Back in the 1980s, I encouraged my friends and students to take our ninja historical martial arts into new areas where our knowledge could help others. How about military applications, police work, health restoration, corporate leadership training, running a local community dojo, and yes of course movie, TV, or novel entertainment? Take this art and do things with it.

Do things that I would not be the best one to do, I urged them. I was the guy who wrote books and conducted seminars and published the newsletter (that was how we communicated way back before the internet) and generally proved the art to the greater martial arts world. I was very good at that apparently, based on the resulting reputation of the ninja martial arts up to the end of the 1980s, and the massive river of American and European students who poured into my teacher’s dojos in Japan.

Yes but… It used to surprise me how many students did not take my suggestion. Instead, many tried to do just what I did. They started to publish newsletters and write books and conduct seminars – all the things that I was already doing. Whoa! Don’t compete with my work, I urged them. That just forces too many similar opportunities on too few consumers, I warned. Do something new and different from what I am doing. That way, instead of us all having to settle for increasingly smaller pieces of a shrinking pie, we could create a massive ever-growing-in-size pie.

By the end of the 1980s, the once-impressive image of the ninja had fragmented with so many voices competing against one another for authority in the art. With all that confusion, much of the world concluded we must not be for real, and the ninja boom faded.

But then a wonderful thing happened. Now out of intense public scrutiny, many students began to look for new ways to bring our gift to more lives. 5th Degree Black Belt Richard Sears is one of those special students who started with me as a teen back in the barn dojo days, went through years of personal growth and exploration, and is now doing what I had encouraged so many to do those decades ago.

I asked Rick to reflect and write on why he stuck with our training all these years, and where he has taken his passion for the art as his own personal contribution to a better world. Give it to me straight, I urged him. What are you doing now with all you have studied, and where are you headed, and why was this so important to you?

Here is Dr. Richard Sears reply:
 
I first began studying with An-shu Hayes as a teenager in 1986. For many years, I delved deeply into the art of the ninja, and even ran my own school for about seven years as one of the very first SKH Quest Centers. I also began studying the mikkyo esoteric mind tradition with one of An-shu’s teachers, and was ordained at age 21.
 
As I grew older, I realized that there was so much more to learn than what would be taught in the training hall. In the dojo, I learned principles that were timeless, and through the example of An-Shu, I came to appreciate the importance of translating the principles to a broader audience.
 
Because of my interest in the mind, I began to study Western psychology, and eventually earned a doctorate degree and board certification. I also obtained a master’s degree in business administration, helping me to understand how to effect change at the organizational and systems levels.
 
Today I am a professor, and I teach others who study to become psychologists. It is fascinating how psychology is now doing empirical research on the forms of meditation that I had first learned from An-shu, techniques that have been passed down for thousands of years.
 
Putting together all of my training and experiences, I have worked with Union University to start the Center for Clinical Mindfulness & Meditation. Already I have been asked to conduct several professional training sessions, and to contribute regularly to a local magazine. I hope to create a forum where scientists, clinicians, and practitioners can work together to share knowledge and experience and develop new ways to improve the well-being of the general public. An-shu has agreed to join as one of the first members of our advisory board.
 
It is an exciting time to be alive. For the first time in history, we now have access to thousands of years of historical knowledge, cutting edge science, and access to amazing teachers.
 
While there is a need to preserve tradition, how can you take what you learn and put it to use in the world? How can you positively affect your own community? What unique skills and interests can you leverage? How can you be of help in a sometimes confusing world? Finding your own way to share and encourage strength is the true ninja legacy that An-shu brought to us from Japan those decades ago.

(Read an interview with Dr. Sears in Natural Awakenings on pages 8-9)
 

Some friends asked me what I thought of the movie Ninja Assassin. “So how real was it?” some asked.

“Real? What can I say? It was a real movie, and it was about ninja assassins,” was all I could reply.

“No, I mean is that what ninjutsu really looks like? How real was the stuff in the movie?”

