Living in a way that keeps you ever aware of the preciousness of each moment and fullness of potential held in each encounter is called being mindful. Developing such a habit is a part of the To-Shin Do 8-Step Personal Perfection Plan for personal transformation from the inside out 7. IDEAL MINDFULNESS – “Perfect way […]

I asked some of my training friends what keeps them going in their To-Shin Do martial arts study. Why are you doing this? If you are not anticipating a lot of life-or-death fights in the next few weeks, what is the pull to keep on training? Give it to me straight. What is the pay-off […]

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, […]

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 […]