Hi Friends,

We just had a great IBDA Tai Kai online hytrin held in San Francisco, CA were we studied the Ten, Chi, Jin (Heaven, Earth and Man). I limited this special event to 40 people plus a few instructors to keep it more intimate as I was sharing some very deep and unique concepts of martail arts training, merging the inner arts and the outer arts in a way that I have never taught them publicly – only in private sessions.

I very much appreciate Judan’s Joel Everett and Dan Ordoins for their coming and teaching. Godans Carlito Flores and John Owsiak brought their full armour and did a fantastic 2 hour demo and teaching of the power of kamae and why you had to be more precise in all your actions. It helped everyone learn to be more grounded what a great way to learn Chi (Earth). Most Excellent session. Thank You Carlito and John.

James Clum and Brian Sumpter helped in the understanding of the kanji for each technique during the tai kai so we could train with the concept that name represented in the technique or waza. We all learned a lot from that. Plus they taught many of the Jin wazas on Sunday. Thanks Brian and James.

The Enlightened WarriorTm session called “The Secret Power” I shared Thursday night brought many insights on the inner arts of Ninjutsu and martial arts which included the possible history of these inner arts from India to Tibet to China to Japan. Many people said that the skills that they learned will change their lives – I know that they have changed mine over the years. It was popular enough that we did another session on Saturday night taking the teachings deeper. I really enjoyed sharing my own inner passions.

Although the main theme I presented was “It is all connected” we trained with the additional concepts of the power of the spine, moving from your center, building presence in yourself while maintaining kamae and being unified in all your actions to get extraordinary results in your taijutsu. Of course we had to play with swords as well. 

But the greatest insights were in learning to understand the power that that mind / conscious awareness has in the ability to be effective in both learning and application of a technique. I broke this down quite often and demonstrated how to feel another’s mind thoughts and body energy changes those while doing the techniques. For the upper dan levels I was sharing how to lock or unlock these connections in their opponents body. The higher level of this teaching is to be able to do this in the taijutsu flow of which I personally had the most fun doing.  The idea is to enjoy the process of learning. This is a feeling art, agreed?

Everyone had a great time.

Stay in the flow,

Richard Van Donk, Shidoshi

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