What am I supposed to say? Would you ask the CEO of Toys R Us how “real” he thinks the Nutcracker Ballet is in terms of its depiction of the way toys come alive at night and dance around under Christmas trees? What could he say?

“Yes, but, you were trained in ninjutsu in the 1970s, and you saw all the 1980s ninja movies, so how real was it?”

Well what did YOU think when you watched the movie Ninja Assassin?

Is it possible that a very old ninja tradition could become corrupted to the point where it no longer lived up to its original ideals and became something grotesque? Could that be real?

Is it possible that one of the very best students could become so disappointed with the corruption that he felt compelled to leave as a statement against the degeneration of the tradition? Could that be real?

Is it possible that the other students would feel so threatened by – and perhaps even envious of – the moral stand of the rebel, that they all banded together to eliminate the rebel lest their own degeneracy be exposed? Could that be real?

Is it possible that the students could be so blinded by their resentment of the rebel that they foolishly stuck with outmoded training that had them fighting modern assaults with antiquated defenses? Could that be real?

Is it possible that because the art was allowed to pass into the hands of degenerate students, conventional fighters in the world would be so busy snickering and eye-rolling and ridiculing “ninjuhz” that they would not recognize what an incredible martial art it was and would not appreciate the power for good that the rebel was trying to offer them? Could that be real?

How real was Ninja Assassin?

I don’t know what to say. What do you think? Real, or totally impossible?

Have you ever felt powerless to make the right thing happen as you watched a terrible injustice unfold right in front of you?

Walking home from middle school with a friend, we found ourselves surrounded by the gang of the cruelest violent predator at our school. This guy was no mere bully. A 26-felony teen, he was three years older than us because he had been away from school in a youth prison. This monster had not killed anyone yet, but that was definitely on his list for the future.

Angry, foul mouthed, and hungry for the pleasure of humiliating yet another boy, he barked out taunts and insults. He focused on my friend and closed in on him swearing and shoving. His buddies circled us smirking and chuckling.

Horror in slow motion, he grabbed my friend’s arm and barraged him with punches. My buddy was still trying to figure out what was happening. Neither of us was ready for this – we were still futilely working on talking our way out with dignity. Jerked off balance, my friend went down to one knee with his head ducked to protect from the blunt punches that showed no hint of letting up.

The ring of creeps positioned themselves to block me from aiding my friend, but they showed little interest in me as they hooted and laughed encouragement at their leader. It was his show.

It ended with the monster shouting threats to my downed buddy – say anything to cops or authorities and even worse would happen next time. The creeps flashed me a last mocking look of derision and then they were gone, strutting away with more foul laughing insults spit over their shoulders.

My buddy shakily rose to his feet and dusted himself off. Though scuffed and bleeding, he didn’t seem to be permanently injured. Neither of us said anything.

Furious with anger and embarrassment, my pre-teen mind churned with regrets and self-disgust. Why did I just freeze and stare? Why didn’t I step in and do something? What could I have done? What should I have done?

I made a vow to myself right there and right then that I would never be in that position again. I would never have to stand helpless and watch a good person be victimized by an ugly and horrific one. When slime gurgled up out of the gutter to threaten the right and just, I would be the one to stuff it back where slime belonged.

I vowed that wherever I had to go or whatever I had to study or whoever I had to find as a mentor – I would learn how to prevail over the cruel and unjust and brutal. I would never ever again have to stand helpless and watch the right be crushed into submission by the wrong.

That was way over 40 years ago. In the decades that ensued, I trained with karate and kickboxing champions, judo and jujutsu experts, SWAT specialists, elite military commandos, top-notch bodyguards, and eventually the grandmaster of the ninja in Japan. “Never again!” was my motivation, and I was the most determined and diligent student any of my fighting teachers ever had.

Somewhere along the way I found myself sharing with others the lessons I struggled to learn. Coaching others for power in a time of unexpected invasion became my career. Today, the results of my decades of training self and others in the ways of prevailing over the dangerous and degenerate is what I offer my community. More than anything else, I want you and the ones you love to have this power too.

