Shinobi Martial Arts in Plaistow NH | Learn Ninjutsu Self Defense | 603-382-9456

Shinobi Martial Arts is proud to welcome back to New Hampshire An-shu Stephen K. Hayes & An-shu Rumiko Hayes to present Secrets of the Kunoichi along with the 2013 theme “Ninja Kuji 9 – Art of Invisibility”. Leave all perceived limitations of size and strength behind and learn to disappear in the face of danger.

May 18th to May 19th 2013

There will be no classes at the dojo on Saturday may 18th.

Friday has sold out but due to the amazing response we have gotten we are moving the seminar to a larger location right down the street on the 18th and 19th!

For more information and to sign up go here:

http://shinobi-martial-arts.com/ninjutsu-students-plaistow-nh/events/hayes-seminar-at-shinobi-martial-arts/

Shinobi Martial Arts is proud to welcome back to New Hampshire An-shu Stephen K. Hayes & An-shu Rumiko Hayes to present Secrets of the Kunoichi along with the 2013 theme “Ninja Kuji 9 – Art of Invisibility”. Leave all perceived limitations of size and strength behind and learn to disappear in the face of danger.

May 18th to May 19th 2013

There will be no classes at the dojo on Saturday may 18th.

Friday has sold out but due to the amazing response we have gotten we are moving the seminar to a larger location right down the street on the 18th and 19th!

For more information and to sign up go here:

http://shinobi-martial-arts.com/ninjutsu-students-plaistow-nh/events/hayes-seminar-at-shinobi-martial-arts/

We got a weapons question this week about the correct size of a hanbo (most people say 3 feet). It actually depends on the person using the weapon. A three-foot hanbo is too short for me (I’m over six feet tall) because I can’t hold the weapon properly and still have it touch the ground. I can use a three foot one but the one I made for myself is taller and thicker.

The same with the jo and the bo, the different lengths were for different defensive strategies. But they were for a group of people, who were relatively within the same size range. A “standard” bo is around six feet tall but was used by a person on average about 5’8″ or smaller. For me to have the same ratio my bo should be closer to 7 feet.

Remember when researching our art to try and put the information into context.

We had a question about defending against a knife attack when they have a reverse grip on the knife. When we do weapons work, we usually start off with one attack direction to answer a situation but then we look at all of the nine basic directions an attack can take.

None of our techniques are “the” answer to a situation. Our katas are designed for you to have an experience that changes how you perceive and react to violence. They are not things to be memorized and repeated mindlessly that type of martial art is dead. It is only a historical representation of what was. Ours is alive, looking to the past for answers to be applied to today’s problems.

One of those answers is to move to a safe space. Too many students are using their muscles to “do” techniques. That is a crude way to fight and tends to lose to the bigger, stronger opponent.

For those of you at Festival this year you saw Mrs. Hayes throw me around stage like a rag doll. She did not use muscle or even pain compliance, she was always in a safe space that just happened to put me in some amazing lock.

With the knife cut the student was talking about one of the ways to look for safe space is to break it down to pure geometry. The cut described is an arcing cut, basically the blade moving along a circle to your body. The tangent to a circle is a line that intersects a circle at one and only one point. Unfortunately in this situation that point is on your body.

But now if you look at a tangent line to a circle it is pointing to safe space where the knife will not be as they cut at you. A simple (simple doesn’t mean easy) drill is to stand in shizen no kamae or a natural posture with both feet on a line and have a training partner swing a training knife at your neck in a large circular arc (so you can see it to start).

Make sure they are right on target by getting cut the first time and then move on the line to either side into the safe space and the knife should go right by you. Later you can use the same concept is a more realistic attack and you should see that you don’t get cut and are in a safe space where you can counter easily.

And one last thought on the nine directions and understanding where space is in relation to them, they are just that, directions not locations on the body. You could do a vertical cut to someone’s hand, a horizontal slash coming down could be done to a calf muscle if I drop to one knee or I could stab a leg if I was in close grappling with a knife. We all have the desire to collect “the” answer but don’t let that desire stop you from seeing.

Today in our ninjutsu class the idea of multiple perspectives to create a clearer picture of a technique came up.

There are at least three perspectives in a technique. What was the effect on the attacker? What were the steps the defender did that caused that effect? And what was the relationship between the two from the outside observer’s point of view?

This three sided…story is a great way to start your notes. It is also a way to observe the technique being demonstrated. Are you watching for all three perspectives when you watch a technique demonstrated? Did you offer to attack so you can feel the actual effect and not what you may think it is?

This observational ability is a hallmark of ninjutsu. When I first started training my teacher told me that our first job as ninjutsu students was to be an information gather. Not just a collector but gather the information and then work with it to question it and make it our own.

So when you put down ideas in your notes see if you can do so from all three perspectives but first you have to watch for them.

A student recently asked a question about learning techniques and all their variants when you add weapons to the kata. His comment was: “While these variants are quality stuff, that I’m more than happy to learn, it is cumbersome to process all at once. The concepts are the same and the techniques are all similar, but the variation (knife, stand-up, ground) is what seems daunting.”

This is a great question and hits on the major difference of our art and something many people miss. There are no variants (taking poetic license here..) there are only different ways to apply the concepts.

If you are trying to learn the techniques as individual things in response to a particular attack you will never be able to remember them all. The concepts that you say are the same are the technique, they are what you are supposed to learn. What is the same about all of them? What cause and effect relationship is demonstrated in each variant?

When you understand that you can head of on what looks like a tangent but keep teaching the technique if you are continuing to demonstrate the same cause and effect relationship.

