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Last Wednesday, September 15th, we had a new student join.  Cindy Cordell has decided to pick up martial arts again.  As an exchange student to Japan when she was in high school, she had a passion for training in kendo and studied some judo as well while in school.  She became interested in checking out budo taijutsu and decided to come take a class and had a great time learning new things.

Christopher and I had a phone conversation recently and he told me that he is deciding to pass the school on to me.  That had been his plan for many years but with so many things in the world changing or being put on hold, as well as with his health, he decided to go ahead and pass the dojo on.  He has already given me most of his books on martial arts, philosophy, survival, etc and will pass the rest on to me along with all of his notes from years of training, learning, and talking with high level instructors, as well as the training weapons.  He gave me the login to the site and told me to change it to how I saw fit.  I have updated a few things, changed a few things, and added a few as well.  

Keep me in your thoughts as there is a ton of new information to take in from these books.  The notes won't be too much that I haven't seen, but there are some things in there which will be new to me, things I didn't get to spend much time on in class, and will surely be difficult...

For the past two years we have been working on Kukishin Ryu and everyone is doing well. The green belts are working on their curriculim but also training with the black belts and working on principles. There have been several promotions. 

Hatsumi Sensei has said many times that everything begins and ends with Kihon. We have always studied the Kihon, it is part of our curriculum from beginning to end. But is it truly an end? There is so much to the Kihon that it is limitless if one will free their mind from labels and deffinitions, and refrain from saying, "this is it!!!". "Understand, good play." should eventually turn into understood, it was good, and play more.

As it happens with all our training, it must become our own. But it must and should always be practiced with a mind that constantly considers the teachings of ones teacher, or teachers. Yes, its our own, and our responsibility to maintain a good heart in all aspects of our lives. Our ukemi should make us get up when we are knocked down, and we should always feel that our teachers are watching us with all their hope, encouragement, and sometimes not so gentle lessons, beckoning us ever farther, until we become what we were always meant to be; ourselves.

Those we have in our group are doing well, and as is expected, all struggle in one area or another. But if they...