I can’t decide whether to see the movie “Men Who Stare at Goats”

It purports to be a story about a spooky special program of psychic warriors in the US Army, trained like Jedi warriors for combat in Vietnam and reinstated for Iraq duty.

From the trailer and information from friends in the movie business, the program and its people are portrayed as lunatic. The whole concept is ridiculed, and all is bunched up and passed off as “satire”.

So what is being satirized? The possibility of mind powers actually working to defeat enemies? Army personnel being trained in such? The Army itself? The government itself?

I know from personal work experience that the US government did indeed mount a program of psychic remote viewing and intervention some years ago. We got into it on the heels of USSR and China research back when I was a teen.

I also know that the US government did an awful lot to camouflage and conceal the program, though the Russians and the Chinese did not seem to be as clandestine about their programs. Seems that as Communist and officially atheist, the USSR and China governments did not have to deal with any backlash from religious sensitivities. It was all approached as science, and no superstition or religious biases had any place in the consideration. If it worked, then it was scientific. If it failed to work, then it was discarded. Had nothing to do with gods or prophets.

The USA on the other hand has a large population block that fears so-called “paranormal” human capabilities as somehow demonic or ungodly. I was told that much of our official secrecy stemmed from wanting to avoid having Senators and Congresspersons around the country being required to spend lots of time assuaging the anger of riled up religiously fearful constituents from all over the USA.

When people asked me about religious considerations, I always replied that if they truly believed they were created in the image of God, and God was a pretty awesome creator, why would they turn down any gift that came along with the full package of potential?

I sometimes got an odd counter-logic reply that humans shouldn’t presume to be godly. OK, but then why would a God give them powers that the God would want them to turn down? The people should know better than their God?

Anyway, back to the movie. I can’t decide whether to see it or not. Some things like the fully activated capacities of an actualized human being are still so un-mainstream and so popularly disdained by weak and fearful people that such things are not appropriate to be used as bait for ridicule or so-called satire.

“It’s only a movie, a fiction,” a friend chides me. “Don’t take it so seriously.” Well then, maybe I’d better watch a movie that is more in line with what I have dedicated my entire adult life to seeking and sharing. I take fully actualized human capacity very seriously, especially when it is often in the cross-hair aim of all those who use threat and ridicule to hold our culture enslaved to a very small and helpless experience of life.

Just some thoughts from a man whose ninja training years ago had him “staring at goats”.

When Ann Arbor, Michigan, Quest Martial Arts celebrated their 10th anniversary recently, I asked head instructor Keith Copeland what kept him going all these years. Keith’s background is a career in business consultation, so what was the draw to keep him engaged in teaching To-Shin Do, when it would be so much easier simply to mentor others in their businesses?

There is so much misunderstanding in our culture as to what martial arts training really is all about, so running an authentic dojo – a “place for finding your way” – is a lot of hard work. You have to deal with too many people attracted for too many wrong reasons. Popular media so often presents martial arts as one of two extremes. We find either impossible fantasies with Chinese wizards flying over bamboos waving singing swords, or cruel brutes in prize fights glorifying impersonal violence.

I also know that a couple of low-life guys came to Keith’s dojo posing as prospective students in order to gather “evidence” to twist into use for an internet lie campaign hoping to disparage Keith, his school, and our SKH Quest To-Shin Do network. Keith beat them at their game, but why put up with that kind of cowardly garbage from low-life people, when other ways of making a living would be so much easier? Give it to me straight, I asked Keith. Why do you do what you do, when other things available to you would be so much easier?

Here’s what Keith told me:

Some things I hear all the time from our Ann Arbor To-Shin Do students:
“I got that new job! I never thought I could do it.”
“I finally found what I enjoy doing and I just launched my new business!”
“I have the relationship I always wanted.”
“I really didn’t think I had it in me. The things I have learned here made all the difference.”

Pride and accomplishment exudes from them like bright light. Their confidence makes me temporarily forget the shy or confused person they may have been when we first met.

