• Thursday, February 25th, 2010

When I first started training in martial arts I was taught in all the systems I studied to move fast but stop my punch just before hitting my partner. This was done I was told for the dual purpose of training safety and teaching me control. I agree that it is safer but I’m not sure about the control benefits.

During college I and a few of my friends from the BU Football Team used to work as bouncers at a number of establishments in Boston. One night at a club down by Fenway Park there was an all out classic bar room brawl. I saw the most beautiful cross over side kick thrown at one of my friends face. He was completely caught off guard but not injured at all. The guy throwing the kick stopped it right on his nose. Needless to say things did not go well for the guy throwing the kick after that.

What’s the point? You do what you practice so stopping your strikes before actually striking may not be the best choice.

So how do you train safely? Slow down and follow through. In our art we move slower when practicing with partners but actually put the strikes where they would be only slower. If you don’t move you will get hit but it doesn’t hurt due to the decreased speed.

Your body actually learns more this way even though it is much slower because the proximity and actual alignments you will encounter are in the training. Then when we want to test the training at fight speed we pad up the attacker for additional safety. The results have been much better.

• Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Many people in the martial arts have a habit of collecting kata. They learn the movements to a kata, say they have that one and move on to the next. In our art the idea is not to collect the kata but to experience them kind of like a car wash.

Its winter in New England where I live and there is salt and dirt all over my car. When I go to a car wash and give them money I don’t get to take the car wash home. I don’t collect the car wash.

If I go to the car wash and watch other cars go through I could explain it to you but my car would still be dirty. My car hasn’t changed.

When I go to the car wash, pay my money and actually go through the experience my car comes out on the other side changed. It is clean now.

This is what kata in our art actually are. Experiences that change you. You can’t collect them and save them. You can’t just watch them and intellectualize about them. You have to experience them and when you come out on the other side you are changed.

• Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Are you on Facebook?

Check out these pages for:

Shinobi Martial Arts,

Boston Martial Arts Center and

Stephen K. Hayes.

• Thursday, February 04th, 2010

When Stephen K. Hayes asked Dr. Hatsumi many years ago what ninjutsu was all about, Soke Hatsumi answered “katsu tame ni” roughly translated as “the art of winning”. From our western perspective this could sound like competition but its more about being successful in your life.

We often ask students what success means to them. One of our friends, Johan D’hondt, who runs To-Shin Do training in Belgium, recently answered this question in an article. I was so impressed with his answer that I wanted to share it with you.

Click here to read the article.

• Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Many times when we demonstrate techniques people will say that it looks like we don’t do anything and the attacker just falls. If they have studied another martial art they often say our training isn’t real because we don’t move fast enough. I have been dealing with these questions for almost twenty years as an instructor. A lot of people just don’t have the eyes to see this art.

Instead of attempting to explain I am going to defer to An-shu Hayes. His post this week is about this exact subject. Please take the time to read his answer here. You won’t be disappointed.

• Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Many martial arts make you conform to a certain way of doing things, everyone is striving to look like the art. Taijutsu, the basis of To-Shin Do and ninjutsu, is the opposite. It custom fits to you.

Last night was a review and test for this months curriculum and the magic of this art was on display. We had a five month pregnant woman, a couple of twenty something male collegiate wrestlers, four kids all around four feet tall, a six foot seven adult male, and a number of other adults with ages in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.

Everyone looked great but someone watching for the first time might have thought they were doing different arts. When they defended against a cross punch using a water technique our very tall student dropped back lifted his arms and looked as if he was holding off the attacker with a long stick. One of the kids did the same technique bent their legs, got real low and pulled the attacker off balance with their positioning right into a strike.

During the defense against a side headlock our mother to be couldn’t get around behind her attacker to break their balance because baby was in the way. She made an adjustment and used her new condition to swing her forward to take the attackers balance with her knees. She and everyone last night did an amazing job using taijutsu their own way.

Taijutsu is the understanding of principles of nature and survival. How you use them “literally” depends on you.

• Thursday, January 14th, 2010

One of my friends was asking me about karate schools in his area for his child. He had spoken to a number of schools but wanted to get my opinion. He knew I did martial arts for many years but not what I did so he asked. When I told him his honest response was, “What’s the difference?”

I told him that ninjutsu and To-Shin Do are not about muscle and memorization, they’re about magic. Ninjutsu is unique in the martial arts because it is about understanding the principles of nature and how to use them to be safe, that’s magic. This art is not about sports, competition or collecting belts its about survival, self defense and living a happy life.

I told him it could take forty years to see everything in this art but how that’s what has kept me training for so long. There’s always more to learn. He said that is very different from the others he had spoken to. Now he wants to train too.

• Thursday, January 07th, 2010

The student responded with:

Outside of physical training, where physical protection is less of an issue (ie. verbal confrontations, a pushy/nasty boss, family stress, etc etc), there are times when the mind/spirit is attacked, and this is what I am referring to when I was talking about mental ukemi.

