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Magical Moments

With our annual Fall Festival just days away, there is a topic that I often find in the forefront of my mind as I approach any training event. I like to go into these annual events (or really any time I get to work with my teacher) with an eye out for what I call […]

The Ultimate Secret

To-Shin Do taijutsu is ultimately about principles as opposed to techniques. Oh, sure, we start students out memorizing things, as opposed to considering things. But that is just an expedient to match their beginner expectations. Normal people expect they will be taught how to move faster, be stronger, and to know something that others do […]

Troubleshooting Your To-Shin Do

I have had many students ask me to comment on getting the most benefit out of their training time invested. Whether you are in a class at your dojo or training on your own with a few friends in a small group, there are a few things to consistently keep an eye on. You may […]

Having a Balanced Perspective

I’ve always been driven to study martial arts. From the first time I knew it existed, I wanted to know more. When I first read a book by my teacher, Stephen K. Hayes, I knew what martial art, out of all the possibilities out there, I wanted to focus on. I was eleven at the […]

Your Brain On Kata

Have you ever watched a technique or kata demonstrated and when the teacher says to go try it you stand there and have no idea where to begin? Or you try it and the results are nowhere near what was demonstrated. The problem may be that your brain is tricking you. What you see may […]

To-Shin Do Training Center Mission Statement

Interested in running your own affiliate school? Are you emotionally attached to teaching your hobby – what you like to do as a martial artist? Or are you running a business, earning a dignified living teaching effective martial arts for the most benefit to the largest number of your community members? What is the purpose […]

Learning to Love the Plateau

All of us who have trained for any significant length of time have experienced the feeling of losing momentum or stalling out. We feel that we are just not making any progress and may even come to believe that we have reached the limit of our skill development. If our aspiration is to reach a […]

Strong Enough to Laugh

The other day I was teaching a class, students were having fun and enjoying themselves, and then one student, fairly new to class, laughed at something that had been said. Normally this is not an unusual event, but this new student almost immediately stopped laughing, put on the most serious expression, and sincerely apologized to […]

Shi-kin Hara-mitsu Dai-ko-myo

What does Shi-kin Hara-mitsu Dai-ko-myo mean? I’d like to share some of my research and thoughts about what this phrase means to me. Conventional wisdom around the Takamatsu-den based organizations loosely translates this as “In every moment is the potential for the enlightenment we seek” or “keep going and you can get it.” The question […]

Subtle Signs of Attack

Since To-Shin Do is a realistic approach to street and field violence, we have to take into consideration a lot more than sport martial artists do. In a competitive ring, you know why the other guy is there. He and you have agreed to a contest of fighting skills. All you need to do is […]

Zan-Shin 残心 Finish

Every technique in To-Shin Do ends with hands in our defense ready position, or some other kamae. Often the suggestion is to keep hands up ‘for at least three seconds’ as a symbol for this concept of zan-shin, a reminder that the problem we’re dealing with may not be over just because we’ve finished ‘the […]