At the party celebrating our 10th anniversary as a school in the SKH Quest Martial Arts network, people thanked me and our team and shared stories of struggle and triumph. At the core of these stories was the affect their time and training in To-Shin Do had on them and their ultimate success.

It is a constant source of gratification. It is also a constant source of humility. They thank me, and I take credit where credit is due. However, I remind them that what they are learning is almost a thousand years old. It is tried and true. What they are learning are the core truths of human existence, and these truths pierce the veil of illusion and distraction that holds people down, excuses settling for the mediocre, and keeps people living their lives asleep in a daze.

People often tell me they came to our school for the most effective self defense system available. Others say they came for the compassionate community that is palpable when you enter the dojo. Others say they came for fitness, fun, or just to try something different. All come for different reasons, but, after years of training, they often tell me they stayed for the fundamental difference our training, our truths, and our community has made in their lives.

You are really much more than you know, and the SKH Quest commitment is to help everyone find their way home to success!

Let’s go way back in time, back to the early 1980s. Think of a time when there was no internet, no DVD, no self-publishing, no MP3, no YouTube. Old enough to remember such a time?

We had magazines. We had books. Those were my only possible channels for getting word out to the world that there was a new possibility in the martial arts – the training legacy of the ninja. And those channels were owned and controlled by a tight group of business people known as “the publishing industry”. If a publishing company did not believe that:

• My credentials were authentic
• I was capable of delivering what I claimed to deliver
• I could write effectively and engagingly
• What I wrote was true and verifiable
• I was disciplined enough to deliver a finished manuscript on time
• Other people would want to read what I wrote
• What I wrote was important enough to see print
• What I wrote was a good investment for the publisher (“I would make them money”)
• What I wrote would add to the prestige of the publisher’s reputation
• What I wrote would so impress readers that it would lead to even more books or articles that would make even more money and prestige for the publisher

…then there would be no way for my message to see print on paper.

Back then, if I were just some silly barely-literate inarticulate poorly-skilled but big-ego wanna-be in a less than mediocre martial art method, I never would have made it in the door of a publisher, and never would have seen my work in print by a reputable company. Of course those were the days before YouTube freedom to willfully and thoroughly embarrass ones foolish self in the eyes of the entire world.

Back in the early 1980s, a new 3rd realm of publishing arose next to magazines and books. Videotape instruction became the new darling of sports trainers and instructors. But early videos focused on the sports of the wealthy who could afford the technology required to watch videos. Everyone knew that martial artists are notoriously lower-class poor as a group (as opposed to golfers or yacht crews), and so the big question was, “Would martial arts instruction ever make it to video?”

I was approached by Robert Clouse, director of “Enter the Dragon”, Bruce Lee’s final film, with a proposal to do a 2-tape VHS video exposition of the ninja martial arts. The company was Hawk Films, the producer was Nigel Binns, and I along with 3 other hand-picked martial stars flew to Ashland, Oregon, to film our four individual projects.

Those two VHS tapes were important in that they gave the world a first-hand look at what was only a frozen-pose 2-dimensional presentation on a page up to that time. I way over-packed the presentation with everything I taught – unarmed classic combat, unarmed modern combat, bo staff, Japanese sword, hanbo cane, shuriken star blades, kusarifundo chain, Ryutai Undo body flexibility, and stalking and climbing. The tapes sold like crazy in the 1980s and into the 1990s.

We eventually converted the two tapes to two DVDs, and added some updated footage. I was a little nervous preparing to watch the reissued scenes. That was 25 years ago when those were filmed. I was middle-30s in age. What if I now embarrassed myself with what I thought was cool or skilled back then but was now only amusing? What if by redistributing those original videos, I accidentally created my own embarrassing YouTube-style exposure? What if I wished everyone would forget what I had done back then?

I watched. I smiled. I nodded “yes”. Young guy in that dark beard way back then did not let me down today. I am delighted to see that what was real back then is still eye-opening today. One training friend (who admitted he was not even born when the originals went on sale) claimed the “paper napkin diner defense” was worth getting the whole set for. One friend cheerfully admitted to what he called “lifting” the sword segments and running them as a Black Belt Club course in his karate school, and he actually looked good with his copycat movement. A few Quest Center owners had school parties for viewing the DVDs together.