This is a big part of the confusion online you see where people are saying Mr. Hayes isn’t teaching the technique properly. The “scrolls” say it is done this way! The problem is that their understanding of the technique is that of a child. They can’t see the concept or principle of cause and effect within so when Mr. Hayes goes off to another way of demonstrating it they are lost and scream that’s not right.

My suggestion is to look at your notes. Are you writing do A then B then C when this happens or are you writing he moved along the circular attack to the outside and then took advantage of the return energy to off balance and throw the attacker. Note in the second one the attack could be anything, as could the response.

In a recent post I said that when you watch Mr. and Mrs. Hayes do anything you need to remember there is always more there then you are currently seeing. Keep looking deeper. That is the amazing part of our art.

The material in our art can’t be “collected”. It is not about doing the steps of the technique but discovering the lesson in them.

As an example there is classical ichimonji no kamae kihon kata where you move back and away from a punch then come back in with an attack to their neck. I have learned this kata as a lesson with three different attacks (high, middle, low), with three different responses (omote shuto – outward hand blade, ura shuto – inward hand blade, and tsuki – straight punch), then done both inside the punch and outside the punch, with four variations for each as the attacker defends against your response.

That would be 72 different versions of the same technique. You’re not meant to memorize all of them, you’re meant to learn from them. There is always more to this art than we perceive. How cool is this stuff?

The answer that has helped me the most came from my teacher Mark Davis. He told me that chi was awareness of energy that is already there. At least this is how I translate what I learned, (sorry Mark if I got it wrong).

So when I build my chi I am building my awareness. I am becoming more receptive. If you think about this it makes great sense.

Watch people when they first start training and they have little awareness of the use of gravity to move the body, but as the years pass you become more and more aware of the energetic pull of gravity and how to use it.

Learning to feel the intent of others starts slow but can lead all the way to the Sakki sword test and beyond. With these examples gravity and intent were already there you were just unaware of them.

As your awareness grows and you learn to connect and utilize these existing energies you are capable of things that are attributed to “chi”. The potential was always there, the energy already existed the only thing missing was your awareness of it, sometimes referred to as chi.

January of 1992 I started a training group at the request of my teacher Mark Davis. He told me that teaching this art is about creating an experience for the student so that they discover the principle you are trying to teach on their own.

Take a moment to understand that statement.

This is not about memorizing the movements of a kata. You have to understand that the kata are learning tools. They teach principles that change the student’s perspective and understanding.

You have to study the material so that you can find the principles in them and then set up an exercise for the student to discover those principles. The nice part about our art is that the lion’s share of the work is done for you with our curriculum. Now the question is, do we understand it?

Recently during a training session I was at in NC we looked at taijutsu concepts underlying each of the elemental levels. Kamae and ken tai ichi jo (body alignment and the use of gravity) for the earth levels, Mai (alignment and distancing between attacker and defender) for the water levels, etc…

I don’t explain these to students at those levels I use the curriculum as the experience to pass on these concepts. For example koyoku at the earth level, I may ask a student which direction is their arm moving when it strikes the hook punch coming in. Then explain to them that the direction their knee is pointing is the direction their energy goes in when they bend their knees.

I recently did this and the student made the leap to “I should make sure my knee is pointing in the same direction then.” Yes exactly, they discovered the principle within the technique, they own it.

Another example of this type of teaching is trying to get people to move backward into ichimonji no kamae for water movement. It is a very difficult concept for some, especially strong, young male students (back up???).

So instead of telling them all the things I’ve learned about ichimonji no kamae. I ask them if they have ever been in a tug-of-war. Then I take off my belt have them hold one end and I the other. Then on the count of three we have a tug-of-war. That I say is similar to the movement of water and how to get into ichimonji no kamae.

Is it exactly? No of course not but it is a start, an experience they can relate to so they can begin to understand. If at that moment they try the kata again with this new understanding and get success they have forged a new synapses in their brain to the idea. They are learning.

The taijutsu ideas for each of the elemental belt levels are guidelines that we as teachers use. I don’t talk to earth level students about wind level taijutsu ideas (a little bit on fun week).

Any corrections made for a student at the earth level are only about body alignment and using gravity. If I am correcting a blue belt it will be about alignment between them and the attacker or it could be about the earth level body alignment and gravity because they have already been exposed to it. I can correct backward in levels but not forward.

You have to give people time to internalize this material. It cannot be watched and then regurgitated because memorizing the steps of the kata are not the art. The kata are ingenious experiential learning tools that pass on principles. Memorizing kata and saying you understand the art is like holding up a paintbrush or a guitar and saying I am a painter, I am a musician. Not unless you can do something with them you’re not.

As I understand it “sensei” means one who has gone before. It is our job, as teachers, to guide the students so they can find their way, not tell them ours.

My friend and the senior student at Boston Martial Arts Center, Ken Savage, has a great analogy. He says that you return over and over to the same material as if it is on a wheel going around. But each time the wheel comes around you should be further down the road in your understanding.

I really like this description because it tells you what you have to do to progress in the martial arts. You must constantly reexamine what you think you know in order to turn the wheel and move forward in understanding.

One of the traps I see in training and teaching is in the translation of Japanese words and the cultural misunderstandings. I honestly don’t know what “kihon” translates to and then if the word it translates to means the same to us as “kihon” means to a Japanese person.

Most people have translated kihon to mean basics. I don’t like this translation because it creates the idea that they are simple, linear concepts that will be learned quickly and then moved on to the “good” stuff.

I prefer to think of kihon as fundamentals.

Fundamental: (adj) serving as, or being an essential part of, a foundation or basis; (noun) a basic principle, rule, law, or the like, that serves as the groundwork of a system; essential part

“that serves as the groundwork of a system…” That to me is the kihon.