Student challenges

Image via Wikipedia

We often blog about the things that our school, Beginner's Mind Dojo, contribute to the Walla Walla community. This blog, we opt to actually discuss our martial arts activities, for a change.

In our adult class, we continue to burn the calories that will help bring our students the physique that they are after. Moving on to the arts, we spent time integrating weapon work into some of the school's forms, experimenting with weapons as well as gaining personal ownership of each kata.

Stepping from katas to Escrima, the class continue exploring the realm of stick fighting.

Martial Arts Bike Ride

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The second Beginner's Mind dojo bike ride of this year will begin on Saturday morning, June 20. As with the other bike ride, this one is a free event.

School attendees, friends, and family will meet at The Beginner's Mind Dojo by 10 am. The ride will be round trip with no stops scheduled and will be roughly twelve miles. Click here for a map of the route or check the map below.

After putting away bikes, those interested in grabbing lunch will head over to Jefferson Park (next to Hasting's) to enjoy a potluck where everyone brings their favorite dish (or whatever is convenient)!

Relay For Life

The Beginner's Mind Dojo spent time this weekend assisting Valley Residential Services at their tent and along the Borleske track through Friday night walking to raise awareness for the cause of fighting cancer.

Many local businesses were present, including Wal-Mart, Hair Raisers, and Gilbert Auto. The Borleske track met many shoes through the course of a 24 hour period and saw people from all walks of life supporting the cause with walkers making anywhere from one lap to ten hours of laps to show their dedication and care, including friends and families of passsed loved ones and cancer survivors like Rick Morgan, who just recently finished his final round of chemo-therapy a few months back.


Also at the Relay for Life was a dunking booth, a mini-fair and a lengthy slip-n-slide to occupy the children (and a couple of the adults), there was live music and an auction, which all helped keep spirits high and maintain a positive environment for an otherwise painful subject.

IFYCA Mountain Retreat in review

The International Fook Yueng Chuan / Shoshin Ryu Karate-Jitsu Association hosts a couple mountain retreats a year in which martial artists from the United States of America, Canada, and Europe have come to train in martial arts. Many different aspects of the arts are implemented in these retreats and training with weapons is not uncommon. This past retreat, hosted on the first weekend in June of 2009, saw the surprise visit of Jesse Glover, Bruce Lee's first student and teacher of Non-Classical Gung-Fu...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Friday morning, the drive was pleasant and the weather was warm. Nearly every student of the Beginner's Mind School was in attendance with the majority of them arriving very early. The event began with a large round of introductions in order to help familiarize every one for ease of training (with a large number of attendees hailing from Yuen's Family Martial Arts Centre) and the instruction was under way, courtesy of Master Instructor Steve Smith.
Moods were elevated and training was fluid as many theories and drills were practiced through the evening and well into the night, with but a break for dinner, including an exclusive knife training segment by guest teacher, Chris. By the end of the session, people were making their way to their tents, cabins, or trailers filled with new information and enhanced muscle memory.
Saturday saw much of the same as training began early and ran through the day as Master Smith and Jesse Glover traded of portions of the day, taking the attendees from Yueng Chuan to Gung-Fu and back again. On this day, the training was showing its measure in the shoulders and elbows of every person there. The evening brought rain but that didn't stop the course as the group moved indoors to the pavillion and continued the experience, only to stop late in the night where some of the remaining individuals sat around and talked with Jesse, or rather, listened to him talk about martial arts, history, and truth in teaching.

The rain died some time in the night which gave way to a misty Sunday morning within the pine trees of the campsite and there were still hours of training to be had before this retreat was finished. The camp got right to business and worked solidly up to noon where the goodbyes began.

This weekend brought a great many experiences, some of the most important being new studies of ancient arts, expanded muscle memory and art exploration, the privilege of being accepted and training with our three main teachers at this retreat, and the friendships that have budded or continued from past retreats that will continue to prosper into the future. Additionally, on a more personal view, the untiy with the Beginner's Mind dojo, which was already strong, has solidified even moreso bringing student and instructor alike closer than a team, cementing the relationships just as those of a family

Remembering David Carradine

Today, the world of martial arts mourns another loss in the family as David Carradine has been found hanging in a Bankok hotel room. This deeply saddening event has kicked up a storm of media and speculation so, rather than drive into the depths of the unverified and the half-truths, we prefer to shine the light on what Mr. Carradine loved and gave to us, film.

Mr. Carradine, 72 this year, was extremely active on the silver screen throughout his career and managed to stay embedded in the cult pop of martial arts cinema as well as non-Kung-Fu based films, as early back as 1965 with Bus Riley's Back in Town and The Violent Ones in 1967.

Up until 1972, David was best known for his roles in Western movies such as The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969), Young Billy Young (1969), and Macho Callahan (1970) where cowpoking and gun slinging (perhaps the grandfather of Gun-Fu) filled the screen and Mister Carradine met with great success.

In 1972, Kung-Fu hit the small screen and lit the homes with, what most people would have to admit, was their very first introduction to, not just the physical side of the arts, but also the intellectual aspect of the arts as well. This series ran into 1975.

David carradine moved through genres again and managed to carve out a niche in the car race films with his parts in Death Race 2000 (1975), Cannonball (1976), as well as Thunder and Lightning (1978).

Mr. Carradine returned to the Kung-Fu (or Eastern Westerns) with The Silent Flute (1979) but only temporarily as he also settled back into Westerns while acting in a wide range of film types throughout the eighties before and during his exploration of war movies such as P.O.W. The Escape (1986), Armed Response (1986), and The Misfit Brigade (1988).

Through the Nineties, action films saturated the market and David Carradine found himself taking on roles to just stay active like Evil Toons (1991), Karate Cop (1993), and Children of the Corn V (1998) and capped the twentieth century off with a series of David Carradine exercise workout videos.

The new century is when his legendary status truly brought David back into the limelight and re-enforced his status as a martial arts tough guy with Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies, Hell Ride (2008), and Crank: High Voltage (2009) where he played the disgusting, yet hilarious villain, Poon Dong.

It is beyond unfortunate that he has passed and we are a lesser world without having him with us, but this much is true; whether he was gunslinging, car crashing, karate kicking, or just generally being a man's man, David Carradine will always be remembered as one of the legendary silver screen badasses!

IFYCA Mountain Retreat this Friday!

Well, there are less than 5 days until the International Fook Yueng Chuan Association mountain retreat and the anticipation within the Beginner's Mind camp is high!

• With special guest, Jesse Glover, attending this retreat, the preparation is in full gear with a great number of straight-punches, big-punches, sticking hands and other exercises being practiced.
• Bags are being packed and the camo is coming out.
  
• Camping equipment is getting dragged out and tested.
• The natural food sections of the grocery store are seeing more activity.

If attending, be sure to bring:

• Pair of Escrima Sticks
• Safe training knife (one must be rubber)
• Comfortable Outdoor training cloths.
• A tent and all sleeping bags etc.

Beginner's Mind is eager to visit with Yuen's School of Martial Arts and The Little Dojo students and teachers again along with the many other regular attendees!