I received a note in which a sentence contained the word string, “…are supposably caring sensi their in the dojo…” What the writer actually meant to write was, “…our supposedly caring sensei there in the dojo…” He was writing to ask about how to become an affiliate instructor in our SKH Quest network of schools […]

One associate of mine (cannot honestly call him a “friend”) thought our dojo holiday classes were “unnecessarily frivolous”. The ninja martial art is a serious thing, he scolded. I chided back that we were indeed so very serious and our techniques so scaldingly deadly that we did not have to go around acting serious and […]

When I was a child in the late 1950s, my TV cowboy hero was Bat Masterson. I watched the show every week and never failed to be enthralled. The Bat Masterson show was based on a real character who lived in the old West. Born in 1853 in Quebec, Masterson worked as a US Army […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]