Hayashi Tomio (Christopher J.Goedecke) led a seminar on October 12, 2025 with four, multi-decade experts on advanced karate training. The panel emphasized the importance of community and internal martial arts, the social aspects and subtlety of advanced martial arts along with the integration of Taoist principles. The panel also explored the concept of Kiko or energy manipulation, and its impact on martial techniques, noting the importance of a concept called Hard and Soft Gates as well as the challenges of aging and the need for continuous training. *[Creative liberties were taken, with the panelists consent, to bring more clarity to the topics discussed than in the video version.]
Click here for Video. Time stamps are included below with each speaker.
Hayashi Tomio 00:00
Welcome to the Underground Temple. I’m Hayashi, head of the Isshin Kempo system, and this is the fifth in a series of ongoing seminars exploring different aspects of traditional Okinawan karate. To start off this seminar, I have asked four experts to join me in what I hope will be an intimate conversation about the nuts and bolts of long-term/advanced karate training. I’d also like to get into some of the weeds as well as some of the obstacles that people confront training for multi-decades. I’d like to introduce each of our panel members by giving you the back story on their experiences.
Roberto Andrade, got into our children’s karate class early, at age six. I never trained children until they were a least seven, but Roberto had an older sister doing it. He has been training non-stop ever since. When Roberto was around thirteen, he also took an interest in Capoeira, which he studied for eleven years and later taught. Roberto was also drawn to China, where he did an intensive training with a notable master in the Wudang mountains in one of the three great internal fighting arts of China, called Xing Yi. Roberto is an acupuncturist. He runs a clinic called Natural Integrated Medicine. During his time in the clinic, he took a decade long interest in the 18 Lohan, a series of Qigong exercises that provide an excellent foundation for physical health and also the foundation for some internal martial arts.
Next, Tim Smith and Tom Lyons. I bring them up at the same time because they have the unusual distinction of having started karate training as teenagers and being consistent training partners for forty years. In addition to his karate, Tim wrestled for four years in high school, studied Kodokan Judo for three years in college, and up until a few years ago, spent five years working on his fitness in traditional western style boxing.
Tom paralleled his interest in karate with yoga. He took up Hatha yoga for three years, and served a brief stint teaching it, but because of time and money, he made the decision to focus exclusively on karate. His entire family is involved in the martial arts. Tom met his wife in the karate class who went on to earn Black Belt ranking. His daughter, Amanda, holds a Sandan in Isshin Kempo and a Shodan in Shotokan. His son has a brown belt ranking, so there’s a lot of martial activity. We often wonder, what happens if there’s a family dispute? [laughter] For the past four and a half years, Tom, along with other members of his family, have been studying Taoist Qigong.
Lastly, on the panel is Jay Austin. Jay goes back to the pioneering Bank Street School in Summit, New Jersey. Bank Street opened in 1962 offering Judo. In 1965 it made available karate to the general public. I began there in 1968. Jay came later in the 70s. Jay was groomed to become one of the senior teachers after I left. He taught at Bank Street from 1977 to 1980. He’s had a wide interest in a variety of different martial arts, including Gracie jiujitsu in the early days when it was just coming into the United States, Hung Gar, Chin Na and Ninjitsu. Jay has been an active student in the martial arts for fifty-three years.
This is our panel of experts. They are very seasoned men.
I have a multi-faceted question to all of you, in which we can start to crunch down what sustains your long-term training. Consider, the average martial artist in the United States does not train past two and a half years. Eighty-five percent drop out within that time period. Once you hit the 10-year range, you’re looking at a very thin band of practitioners. With the least experienced panel member of thirty-six years and the most with fifty-three years, we’re talking about the top 1% in the United States able to sustain this kind of training. My question to all of you, and anybody can start, is what has sustained you to go this duration? I’d also like to bring in the concept of advanced karate. What does advanced karate mean to you? Is it just time and grade? In addition, could you talk about Internal versus External training, in which I must add the concept of Ki or Chi. How is it relevant to your training? If anybody would like to start, I’ll pass the talking stick.
Jay Austin 07:00
First of all, I think we are all blessed here because we have a full-time teacher. Even going back to the original Bank Street Dojo days, we had full time professional teachers, which was very unusual for the time. Even to this day, we have a full-time professional teacher [referring to Hayashi]. * [Note: Roughly 25% of the martial teaching community in the U.S. is full time] We’re all blessed because of this. Some parts of my training have literally saved my life. In the early days of the Covid Pandemic I ended up in the hospital for nine days with double pneumonia. I think what sustained me was my training in my Sanchin breathing and my ability to focus my mind on moving my energy to parts of my body to fight that battle.
