The dojo is in Greenwood, WI. 300 S. Main St. Greenwood, WI 54437. Looking forward to having a great time and getting my but kicked. Hope to see a lot of people there. Starts at 9:00 a.m. and should end around 3:00 or so.

Greetings,

Just a reminder to everyone, there is an Isshinryu Seminar in Withee, Wisconsin on May 17th at the Conger School Of Isshinryu Dojo.

Topics cover will be wrist locks and joint manipulations takedowns and defensive ground fighting.

For more information, please go to our calendar section or visit www.aoka.org

Thanks,

Sensei Morse

WOW!!! You have learned more then i have. That is awesome on your finding. I will have to look some of this stuff up. Thanks so much kevin, you really are studying up on things. Great Job.

hi tonya,
so far from my reading i have been able to trace most of the origins of okinawan martial arts to southern china and more specifically, the foushou and fukien provinces. and from the fukien province, the art of white chrane kung fu. i found a book on white crane available from www.ryukyu.com. its a nice site that has many books and most of the isshin ryu books as well. i just ordered the first four isshin ryu kata books by steve armstrong. and the book, who's who in isshin ryu.
shorin and shorei are translated as shao lin. as in the monastery. these are the true origins of karate. and from my reading i have found that karate originated in okinawa. japan had martial art systems but they were not called karate. so true karate originated in okinawa. i recently purchased the bubishi, the bible of karate. this is a manuscript that has been used by many okinawan masters in setting up their arts. including shimabuku. another book i am soon to read is barefoot zen. it traces the origins of karate and kung fu to the shao lin temple. in fact, there have been many okinawan masters who considered the notion of separate sytles to be silly. they commented that it should just be called tode. tode is the okinawan term for china hand. funakoshi changed the characters for kara to mean empty, thus taking away from the chinese origin and appeasing the japanese who were insulted by the term kara because of its chinese origins. there is so much more but it is hard to sit down and just type out a simple lineage. but there are charts in the book by mark bishop, okinawan karate. that would be the most helpful book for you to read. it is available online, i got it from amazon. have a great day.

Well, I have to say that i started for a reason. My whole life i have been pushed, beat, physically, emotionally, mentally, and people trying to break me. I want to learn to fight back and defend myself. I was taught from a little kid on that i cant fight back or will get it worse. So learned that fighting back was wrong. It has been hard on me to fight back and override the brain. I still have a ways to go but i am fighting back slowly. At times fear is stopping me. It is so hard too know it is OK to fight back. My life you can guess has been a nightmare. I want to be free from my fear and fight back when i have too. I have to say this is hard even now to write this, or say it at times without feeling so much pain. Honestly i was not going to respond so you guys dont know. I dont like to open myself up, then i wont be attacked at my core. I am not strong enough to take an attack.

Don't feel too bad, Sensei Burrell. My story is pretty much like yours. Yes, I was concerned that I didn't feel like my job had given me enough..ok, ANY, real training on how to protect myself. But that wasn't why I started, it was why I stayed. I started because Brian wanted to. So I bought two month's worth of class for a Christmas present so we could start together. Then he hurt his knee and backed out. So I started by myself. No deep meaning, so spiritual quest. Thinking about that stuff came later....much later.

Ok this is going to sound pretty bad for someone who hasn't posted in quiet some time. The reason I started MA is because my brother was in it. That's it ... no profound reasons or needs to fill. Just wanted to do something that my "BIG" brother was doing. Mom caught on right away as to why I wanted to join so she originally said "no". But after almost 2 years of "mom please" I finally was able to join. Now here I am 21 years later and still going strong. The MA have now become a huge part of my life and I can't think of what I'd do without it.

i started martial arts because i felt that i didnt have the power to take care of myself in case i was attacked. there were some bully issues when i was younger. buy now thats been many years and i am faced with the question...why am i in martial arts?
over the years i have just felt this pull from the study of martial arts. not just in the personal development of physical arts but in the study of the history and philosophy of the arts. reading has always been my mainstay. i pick an art and read it to death. i like to see every possible angle of an art that i can get, now including video.
studying martial arts as a whole, not just any one system, has always been like a puzzle to me. i am trying to fit the pieces together. i have found over the years that there really is no one superior style or system, but that the individual is the key. it is up to the individual to develop his or her own personal skills. there have been many great fighters who have come from varying arts. the best we can get from a system is a well thought out progressive training program which is designed to take us through the skills we need to develop our own personal understanding of martial arts.
so, my purpose for being in martial arts is self development, self awareness, and after many years of all the "self"-isms i am hoping that i have lost some of my selfishness and to be able to care for others and not just myself. but all the self development is important in the beginning because we need to be empowered before we can help empower others.
and that is where teaching comes in to play. teaching has been my main interest in martial arts. helping others to see what is sometimes seemingly hidden. i am a perpetual student, always studying things. not just martial arts. i have many interests which i actively pursue. all of my interests i can tie back in to martial arts training. each activity plays hand in hand.
i suppose there are always many reasons we do things or are interested in various things. these are some of my reasons for why i am in martial arts.

I will get back to you on this one. Just have to think of how i am going to word it!!

Onemind 1, well that is good to know that you are getting yourself back. We all loss our selfs over time, situations, and life. I too struggle at times with these issues, and i will agree that Isshinryu has helped me get back in touch with myself. Brings us back to where we need to be. We are never done learning. I am glad that you are growing!!!