Shoshin Ryu

Martial arts has continuously gained popularity since Bruce Lee jump kicked into Hollywood so many decades ago and a great many powerful things have been associated with this equally powerful physical art since. This growth has been fantastic for the awareness and understanding of what martial arts means to those of us that have studied and practiced it but as time moves forward and studios find need to compete with one another on a marketing scale in order to keep their doors open, sensationalism has taken hold and the grandiose has saturated the market with studio names that may be better fit as titles to a Shaw Brothers Martial Arts Movie.

Some of the softer, yet equally powerful, messages of the nature of our arts get overlooked in this realm of marketing and advertising. Many schools promote the stronger sounding beliefs in their names and attitudes to appeal to extreme fighters and individuals that are looking for evidence that martial arts can truly protect them and so, often times, words like dragon and flaming and other powerful sounding words are chosen merely in hopes to draw appeal to a place of learning.

Equally important philosophies of martial arts can be found in such simple words as respect, humility and honor or through more complex ideas such as peace through knowledge, honesty of action, and learning with the heart. Though the powerful ideals are strong within our minds, chest and teachings; it is from this quiet place of the arts that our school resonates loudly with. It is here that we find our balance, our Yin.

Through personal studies, we have always held firm to entering each class or session with an open mind and see every instruction with the eyes of the beginner, without the bias of experience. This belief has been honest to us every day, both inside and outside the dojo, and it is with this valuable lesson teaching us every waking moments of our lives, we continue to develop the personal integrity that we feel needs to be given to our own martial arts and offer the same for those that choose to learn along side us. Within our Shoshin Ryu or Beginner's Mind School.

Jesse Glover Seminar

On the weekend of January 10th, 2009, The Beginner's Mind School acted as host to a very incredible seminar sponsored by The Little Dojo and Fook Yueng Chuan association in which legendary martial artist, Jesse Glover came to Walla Walla, Washington to provide exceptional martial arts instruction to both local and distance artists from all around the Pacific Northwest.

Jesse Glover, Bruce Lee's first student and assistant, spent an astounding eight hours, divided into two days, through the course of the weekend providing instruction on some Non-Classical Gung-Fu such as closing, trapping, as well as other drills and techniques. 

Through the course of the weekend, Mr. Glover was kind enough to show amazing applications of his art and was more than willing to demonstrate and guide each and every participant on any step they could not take alone. His kindness showed up to your training area before he did and his knowledge stayed behind to help you even when he walked to the next group of practitioners. His friendliness was easily felt by each and every martial artist that attended this seminar, regardless of belt color, years of practice, or level of skill and each individual participating was blessed by his attention. Beyond the instruction and course content, as well as beyond Jesse's presence, the attendance was peppered with teachers, school owners, private practitioners as well as beginning students; including the majority of the student base from our own school, which we were thankful for the representation.

The quality of instruction and the pleasure of experience of this event was without doubt or question and the amount of information gained was without parallel. We were exhausted at the end of this momentous event but excited to play with what we learned and thankful for Jesse's willingness to give us his time and energy.

If you are ever given the opportunity to spend time learning from Jesse Glover, do what ever it takes to commit to it because you will walk away with something that will stay with you forever.