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Wednesday 7:30pm - 9pm Sunday 10am - 12pm

TCSamuraiArts, 2419 Sybrandt Road, Traverse City, MI (2026)

05/08/2026

I am going through it ya’ll. And while looking for silver linings, Nami Ryu has shown up so strongly for me.

I have been experiencing the problems that come along with the quick deterioration of a birth defect that has caused me to get a full hip replacement at 45 years old. Once we realized that there so we few ways I could actually cause more damahe to my hip leading up to the surgery, I commited to participating how I could at the dojo. I continued teaching the Youth Class and when Carlson Sensei was unable, I taught our adult class too.

I feel like I leveled up. We should work to think of our bokken as live edged weapons, which helps us appreciate our first principle, “Never contest with vectors of force.” But it is very hard to trick your brain into doing that. Well, if I broke the first principle, it would bring the force pf that collision directly into my hip, which was agony. So my brain wuickly adapted to staying where I was on the line, but not letting them connect with me. I was able to spend some time deepening my training with the people I care about, and get better. Even with my hip essentially falling apart. But that was literally 1 of the many, many ways that I have been benefited by this training through this process.

When preparing for surgery, it is ideal if you can have good muscle definition in your thighs and hips. Goodness has this art prepared me there.

The excercises that I am supposed to do are things like getting up from a seated position while one-weighting on my right leg. This is what training has taught me to do anyway. Actually, Havasupai Canyon teaches us to balance our weight over our feat so we are not off balance as we move, it was a natural progress to recognize that if the left isn’t safe, have the right balance it out. But as I am getting through this post surgery phase, I realized that this process would be really terrible if these skills and strengths that are defaults for me from my years of training were not ingrained.

I am currently feelings so incredibly grateful for the time I have put in here, and I see paths to growth, and excitement for how it has already helped me in so many ways that are not about an attack.

Nami Ryu is a life skill.

12/26/2025

Happy Everything! As we approach the new year I like to put my mind to change. Change can be really scary, and it can also be incredibly freeing.

We all know that when we are training correctly, we are frustrated. Frustration is evidence we are pushing our boundaries and understanding, and it shows that we are doing the hard work - and actually learning. Probably even seeing subtle change.

While we know that holding on to tension hinders our movement, most of us don’t connect that your left scapula may be locked down because we believe deeply that this SHOULD be hard. I have had moments of clarity where I can “just release those muscles.” And while those are hard to replicate, they show me how easy this could be to get beautiful movement. When Sensei talks about “NIKE-jutsu”, this is literally what he is talking about. Stop thinking so hard, and Just do it!

As the current popular musical says: “We are warriors of the mind.”

Here is my invitation: when you step into your practice. Don’t worry about where you have been struggling. Just think about the simplest version your movement could be, and do that. I often will ignore that I have a boken and think: scapula down and right hip back and I will have performed a pretty decent Kenjutsu Kata 2. What does your practice look like if your forget to worry about things and Just do it?

In your new year, I invite you to try NIKE-jutsu with me. Good luck!

11/16/2025

Holy cow! Thank you Ryan Bellegante Sensei for an amazing seminar!

These photos tell a really relevant story. There is the photo that looks formal and official, then the one where Matt Carlson Sensei was being himself and helping everyone connect.

There is what we see on the outside, and what we feel on the inside. Many of our movement drills were very challenging (for me at least) to find the last puzzle piece before I could really get it. How do I affect my partner, while not worrying about affecting them… These puzzle pieces are completely within my own body, and cause me grief when they are out of place. Outside, I look like I am standing calmly in my stance, inside, I am juggle 3 knives that are on fire while someone is diving across the stage to show me all the tension I am holding. This weekend I felt as if I had enough people with various words and examples to explain the feeling I should be aiming for, and it was the right key for me this time. I felt like a lot of really difficult puzzle pieces found where they should go, and my movement improved just a bit more.

Let’s keep trying, let’s keep working it. I am so delighted by every little progression, and I keeping finding them when working with this community. Looking forward to the next one.

07/24/2025

While I would never dissuade someone from going to therapy, swinging a sword and rolling around on the floor with some awesome people has done wonders for my mental health. You should come join us. (And keep your therapist too)

06/27/2025

Growth is difficult.
This past week, we were working with Hachi Dan Giri (forgive the spelling) and carrying it forward into 3 person kata showing the value of the 90 degree transition. I frequently have this type of issue. I try to follow the explicit form/movement of the training movement, and bring it to the transition. And I kept seeing that my timing which shouldn't change, required a huge shift in gear ratio for the transition, and I was still way behind.

Matt Carlson Sensei came over and showed me what it should look like. And I saw it. The movement is not the large movement where the kissaki follows your hips diagonally across your body, it is the version that is created when you aim for minimal movement and reach for your opponent. It is direct, and all energy is moving into the cut at your opponent. Which leaves you the opportunity to transition and get to the other attacker.

