16/02/2018
MESSAGE FROM SENSEI HAROLD
As I sit back and watch the years flash past my eyes I have come to realise that the acquisition of the Kempo Jutsu skill set is slow and the pathway is long and, at times, tedious.
There comes a time, with regular practice, that your body and mind work as one unit, as my instructor used to say to me, "if you have to think about it then it is already too late to save yourself from being hurt."
Along my journey I asked myself many times whether martial arts was solely about defending oneself from a physical attack or whether there was another side to it?
Training always consists of blocking, punching, kicking, elbows, knees etc and we do these things fast and hard against an imaginary opponent who is our size so surely it must be about hitting, hurting and fighting?
The answer didn't come in any shuddering overnight relation, rather it slowly evolved over the years in a sort of non-conscious way. Clearly I see the evolution of an individual in martial arts and if I look at the countless people I have trained over the years I see vastly different motivation from various different categories of students eg:
* I have trained the Police Officers of a certain Police station in a difficult area of Sydney. These people wanted to know how to stop themselves from being hit and how to immobilise those that were law breakers.
* I have trained a group of special army people and they were driven by the desire to not get hurt when facing the inevitable in close, life threatening circumstances they will almost certainly confront in their career.
* I have trained wayward adolescents from government owned youth detention institutions. These young people needed to learn discipline and respect for others and established norms and customs.
* I have trained thousands of young kids from 5 years of age and they wanted to have fun whilst their parents wanted them to be able to look after themselves as they grow up and enter high school.
* I have trained world class fighters who saw their career as being in the ring.
* And I have trained tens of thousands of normal everyday people who want fitness with a purpose. Most determined they would rather work hard physically whilst learning how to defend their family rather than joining a straight fitness oriented class.
So we see the enormous variety of reasons people have joined Kempo Jutsu but those that stick with it all follow the same evolutionary pathway. Let's consider the evolution they go through:
They join to learn how to defend themselves and to strike back hard and fast but along the way they become interested in the history, the culture, the fitness, the complex never ending array of things there are to learn.
As they age they find a desire to help others by assisting them in class, as they grow further it has become part of their life and it is like a train going down the mountains, it just can't be stopped because by this time it is part of you.
This is what happened to me. After training under Shihan Kyoshi Tom Slaven's name for circa 50 years Kempo Jutsu is me and I am Kempo Jutsu. This could happen to you too: it is a comforting feeling to be able to help others and protect those you care for.
So train hard and don't worry about the sweat, the alien moves or the stress, strain and inevitable fatigue to every part of your body, this is the cost of evolution.
The end result is worth the price of admission.
Kind regards,
Harold Baldry
Chief Instructor Kempo Jutsu
CONCEIVE-BELIEVE-ACHIEVE
