why do karate?
Karate isn’t the fastest route to the top of the mountain. there are still good reasons to do it.
What I mean is: if you want to be a gnarly fighter in 90 days or less, try going to an MMA gym. That’s what they’re there for. Karate can make you a fighter, but it has other goals and other considerations that maybe make things go a bit slower than some of the contemporary schools of mixed martial arts in this particular area. MMA is incredible, and in many ways it is quite similar to karate, but with a pedagogy laser-focused on combat readiness in the quickest, most efficient way possible. But MMA isn’t for everyone. Our founder, Ansei Ueshiro, once said that anyone can learn karate.
So what does karate offer, if not the fastest route to lethality?
scalability
Karate is uniquely scalable to the practitioner. The way you train, or want to train, at 20, 40, 60, 80, is going to differ. The depth of your training, too, will change over time. Karate’s deep library of solo exercises (kata) and compliant partner drills make it possible to train for a lifetime. When or if you’re interested in training that involves resistance or pressure testing, that is available to you, too.
Longevity
While karate includes a wide array of techniques effective at inflicting damage to an opponent, it can be trained with sensitivity to age, injury, and trauma in ways that other martial arts are not as readily able to accommodate. Trained in a traditional fashion, Shorin-Ryu karate provides myriad physical benefits, from cardio endurance to flexibility and functional strength.
community
It’s 2024, and a lot of things are awfully strange. Maybe you used to play in a band. Maybe you had a kid a few years ago and realized you’ve lost touch with some friends and aren’t really sure where to find new ones. Maybe you just moved here, and want to get to know new people. Maybe you thrive on the experience of shared challenges. Maybe you got sober, and the things you used to do and the people you used to do them with don’t quite fit anymore.
Maybe karate would work.
Karate can offer us something that is increasingly hard to find: community. We’re here together, training with and alongside each other. Some of us have trained for years, some for a few months, some for just one day.
Also, the internet is so boring, let’s do something actual instead.
mindfulness
The founder of Matsubayashi Shorin-Ryu, from which tree we are a green shoot, had a saying: 拳禪一如 (Ken zen ichi nyo), or “the fist and zen are one.”
A lot like the fighting part, karate may not be the fastest route to the top in the world of mindfulness. There’s probably a retreat center that will happily take $500-1000 from you to show you how to “do” mindfulness in a 72 hour weekend event in some beautiful location. You’ll get to do some arts and crafts, some yoga, eat some vegetarian food, maybe a weird pickle. Leave the US and maybe you’ll do some psychedelics and throw up in a bucket, too. You might even meditate. You’ll leave there with that great, post-retreat buzz.
Karate isn’t a 72 hour retreat (you might still, on a hot day, throw up in a bucket - pace yourself). Karate is a practice of consistency, diligence, and persistence. We go and we train most days of the week, or maybe even every day. One of our senior instructors once said that he likes karate because it gives him “a way.” A way gives us a framework within which to refine and study the self. “To study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things,” as they (or, uh, Dōgen Zenji, if he’s worth listening to) say.
Our founder didn’t make anybody meditate, but his teacher, Shoshin Nagamine, did. Choose your own adventure. Meditation is available at the dojo weekly.