I keep running into similar things. If I look at the attack as something I need to deal with, not thinking about the specific practice we are on, it seems more simple. I let my body move, I reach for my partner, I try to let them past. When I am working to follow an activity starting form beginning to end, I have a harder time adapting the movement because I am trying to do the activity. I need to look at each movement as the efficient version that always reaches down the centerline to the opponent. Even when it doesn't look like the thing we are doing. (Maybe that is the real thing to remember, the thing that Sensei does, is not the thing we see.)

Until I can make that my consistent pattern, I will continue what I am doing. Work out my question, confusion, struggle out loud, and try to find the next step. I believe (or would like to) that by communicating about my challenges, and how I work through them, I can help others understand that the frustration is part of the growth not that they are not good enough.

05/29/2025

This event was awesome. I was strangely nervous to start. Good conversation, good questions, good cutting. So much excitement all around!

04/29/2025

A few updates:
1. We had a fantastic gathering this past Sunday, and I am so grateful that our community is connected enough that we could gather for lunch after 3 hours of training and still have a great time.
2. We are only a few weeks away from the Gathering of the Clans. So exciting!
3. For those of us that cannot travel for the gathering, I will be running a few epic classes at the normal times, so please attend if you can.
4. I find that I am so motivated to do this for many reasons, and one of them is the consistent growth of my family. I wanted to share that my wife (Claire) travelled to Hamilton, Ontario this past weekend and in her first official game, she got MVP blocker and helped her Roller Derby team win against a team that was expected to beat them easily. I am so proud of the work she has put in!

04/10/2025

There are a few different trains of thought on how to work through the multitudes of challenges and puzzles we come up with, and I thought it was worth putting my hat in the realm for advice. Or at least for thinking about this out loud.

I am a both/and kind of person and when I hear things like: "Stop when you make a mistake, and back up to start over." The beauty in this is while it slows you down at first, it never allows you to learn a movement that is incorrect, allowing you to make future steps easier as your base is solid. With this process, I got completely stuck. I have the ongoing problem of being too much in my own head. (Read as: In my own way.) So this has never worked for me. If I stop at every mistake I will never even complete the first repetition of kata 1. I spent too much time trying to logically process every error, and it would prevent progress. I needed to find a way to get into my body and out of my head. So I have really stepped into the "Get through your movement, and pause to see where your body is, vs where you think it should be ~ and move it." This allows you to feel where your body should land, to help your body find where adaptions can occur to end correctly. Hopefully, but starting correctly, and ending correctly, your body will start finding more-correct paths.

Yesterday, in class, Matt Carlson Sensei mentioned the first approach again. And I realized that I have grown and can do most of our movements with some degree of success. I am doing better at being in my body and feeling the movements. It actually reminds me of something James Williams Sensei said to me a few years ago. To paraphrase: Understanding in your head is a logical game, you don't understand it until you can act it out in your body without thinking. I feel as if now, I can feel them in my body. I am starting to understand the movements. And it might be time to step into the first approach for improvement.

Now that I can feel these movements in my body, and not get stopped in my head, I can now stop my movement in individual practice when I see a mistake. Step back and try again. In shaping myself to improve from here forward, I need to train the closest to perfect I am capable of. I realized that my improvement from here forward will really benefit more so from being more strict and stopping with each mistake. Telling me that even our tools need to adapt with our growth.

What do you think?

03/27/2025

Being a Sempai is a sacred duty in what we do. We work with newer students, and we keep pushing to learn our own stuff. Working that balance between giving them what they need for where they are and finding the items you can work on in your own learning from that space. Working through the frustration of puzzles in your own body while also smiling and helping a newer stusent experience their own frustrations without feeling your challenges.

Remember this, working with newer kenshi IS PART OF YOUR Training. Step back and find a way to appreciate and enjoy that time. And one more thing, you don’t have to be perfect. Let them see your errors. Talk about your errors. It opens up much better conversations and safety for them to make mistakes too. We must model the kind of learning we all need to grow. Good luck!

03/21/2025

Good morning folks! I just saw an email that is pretty exciting. For those of you who are traveling this year to the Gathering of the Clans in Fort Washington, PA.

"We were looking to schedule an extra Thursday session at the Gathering this year on May 15th from 12-3pm followed by a later evening session"

This means that if you are able to arrive by mid-day Thursday, you can have 2 extra sessions of work! The Gathering can definitely be overwhelming. But when I have the chance to attend something like this, I want to absorb as much as possible in hopes that we can take the next 6 months to unwrap it all and look at it closely.

The Gathering can help to drive the focus for our individual classes for the rest of the year. If you can make it, please do. While there are always rough parts of travel, there is very little I am more impressed by than working to learn in a room with 20-30 martial artists that have a range of skill from 'new and trying' through some of the best I have ever met.

If you are interested and able to attend, Reach out to Matt Carlson, Sensei. He is coordinating for our Traverse City Dojo.

TCSamuraiArts

05/08/2026

12/26/2025

11/16/2025

07/24/2025

06/27/2025

05/29/2025

04/29/2025

04/10/2025

03/27/2025

03/21/2025

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