Carsten Neumann

San Dan--ShotoKan Karate

Colon, Germany

12/13

“My Training Experience Message to my martial arts-family at the Gi Yu Dojo in Centerville, Ohio USA”

Words are not enough to express my gratitude to have been given the opportunity to train with all of you at The Gi Yu Honbu Dojo. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the training in a foreign country, in not my native language, and in a martial arts, which is different to mine. I’m pleased that I was welcomed very warmly from Sukh Sensei and all the others during the training courses.

I train in Karate (mainly Shotokan, also free style) in Germany and my main focus is to improve my self-defense abilities.   I am open to new ideas and skills from others, if those ideas can help me explain and understand why that technique makes sense.  When I contacted Sukh Sensei the first time by mail, I felt already connected with him because he wrote me back, that the training is for learning martial arts and they are not competion training, rather competing with one self every class.  They train and learn together and from each other. That fits my approach and philosophy more than 100%.

My first class with The Gi Yu Dojo was on a Saturday after a hard week of business training in Cincinnati Ohio.  I was there for work from Germany.  I drove the 30 minutes North to Dayton Ohio to go train.   Everything was new for me. Topic of the training was a weapon I had never seen. Specifically, tessen jutsu and jutte as well. Tessen is a Japanese iron fan, which I never have used before. Great experience! Sukh Sensei described the historical background and we exercised with it the whole training session. I really liked the partner training. Like my own training at home, we changed the partner regularly, so you got the chance to train with lots of people. I was more than happy, about the patience of my training partners to repeat the shown sequences and to wait until I finished my slow execution of the techniques.

I decided after the first class, I would like to come back to more classes to learn more from all of them. Luckily they offered me that opportunity and I was pleased to join 4 more classes and training sessions. I was very impressed by the way of the students showed their cooperation between the each other and included me in to their group, like family- warrior brothers....”buyu”. I felt like I had been a member of the group/dojo for many years. I liked the self-defense aspects, the tessen jutsu, the jutte jutsu and finally the ground grappling and falling / rolling exercises. So much knowledge and experience, I was very happy and impressed.  On another day I experienced their “way” of Martial Arts from the beginners class and then in the black belt class. One day I felt like “ Yes, I’m doing the execution of a punch different than you learn and practice there, but it doesn’t matter, because there is always more than one way, if it’s effective and meets the purpose and furthermore I can improve mine for sure even more”.  A great experience.  What I also thought was remarkable, was that every dojo student took great care of their dojo.  Another day I was there, I saw they took care for the Dojo itself and cleaned and maintained it. What a great bunch of people.

As said in the beginning, I can’t express all my emotions remembering the time with you. The training and the talks with all of you have made my time in the Ohio area a memorable time of my life. I hope I name all my training partners and don’t miss somebody: Sukh, Jaye, Aman, Sam, Chuck, Doug, Todd, Andreas, Matt, Grant, Laura, Anna, Brittney and a lot more --- Domo Arigato Gozaimashita! You have all a place in my heart.

I hope we will see each other again. It would be an honor to welcome you in my Dojo in Germany. I’m looking forward to get the chance to come back to Centerville Ohio one day.

Have a great holiday season and a wonderful start in the year 2014!