At one martial arts school in Mesa Arizona, traditional karate is taught by Grandmaster Soke Hausel, who has been teaching for more than 4 decades. Soke teaches traditional karate (non-sport) and has a unique method to train a person's, reaction and muscle memory. Without these, a women will likely need a gun.
Last week was 'WOMEN's WEEK' at the Arizona Hombu (aka Arizona School of Traditional Karate). Over the years, our sensei (instructors) have taught many self-defense clinics for women at various universities, sororities, girl scouts, political groups, libraries, professional associations, and businesses. These are a great time for all, but one thing that always is lacking in these 2 to 4 hour clinics - mushin! Mushin is the karate mind which is the state that we like to see our students achieve in order to learn be able to properly defend oneself. The karate mind is mostly muscle memory, but that muscle memory must be properly tweaked so that the individual reacts to an attack without thinking and with focus and power to quickly end an attack. This cannot be done in a seminar or short course, so we try to get those who sign up for these seminars to continue training in 'Traditional' Karate so they can learn proper muscle memory. But the seminars hopefully introduce attendees to karate and if not, we focus on the use of weapons - such as car keys, books, magazines, pens, pencils, kuboton (yawara), elbows and knees to give them an advantage.
Our women's week began on Saturday, August 2nd (2014), when one of the Shorin-Ryu Students from Utah was promoted to Yudansha Sho. Jasmina has been a long time student of Hanshi Watson, 9th dan, and tested for black belt before I had arrived. But I was given the honor of presenting her certificate to her at the Utah Gassuku (outdoor training clinic) at the East Canyon Resort to the east of Salt Lake City. This promotion was celebrated by a Bosnian dinner at her family's home Sunday evening.
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| Outdoor training (Gassuku) attendees learn to use a hanbo (3-foot stick) for self-defense. |
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| Another student trains with throwing stars (shuriken) |
I returned to Phoenix on Monday and on the next day, I was excited to see the return of one of my favorite martial artists - Sensei Paula Borea. Sensei had a knee injury that progressively got worse from her training many years ago in taekwondo, which finally had to be corrected. We were all excited to see her return to the dojo. Sensei Paula is half Japanese and she wanted to return to her roots by training in the original traditional karate from Okinawa - Shorin-Ryu. Sensei Paula is also a real samurai with samurai lineage! As a result, she is a real tiger in the Samurai Artsand Kobudo classes.
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| Katie whips her future husband while at the University of Wyoming several years ago. |
Last week, we also received three new students on Tuesday, including Debora, Suzette and Rihanna. In addition, Megan returned from Japan after spending the summer with her grand-parents and two of our students were promoted on Tuesday and Thursday of last week - both are school teachers. Janet was promoted to 9th kyu and Alexi was promoted to 3rd kyu. Then we had another new member sign up on Thursday - another Megan, who is training to be a pilot.
We featured one of our female martial artists in the 'Bushido' newsletter. Sensei Elena Finley finished graduate school at the Colorado School of Mines and we found out she is in the final group for consideration by NASA for colonization on Mars. Wow, wouldn't that be a 'Kick' if she opened the first dojo on Mars! I'd bet they could do some serious tobi geri (jumping kicks).
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| Group of Wyoming martial artists include Hanshi Finley (Casper) in back. L to R in front are Uchi Deshi Heather From (Nebraska), Elena Finley (soon to be from Mars), and Dr. Florence Teule (France).  |