We are repeating the kata from Bobi no kamae and starting to explore close range, grappling and uke work through Seoe nage and Ganseki.

Video of Ninjutsu “Seoe”

We’ll all meet at the Maria Kong Dojo.
The first part of the seminar will be the master recipe for Ninjutsu Sabaki – empty handed, or with weapon.
Here’s a primer:

Video of advanced combining of retreat and attack sabaki

Mechanical efficiency is the ideal of materialism, but unless it is subservient to and disciplined by the spirit, it can take charge and destroy the spirit.

In life, though not in mechanics, the things of the spirit are more real than material things. They include religion, poetry, and all the arts. They are the mainspring of culture which can make life worth while.
Farming is concerned primarily with life, so if ever in farming the material aspect conflicts with the spiritual or cultural, the later must prevail, or all that which matters most in life will be lost…

Farming must be on the side of religion, poetry and the arts rather than on the side of business, if ever the two sides conflict.

Lord Northbourne – Look to the Land

All the basic attack kata from Shizentai no kamae, Doko Ichimonji no kamae, Hira ichimonj, Jumonji no kamae and, with more detail, Bobi no kamae.

Video of the first aggressive kata from Doko ichimonji no kamae

At the first session we’ll hone ukemi work from Ninjutsu underhook and later on kick combinations from Bobi no kamae. At the second session we’ll work our Tai sabaki from Bobi no kata and it’s derivative in Randori. If time will suffice we have some Kusari work and sabaki against it.

Video of basic back kick in Ninjutsu

At the first training session we will practice the tai sabaki from the 1st Bobi no Kamae kata with Mikazuki geri. Also we will explore the Ninjutsu underhook from various clinches.
At the second training session we will do the same syllabus and add to it some applications of Fudo Ryu Shizen gata.

We’ll go over several kata from Bobi bo kamae, asimilate sets of leg blocks and kicks and then research the Ninjutsu underhook – Genseki.

Video of Ernesto Hoost in AKBAN explaining leg blocks

We will repeat the sequence of Daken Kuzushi, Tai otoshi and Osoto gari. Later on we’ll do the first attacking Hira ichimonji kata and the 1st Ninjutsu answer to the opponent taking us to the ground.

Ninjutsu osoto gari tutorial

Every year I make it a point to donate my time for some kids who want to learn martial arts and can not afford to pay for it.

This makes me happy and this way I return the gift my instructor, Doron Navon, once gave me when he allowed me to train even though my mother did not have enough to pay for dojo fees.

This year I am fortunate enough to be teaching a wonderful youth group in Tel Aviv, about thirty kids.

My friend, Shai Reshef, sees a far horizon from his lofty perspective, he sees more then 30 kids, he sees a change. He once told me: “I want people to be able to learn higher education, not only read the news”.

And that’s what he did, after only three years he built the world’s accredited people’s University that teaches students from Israel, Haiti, Egypt, well, actually from every country where there are students who can not afford University tuition. 1200 students from 121 countries, so far.

Every dollar contributed to the www.uopeople.org pays the tuition of an able student who would otherwise be doomed to a life of cultural and economic poverty.

I think my teacher would have approved. I intend to donate not only time but money in this round of contributions. Maybe you would choose to do the same.

Here’s a link

Yossi Sheriff

When I consider what is happening today in the world I cannot help but regret that people everywhere are too eager to search after that which they think is new, to the gross neglect of things old, and never realizing that whatever is being rejected at an alarming rate of increase is that which is intrinsically good.

This tendency is nonetheless true in today so-called world of Budo (Martial ways). The number of persons who engage in Budo training is increasing and some competent instructors are endeavoring to transmit the correct values of Budo to their students.

But what is most deplorable is that the majority of Budo forms being thought today are quite different in form and spirit from those of the original classical ones.

Today’s Budo has lost its original flavor and has become simply a recreative pastime for the general public.

Written by Otake Risuke Minamoto-no-Takeyuri, the headmaster of Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu
At Miyashimo, Chiba perfecture
December 1976