I understand the question and what seems to be the non-physical nature of it. From training and teaching, especially with small children, I have found it is easier for us to learn to control our bodies at first and then move on to the mind and spirit.

The body mind connection works in both directions. What I talked about before was Derek using his mind to control his body reactions. That takes experience. But you can use your body to control your mind also.

When we have children who get hurt or upset it is very difficult to communicate to them and get them to use their mind to rationalize their pain or emotion. If they are hurt their breathing is often very fast. We will have them try a couple of physical tricks to slow it.

First we have them take a deep breath and hold it for as long as they can. When they finally exhale their physical condition usually has slowed down. If they can’t handle this one we get a candle and have them blow it out like a birthday candle. This again forces them to take a deep breath and exhale, usually calming them down.

The other one we use when they are just grumpy or upset is we have them look up toward the ceiling. This pulls the muscles of the face into a smile and the body and mind react accordingly.

These are simple physical tricks to calm yourself when you are angry. They are a first step to controlling the emotional reaction. And most of these are learned in our physical ukemi. Be aware the next time you get thrown or hit. Are you tensing and hitting the ground hard or are you letting go of the pain or momentum and going with it to escape?

The next step, in my mind, would be to look at your mental reactions and ask why you are choosing to be angry? There is some stimulus, outside or inside, and you are reacting to it. That reaction is a choice. The difficult part is that most of our reaction choices have become habits and we let them run on automatic.

Just like the physical training you have to be aware of your reaction to that stimulus. Are you tensing and arguing more or are you letting go of the anger and frustration to go with it and see an alternative?

I used to have a really bad temper, I know how you feel but now I am aware of the physical signs of my anger, I take a breath to stop them before they go and ask myself why I am reacting the way I am. At that moment I can then choose to react in a different way.

Just some ideas to get things started.

• Thursday, December 31st, 2009

We had a question about ukemi, which is the ninjutsu system of receiving an attack physically and mentally. The question was:

I feel that the physical aspects are straight forward, but I have been wondering about what kind of exercises one can do to improve on mental ukemi?

I don’t believe the physical aspects are as straightforward as one may think. Learning to roll and break fall are drills that teach you to be an uke. They change you, they are not collected things and then you move on to the mind versions. The question seems to imply (to me) that there is a difference between the physical and the mental or emotional. They are all the same. The physical ukemi exercises are the exercises you start with to control your mind and emotions and vice versa.

During a session at New England Warrior Camp my senior student Derek got to be uke for my friend Paul. Derek is a very good uke but Paul was showing some very intense techniques. It was clear that Derek was at the edge of his ukemi.

We had a quick discussion about his mental state. I told him he was fighting the pain too much. He agreed and (bravely I feel) said that fear had crept in because he hadn’t trained at this level for awhile. We talked about giving in completely to it as if you had fallen asleep or died. Not comforting thoughts but effective.

Derek went back to uke for Paul almost immediately. There was no time to change his “physical” technique, only enough to change his mind. Instantly he looked more relaxed and was able to handle much more easily. He came back from a crushing throw and lock smiling.

He changed his physical response in an instant by changing his mind. The physical training he has done for almost two decades has taught him to control his mind and emotions, which he used to control his body. They’re all the same. My suggestion to learn mental ukemi…punch in.

• Thursday, December 24th, 2009

I’ve been thinking about this thread for a while. Unfortunately I have been directly involved with knifes. This question is in fact why I went looking for ninjutsu. I didn’t know I was looking for ninjutsu at the time I just wanted an answer to all the knifes that were in the bars I was bouncing in.

From the time I started training with Mark Davis in ninjutsu we have always trained with the idea that our opponent was armed. If you think about it historically there’s more chance that they were fighting armed then unarmed and more than likely that weapon was some type of blade.

I am always interested to see that for most people there is a perception of difference in knife fighting and fighting. To me they are the same. I won’t deny there are concerns when a blade is involved but the defensive concepts should be the same.

I heard Dr. Hatsumi talk once about how many martial arts fight like animals (lion, snake, etc..) but how he fights like a human because when you go to a zoo the animals are on the inside and we’re on the outside. He talked about how we control animals by controlling the space around them instead of rushing head on and trying to over power them.

The same applies to our fighting system. At some point you have to give up on “doing” techniques and learn to control the space around your opponent. There are an entire series of evasions that allow you to move in on an armed attacker that are based on where the space is in relation to the geometric plane of attack created by the moving knife.

An example would be the tangent to a circle, a line that intersects a circle at one and only one point. This concept is the basis of avoiding a slashing attack. To start have your partner make the slash in a large arc toward your neck. First let them hit you to be sure of the distance. Then as they attack again move to either side from that point of contact and the knife should go right by. Don’t step back, move to the side or as you get more comfortable move in to the space along the arc of their cut. This lets you avoid the cut and bridge the gap to facilitate control.

This same concept can be used against a bat, a hook punch, a roundhouse kick or any circular attack. There has to be principle-based responses that work regardless of the weapon used because it is impossible to have a set answer for the infinite variations an attack can take.