Redding Shotokan Karate

Sat., May 12, 2007

I just came home from Berkeley, California. It's about 200 miles south of Redding. I led Northern California Women's Practice at the Berkeley YMCA dojo (located close to UC Berkeley) today. I've been leading this women's practice on Mother's Day weekend (a special day for women!). This is the 6th year. It was a gorgeous day. We had 21 women, some from Oregon, LA or Nevada. It's always nice to meet new people and see old firends again. There were lots of smiles and hugs.

Practice:

Welcome address What's the point of women's practice? Most of the karate instructors and the majority of students are men. We are having sort of "guys' practice" all year round. It's good for us to have women's practice every once in a while, where we can get to know each other better, support each other and think about the differences between two genders. Women can be strong "and" graceful, or..... gracefully strong. Ohshima Sensei once said half-jokingly during his women's practice, "Women don't have to imitate men's ugly conscious power." Thank you Ohshima Sensei! Women don't have to abandon their nature. That's what I believe.

Warm-up in a big circle so they feel connected. Encouraged them to count with me in Japanese so newer members learn how to count. I had them do 20 knuckle push-ups, plus a few extra as always, in Darrell's "Marine Corps style". Never give up! Keep trying! I told them how my direct teacher Ken Osborne, godan, loved push-ups.

Sanbon Kumite I immediately moved on to kumite practice. I had many things in my mind for today's practice. I had NO time to waste. We started off with attacks and then proceeded to defense. I emphasized two things:

1. the importance of good form in kumite just as in kihon or kata, because it makes our techniques work. However, we should not worry about good form when we are actually facing the opponent. We don't have time to do it, and it's too late to worry. We need to practice in good form when we have basic kumite drills, not when we have the opponent in front of us. Teach your body and muscles every day how you stand and how you move, so your good form will show automatically. Let's go clean.

2. the importance of finding out what kind of an attacker you are facing as soon as possible.We talked about the opponents who make 1) slow/short attacks, 2) clean, long and penetrating attacks (with no control! - mentioned by one brown belt today - Yes, we know that attacks should be real in sanbon kumite.), 3) slightly round attacks. We practiced different ways of defense for each kind of opponents. I intended to have discussion about how we can keep strong mind in sanbon kumite (or any kind of kumite). Unfortunately we didn't have enough time for that today. I think it's very (probably most) important, especially to women. So, this is going to be the centerpiece for our next practice.

Self-defense Having only 40 minutes for this, I focused on groundwork for four different situations. I emphasized 1) Never give up! Keep trying. Even if nothing works, never give up and wait for the chance. 2) Practice regularly on single, simple and effective techniques. Special thanks to five men who volunteered to be bad guys and dummies. You all did a perfect job!

<short break>

Kata I secretly had a plan to give black and brown belts a surprise today. It worked! Junior members got to assign each senior one or two individual kata of their choice. It's only fair for juniors to "have their turn" to ask seniors to demonstrate thier kata. Besides, it's good for us seniors to be tested and put under pressure. Juniors' eyes sparkled and they couldn't hide smiles. Sandans (Cyndi and Amor) did two kata. I was assigned to do Gankaku, Taikyoku Shodan and Hangetsu. I did one more kata, Bassai, to show my deep appreciation to all of the members for coming to my practice today. There were mirrors everywhere on the walls. Before bowing, I tried to stand facing the wall between mirrors. I didn't want to get disoriented by so many mirrors.

We had too much fun and it was alreay time to wrap up the practice. This time I had a (happy) surprise. When we lined up for the closing mokuso, Amor (leader of the hosting dojo) stepped forward and gave me the most beautiful bouquet of bright yellow sunflowers! Thank you all. It was my great pleasure to lead the practice today. After the photo session (so many cameras!) we walked to Jupiter for the reception and had a good time. Heartfelt thanks to Amor and the Berkeley dojo to host this year's practice. It was another lovely day with SKA people.