Every once in a while a new person will come in to the school and think that they understand everything we teach already. Or they tell me how their training should go. They have expectations.

My suggestion to them is not to get locked in to what you think you know. It is very easy to say, “I’ve got this. I understand, what’s next?” 2008 was the beginning of my third decade training in ninjutsu and I can say unequivocally that there is more in front of me to learn than what is behind me.

At a recent Friday night class with my teacher Mark Davis, we went over the first part of Do Gaeshi from Takagi Yoshin Ryu Jutaijutsu. This is a technique I have done many times before but what Mark showed us was something I had never seen before. My training has now changed completely, again.

I don’t know what I don’t know, so to place my expectations and limitations of what training should be on my teacher would be the ultimate in egotism. There is always more to learn. If you’re willing to keep an open mind you can train for the rest of your life and never see it all.

Always look at your training with the wonder filled eyes of a child and you will do well.

Dennis
Shinobi Martial Arts
95 Plaistow Road, Plaistow NH

I was asked if training in other arts helps or hinders ninjutsu training. I feel the knowledge of other arts is good for knowing what you are up against but trying to fit those concepts into taijutsu is difficult if not impossible (my opinion). Taijutsu is unlike anything else.

Over the twenty years I’ve been training in this art I’ve come to an understanding that taijutsu is unique. I’m not saying that other things we have all studied (and we’ve studied many, my two partners and I have a dozen or more black belts between us that are not ninpo related) are wrong. I’m saying they are not taijutsu.

A stomp kick may look similar to a thrust kick and the techniques of Aki-jutsu may look like our art but they are not. These are just tools, like a hammer or a saw, both of which I’ve had to use recently but that doesn’t make me a carpenter. I don’t move or think like a carpenter.

Taijutsu isn’t the tools we use it is how we use them. Hitting someone with a cupped hand shuto doesn’t mean you’re using taijutsu. Releasing your body structure to the pull of gravity so you fall into the side of a person’s neck with the edge of your hand is.

There are people in the ninpo world that will argue this. They say no it must be done according to the scroll this way. To me that is a childish understanding of the art. Mr. Hayes for as long as I have known him has always taught the principle behind it. The why of what we are doing.

Progress for me came when I let go of what I thought I knew and began to pay attention to what I didn’t know.

Dr. Hatsumi made a comment once at a Tai Kai I attended about learning taijutsu being like sculpting. You don’t collect techniques in a bag, like a sculptor you start with something and then take away what you don’t need until you have a work of art. That is our taijutsu, we are the block of wood or stone and you train to take away what you don’t need until you are left with a martial work of art.

Dennis
Shinobi Martial Arts
95 Plaistow Road, Plaistow NH