Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu Course

HOW THIS COURSE WAS BORN

What Are the Most Important Lessons of Budo Taijutsu?

Face it: Budo Taijutsu is not easy to define as a martial art. Some people really get it, and others struggle. It is an art that needs to be practiced interactively with someone beyond your current knowledge level. It is really a study of concepts, principles and ideas to use in combat: exploring the proper distance, controlling the space (kukan), taking your opponent off balance, striking without being seen (the course has over 100 principles). Even Soke Hatsumi (now fully retired) did not teach a formal way, yet he uniquely demonstrated his concepts and principles in any form.

This course was created to help ALL Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu practitioners understand the dynamic relationships of the Bujinkan art. It has never been defined the way it is in this course. The training draws from 9 different schools, and their concepts overlap in every class, and those concepts have never been defined all in one place. Many students and instructors have become confused. This is an overview teaching of the most important lessons and concepts in learning the art.

Every year when I plan our annual Tai Kai, I choose a special theme for the training. When I sat down to think about it, I had a brainstorm that lasted for several hours. I literally could not stop writing for almost 3 hours! The principles just flowed through me. It was triggered by one question:

“What are all the most important lessons of Budo Taijutsu ever taught to me by Soke Hatsumi (and other Grandmasters) over the last 30+ years?”

That is a super question when you have studied an art for over 30 years and made over 50 trips to Japan to train with Soke Hatsumi and other Shihan. I had also been in Grandmaster councils for decades and videotaped and studied the master patterns and movements of at least 30 other styles from the grandmasters themselves. The answers came flying in. I wrote them down as bullet points, then received specific exercises on how to share each point with you, and codified all the lessons into a progression of importance.

Then I asked my senior instructors to write out their top 10 insights on the same question, and some of them spent months on a lesson plan to share at the event: Shihans Dan Ordoins (15th Dan), Linda Van Donk (13th Dan), James King (13th Dan), John Owsiak (8th Dan) and Carlito Flores (8th Dan); Shidoshis Charles Benham (7th Dan), Roman Marquez (7th Dan) and James Clum (7th Dan); and Shidoshi-Hos Jamie Daiken (4th Dan) and Theodore Schink (4th Dan). At least 8 of these teachers went on to become Judan and above. All have trained with me and in Japan at the Hombu dojo directly with Soke Hatsumi.

I filmed the event and compiled their most important concepts of Budo into a 236-page manual, which includes the Ten Chi Jin Shidoshi book with my own training notes. Get the best of what they have learned, presented to you.