Congratulations to Kengokan Dojo assistant instrutor Sempai Adrian Cepak who was promoted to Shodan (1st Dan black belt) at the Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Watanabe Ha Karate Australia national training camp at Coolum over the weekend of 16-18 April.

Graded to Shodan-ho (probational 1st Dan) 12 months ago, Sempai Adrian put on an excellent demonstration that shows his indepth analysis of Shorinjiryu karate technique.

Sempai Adrian’s promotion was awarded by headmaster of Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Watanabe Ha Karate, Hanshi Shunji Watanabe who presided over a panel consisting of Shihan Dan Hayes (USA), Shihan Page Christis (USA), Shihan Jim Griffin (Australia), Shihan Max Estens (Australia), Renshi Lesley Griffin (Australia), Renshi Des Paroz (Kengokan Dojo) and Sensei Tony Fletcher.

Congratulations to other yudansha promotion recipients Shihan Jim Griffin (nanadan), Sensei Mark Slingo (sandan) and Sempai Christine Dewar (nidan), who were promoted at the same event.

Congratulations to Joanna Choe who was promoted to 1st Kyu (brown belt / black tip) a couple of weeks ago, at a grading conducted by Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Watanabe Ha Karate Australia chief instrutor Shihan Jim Griffin and Kengokan head instructor Renshi Des Paroz.

Joanna performed kata, yakusoku kumite and buki-ho well. Her progress reflects the excellent effort she has put in over 3.5 years of training in Shorinjiryu karate.

A couple of weeks ago we discussed at a session the three types of timing. Its worth bearing these in mind as you practice kata and kumite. The three types of timing are:

1. Go no Sen: Countering after the attack. This is the “typical” scenario found in early karate training where an attack is delivered by tori and uke executes a block and counter technique.
2. Tai no Sen: This is where uke delivers a countering technique simultaneously with tori‘s attack. This timing is seen in the first techniques of yakusoku kumite like Nijushiho Waza and Sankakutobi Shodan Ichi.
3. Sen no Sen: This is a strike that is timed to land before tori‘s attack can reach the mark. Sen no Sen is based on the scenario that tori commits to an attack, but uke manages to get in faster.

There is a fourth type of timing, called Sen Sen no Sen (or sometimes simply Sen), which is more of a preemptive strike. Sen Sen no Sen is a timing used when there is no question that violence is imminent, and a karateka chooses to strike first to bring the situation to a quick close.

As martial artists we practice self defense on a personal level. We work hard to avoid, diffuse and occasionally  definitively deal with threats to our personal security. Martial arts are a practice of life preservation techniques.

We know that being aware of whats going on around us, being aware of potential threats, is a vital part of self defense – more important than any technique or skill.

On a global level we also have to recognise threats. One important one is global climate change. There appears to be widespread consensus in the scientific community that the climate is changing, and that the changes are likely to have far reaching consequences. We need to take action.

One small action is to reduce our energy consumption. Earth Hour is an annual event where people around the world show their commitment to reducing consumption by switching off all lights.

Life protection means protecting our life on a personal and a global level. Visit the Earth Hour website and calculate your footprint. Its quite astonishing to see the impact we have, and great to see that there are simple steps we can take to reduce our footprint.

This website will be blacked out for one hour during Earth Hour in Sydney, Australia. From 8.30pm tonight, you’ll get an Earth Hour page instead, showing our support for Earth Hour. This is achieved using BraveNewCode’s Earth Hour WordPress plugin.

As there is much buzz around the interwebs about Twitter, you can now follow the Kengokai Dojo on Twitter by the username @kengokai.

We’ll push any updates, etc to that so you can keep up to date with what we’re doing!

Viewers who have previously visited the Kengokai Dojo website will notice that everything has disappeared!

The old website was hacked and rather than trying to fix it, I’ve decided to rebuild it from ground up. Probably a good thing, as the old site had got a bit complex and convoluted. So please bear with me while I rebuild the site.

We’re still training, and welcome visitors to come along and view our training. We’d also love to see people who have trained with us previously to come back.