NW School of Martial ArtsNO CLASS TONIGHT due to weather. Enjoy~! đ We haven’t yet decided if there will be class tonight. Please check Facebook around noon for our final decision!
If (BIG IF) we do decide to stay open, remember that you are not obligated to come! If you’re concerned about conditions, it’s always better to err on the safe side. In exchange, we promise not to teach ALL the super secret martial arts moves in one night. đ
Students from Stanwood’s Northwest School of Martial Arts and Fudo Yama Karate-Jutsu made a donation to the Stanwood Food Bank on Monday, December 16, 2013. The donation ended a month-long competition between the two schools to see who could collect the most food.
We’d like to shout out a big “THANK YOU” to our parents for helping our kids collect the food!
And to everyone in the Stanwood-Camano area, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and warm season wishes from all of us at NWSMA!
I recently read “The Karate Code,” an e-book collection of short essays from Japanese Karate masters. In it, each master picked one word to describe karate, and then offered some thoughts to help sum up karate in a word.
Not an easy task.
If I had to pick one, right now, I’d pick “integration.” I like the sense of fullness and evolution that it embodies. (It probably also reflects my age. It’ll be interesting to see what I think in five, ten, twenty years).
Integration.
The more I think about it, the more I think integration is (or should be) at the heart of what we do both inside the dojo and out.
The best challenges are the ones we have a choice in. By choosing to undertake difficulty, we make ourselves stronger. –Sensei/YDN Caitlin
Today, I was reading about the history of using colored belts when I came across another great quote. “Achievement of rank should be considered as a side-effect of karate training and not a goal.” (You can read the essay here if you’re interested, but it is a fairly dry [no offense to its author] historical essay full of facts, names, and dates).
Anyhoo, I agree that your training shouldn’t only be focused on achieving belt rank. That’s shortsighted, and misses the point of martial arts.
But I *do* think that testing is an important ritual in martial arts. Let me explain… (click “more”).