The set is now “back from the depths of the vault” and available if you would like to own a piece of ninja history in the Western Hemisphere. CLICK HERE to preview some scenes on your screen. I heartily recommend the DVDs, I am happily relieved to be able to report.

Kuij literally translates as “nine letter-words”. The reference comes from a nine-word sentence of Chinese language origin that summons up the ninja’s powers to deal with obstacles and opposition. I describe it in my book Ninja Vol 3, Warrior Path of Togakure.This term is often used as a catch-all for the ninja’s warrior protector spirit practice, though there is a lot more to the practice than just those nine words themselves.

Part of the bigger teaching is an imaginary symbolic 4-sided, 4-walled- 4-doored fortress palace and geographical layout known as a mandala. What if your life in operation were like that fortress palace? What if you had different types of response strategies for handling different kinds of situations that could rise up to challenge you?

The four parts or wings or doors of the fortress can be interpreted as four specific roles you might take in accomplishing what you need. Think of this as four roles to play, four types of identity you might take in order to be sure that all the angles are handled most effectively.

Here’s an example of how this can work. When I counsel my friends who run professional martial arts schools, I often refer to this mandala idea, and urge friends to see all the roles that need to be taken to drive a professional school to success in serving the community. Most successful businesses need four key players to get four types of job done. The four kinds of roles to be carried out – in a “4 W” format – include:

1. Whip-cracker – is the person who oversees daily operation and makes sure that everything gets done and done quickly and effectively, with an emphasis on urgency and accuracy. In a professional martial arts school we call this the office manager or the administrator.

2. Warrior – is the person who does the production work to provide the service or build the product or deliver the goods. In a professional martial arts school we call this the instructor

3. Wonderer – is the person who comes up with the idea and application and designs the product or service in a fashion that will serve the client’s needs in the best possible way. In a professional martial arts school we call this the conceptualizer or designer, or maybe the research and development role.

4. Welcomer – is the person who attracts and draws in the clients with effective communication of the benefits of the product or service. In a professional martial arts school we call this the marketer or the salesperson.

Sure, you can do it without one of the four, but that takes a lot of hard lopsided work and a lot of luck. Do you want to base your success on a program of over-working and counting on luck? No, me neither.

In a brand new school, these four roles may be handled by two people or even a single individual. A new business is a lot of work in the beginning. Gather allies and become a fortress, and you have a better chance of being the victor in that campaign.

In a personal conversation earlier this week, I asked the Dalai Lama about the public publishing of what for generations up to now were secret teachings for depth inner transformation. Books about once-secret Tibetan and Japanese tantric meditation inner work are available for sale all over the world; some of the books are good and authentic, some are accidentally off-base and wrong, and some seem deliberately designed to deceive and distract.

Blunt quick surprise reply from His Holiness was that we now need to publish this kind of information in its authentic form because there is so much bad stuff out there. Without access to the true, people will be tripped by the tricksters.

OK; king speaks, I listen.

In chapter 5 of my book Ninja Vol. 2; Warrior Ways of Enlightenment I wrote that I would never provide more than an overview of the ninja kuji-in work. In Chapter 5 of my 1983 Ninja Vol. 3; Warrior Path of Togakure I wrote a similar statement about ninja kuji-kiri. I felt strongly that way then.

But now I feel differently. I have decided to change my stance as to the public dissemination of information about ninja spirit-focussing intention energy work. I wrote my original teacher stance on not publicly teaching ninja power channeling back in 1981, way before the internet and self-published e-books and YouTube were even dreams in the public mind. It was way before an onslaught of embarrassing junk being purveyed on those future 21st century sources by “kuji masters” lacking legitimate authority and power. It is really awful what some people are hawking out there now.

