‘Strive!”. We should remember that every time we say it!

By Sensei David Johnston

(editor’s note: This article was written when Sensei Johnston was part of the AJKA)

Two years ago, when I took the position of Technical Director, I considered that the most useful thing I could do was to standardize the Kata. It was apparent that every kata, from Heian Shodan onward, showed some variation from region to region or under different instructors when within the same region. Standardizing would make it easier to judge a performance, in competition or testing, and (more importantly) would ensure that each kata maintained it’s integrity as a vehicle of technical and strategic instruction. The more I became involved with the project, however, the more like a nightmare it began to seem. And, the more I began to appreciate Nakayama’s monumental efforts in that direction. That he was not successful was due, I believe, to the size of the job (the bewildering array of diversity even within the supposedly united JKA), to the limited time at his disposal, and to the resistance he met from instructors at all levels around the world. As one senior instructor I was attached to liked to boast: “My style is my style!”. Well, and why not? Within limits, why shouldn’t there be variation?

Katas were not stamped out by machines or to be performed by machines. They were developed and transmitted by people with variable strengths and weaknesses and with variable points of view; the strategic situations they explore are similarly variable. If every detail could be rigidly standardized, katas would lose much of their historical and aesthetic richness (like computerized music compares with live performances) and they would be less useful as lessons in strategic flexibility. As for judging the main points of concern are stance, posture, rhythm, focus, concentration; all that is required of a particular technique is that it should have some respectable historical precedent and make sense in the context of the kata being performed. But as an instance, take three Japanese competitors in the same competition (The World Shoto Cup held in Philadelphia) performing the “same” kata (Gojushijo-sho); take one movement, the characteristic turn into back stance, right hand open and left hand under the right elbow; you’ll see it done three different ways. There may or may not be a slide; the right hand may be in upright knife-hand form or “Tiger’s mouth”. But, and this is what’s importance, done differently, a different situation is implied and it’s our business as students, instructors, and judges, to be clear about what this might be. Of course, there must be limits to variation. Each kata has its own character; it expresses and develops certain well-defined qualities; without limits its character would be blurred or lost. A jump-kick in Jitte would be as unnatural as a banana leaf on an elm tree; the kata would also be less convincing as an exercise in stability! Part of my job, with the new title of Technical Chairman, is to think about what techniques are acceptable in a given context and why; to debate controversial points with other senior instructors; and to communicate the results of our brain-storming to AJKA members all over the country. To this end, I plan to contribute regular articles in this news letter; I also urge member dojo’s to host seminars by visiting senior instructors, perhaps twice a year. All instructors should make whatever sacrifices might be necessary to attend the Annual National Camp. For our organization to be strong, we must communicate by all means possible: news-letters, telephones, and E-mail all help but nothing beats getting on the floor together!

Brief Biography of David Johnston

1964 Started Karate training under Hirokazu Kanazawa

1967 Britsh Team, 1st EKU Championship

1968-71 Karate instructor London School of Economics 
University of Surrey, Budo Kwai (London)

1973 Moved to USA; Assistant Instructor for 
Mnt. States Region;
Founded clubs in Vail, Aspen, & Boulder CO

1976-80 Regional Director, Completed instructors 
training under JKA

1980-88 Chief Instructor of North Shore JKA, founded 
clubs at Brandeis & Harvard Universities

1988 Moved to Calif., founded clubs at 
Univ. of Redlands, Claremont College & Pasadena JKA

1993 Technical Chairman AJKA

1995 US Team coach (kata) WSKA World Championships