OK, it’s 2009 not 1981, so here goes.
Read the Ninja Vol. 2 book.
Watch the kuji-in DVD.
Read the Ninja Vol 3 book.
Watch and study the ninja kuji-kiri DVD.
Read and watch again and again. Walk through your days looking for opportunities to “storehouse” amassed power from continuous awareness of your effect in the world (the books and DVDs tell you how) and watch out for temptations to let your power leak away.

I will post more suggestions on this blog as the year moves on. No, you cannot “master ninja kuji” from a blog – or a book or DVD for that matter. But you sure can get a head start on learning, and you sure can learn to tell the difference between instruction from a qualified teacher and something silly on YouTube.

Here are a lot of my senior Black Belt students and SKH Quest licensed school leaders. Several folks came in before for my 9-9-’09 60th birthday party at the Dayton dojo and then we all got together for some high-level practice the Friday afternoon before our 29th annual Festival.

Some of these Black Belts have been training with me since the early 1980s. Some have traveled to Japan with me for training and visits to inspirational training halls and mountaintops and temples at the roots of our ninja warrior tradition.

Especially in this year of unprecedented financial devastation in the small businesses and lives of so many Americans (and world citizens), I emphasized a hearty salute to my Black Belt training partners for making it back to Ohio for our yearly gathering.

These are the ones who carry our To-Shin Do out to their communities to serve the call for heightened life mastery quality through martial arts training. These strong people saw the importance and beauty of the message I carried from what I studied with my teacher and my teacher’s teacher. Certainly they do not “have to” stay with me and my program; easier lessons and easier belts and easier trophy titles could certainly be had elsewhere. But they vowed not to take the cheap and easy route, and promised that no matter how difficult the lessons, they would persevere, they would prevail, they would master.

I am proud of my friends. You can see their schools listed on this web site under TRAIN WITH US.

I wrote a blog about relics being revitalized to provide new benefits to a new generation without damaging or destroying the essence of the relic itself. And of course I sometimes believe relics should be preserved as relics; museums inspire us with past triumphs in creative development.

Anyway, one commenter quite bluntly wrote in that the source martial art from which To-Shin Do evolved is completely sufficient in and of itself and required no “updating” at all to be effective. He went on to surmise that the reason I had changed my teaching was that my “ego and bank account” needed something more.

Brushing that cheap shot aside, out of curiosity my staff and I looked at my critic’s web site and links to videos of him in action. There he was, performing flat-footed robotic slow motion single action responses to a listless attacker who lurched in with a punch that resembled a bad bowler stomping forward with a right step and then a limp straight-elbowed right arm upward swing. The “punch” came to a stop almost a foot away from the defender when it ran out of what little steam it had. Made me shudder just to watch it.

Oh-ho. OK. Now I know why he does not at all approve of my insistence that we train against scary threats. He can’t handle those with what he is teaching. He then dodges the problem by requiring his students to attack him in a quirky stylized manner that fits what he wants to use for defense.

One difference between what I taught in the old days when I was an apprentice explorer and now 30 years later is that we usually avoid that lurching lunge that would never happen that way in a real fight. We insist our To-Shin attack simulations reflect what a real assailant would do to start a fight.

Many (most?) of the techniques that work so well against the extended straight-line-from-knuckles-to-neck arm need major modification to be effective in a real fight where the aggressor keeps angularity in his arm and shoulder joints. That’s why I had to create To-Shin Do.

Does that mean we do not teach defenses against leading-leg leading-hand attacks? No, not at all; we cover those. Boxers jab off the same-hand-and-leg-forward position, wrestlers lunge in with a same-side step and grasp, and MMA cage fighters fly in with a same-leg-and-fist lunge punch. We do train to protect against such fighting sports assaults that could end up on the street.

BUT when we do use a lunge punch, it really is a punch.

I suggest to my critic that to avoid embarrassment the day a real challenger struts into his dojo for a trial, my critic should think hard and carefully every time he is tempted to blow off and ridicule that which he does not want to understand. Save the cheap shots for later once you have earned your reputation.

That’s exactly what I learned to do in my decades of martial arts training. And that’s how I came to earn in the public arena the right to demand we revitalize the relic.