Roberto Andrade 08:19
Because I started so young, I went through many different training phases. As a teenager, in my 20s, even in my 30s, much of my focus centered around my physical prowess. It’s a martial art, right? I was looking at the obvious, self-defense fight of it. But if you’re only training for the fight, unless you are a competitor, how long is that going to really sustain you? Will it sustain you if you find yourself in a cushy environment in New Jersey, where maybe no threats happen? Or are you constantly dipping yourself in some sort of fire? After a while, I started looking into deeper organizing principles, ways to use my art to explore avenues of better awareness of situations, better awareness of different principles of my body, mind, and spirit. The martial rabbit hole is as deep as your ability to dig. I have found if you keep digging, there are richer veins of knowledge and exploration. I kept circling back to a straight punch, to a throw, and the different levels that I could keep attaching to it. If you’re training solo, obviously there’s a discussion of what do to do in terms of your kata, other supplemental exercises, or weight training, or whatever you might do versus training in a group. Obviously, in a group, there’s the camaraderie, the brotherhood or sisterhood. Interacting with others can sustain you for a while, but if you’re training on your own, you have to look for the deeper principles. You must keep refining and honing to avoid getting stale. The kata for me has been a very deep dive into all facets of the art. I asked many questions; If I use my art for physical strength, how do I train for strength? How do I train to stay limber? How do I do it for injury prevention? How do I do it for relaxation? How do I do it for stress hygiene? The questions go on and on. When I started layering all these principles, I saw how the art can sustain oneself until your end of days, instead of just turning my body into a killing machine and possibly suffering crippling injuries along the way.
Tim Smith 11:19
What sustains me first, is the community we have. This is just a wonderful class. I’m so glad to be part of it. As Roberto was saying, the longer we train, the richer the art gets. There are dimensions I hadn’t imagined when I started out, and certainly before we began the Kiko studies. Working on the mechanical level was wonderful, but adding the Kiko dimension on top of it has made my training all the more intriguing and exciting.
Tom Lyons 11:54
Tim echoes a lot of the sentiments of my classmates here. I’d just phrase it a little differently. My first thought, when Shifu posed the question, was the number of times we’ve said, ‘Did you ever think we’d go this far? Did you ever think you’d be here forty years later?’ My answer has always been, ‘Well, yes, absolutely.’ I started martial arts in the days of Black Belt Theater—you know, extraordinary things on film. I always thought that stuff looked really cool. I always wanted to be extraordinary. I don’t mean this in a pompous sense. I mean ‘more than ordinary’. I wanted to do something beyond getting up, going to work, doing my thing. I wanted to delve inside. There’s a rich degree of subtlety, as my classmates have referred to. That’s largely what sustains me today, along with the social aspects, certainly my friends outside of work. like people here in the dojo. I love the game too. I love the interaction, the energy exchange. I work a traditional white-collar job—in my head. It’s nourishing to do something physical, not just physical in my basement with weights, but exchanging ideas as well as physical interactions with other individuals. I can’t imagine not doing this. And I’m happy that my daughter has caught the same bug Roberto referred to as higher-level martial arts training, at least at this point in my life. When I look at the degree of subtlety, the optimization of movements, the incremental changes, not just the gross movements, but if you really look hard, the more you look, the more you see, that level of subtlety is really intriguing. The other part that I see defining advanced martial artists, is one’s capability with transitions. Shifting from one to the other, whether it’s an actual technique or an energy exchange. I know this is kind of nebulous phrasing, but that’s the way it is. Advanced karate is more than just offense/defense. It’s also shifting your energy attitude. The quickness with which you can transition within your movements (movement meant in a broad sense) is, to me, a mark of an advanced martial practitioner.
Hayashi Tomio 14:10
I want to pick up on something Roberto said, that at some point in your training, a punch becomes more than a punch. I would add that kata becomes more than a Kata. When did a punch become more than a punch for you? Or what evolution did you see in your own training in any aspect of the kihon, kumite, or the bunkai?
Tom Lyons 14:43
I see my evolution as a pathway more than a switch. An evolution in terms of punching, right? Initially, you’re just projecting the force of your arm, and then you learn the subtleties of projecting that force with an appropriate route through the rest of the body, to generate even more force. Sticking just to the punch, you can add energetic elements to further increase the capabilities of that punch, and this mindset also to your kata. It’s sort of learning a layered martial alphabet, a building block of potential responses to a stimulus. Later on, the techniques become more of an internal exercise, when I’m trying to figure out how to optimize movements without an application in mind. We’ve always been a heavily driven kata a school, with applications a primary focus, which I think has been wonderful for us. It makes perfect sense that we’ve gone into the internal study as a result, because there’s been a lot of introspection throughout our kata study. Once you’ve nailed down the basics, if you keep looking, the more you see, the more you look, the more you see—becomes a cyclical evolution. I think it was completely a natural pathway that we would begin to look at the more subtle elements of our kata performance.
Hayashi Tomio 15:57
How about you Tim, when did a punch become more than a punch? Tom talks about this transition into more subtle elements. Can you offer us some nuts and bolts? What does that mean to you?
Tim Smith 16:09
Two things come to mind. One is, as we’ve been looking more toward the internal side, I spent a lot of time doing daily meditation. I found that the punch became more than just moving my arm, but essentially moving my will along with it. When we talk about Kiko, I would define Ki in one sense, as combining proper physical mechanics with proper mental focus, meaning you’re not just thinking about the next move in the kata or the things you have to do after class. We’re actually focused on executing the technique properly, which sounds very basic, but it’s a fundamental that you have to incorporate into your practice. You need singlemindedness. We had initially worked on kata applications as a series of blocks and strikes, which later became blocks and throws, then blocks and joint locks. And we saw the punch itself wasn’t always just trying to hit somebody, it became part of a grappling maneuver. On a mechanical level, techniques weren’t always what they appeared to be later on.
Hayashi Tomio 17:36
How about you Jay, when did a kata become more than a kata?
Jay Austin 17:39
Probably ten years ago. I’d also like to break it down a bit differently. Roberto touched on this. I’ve been delving into Taoism, the study of yin and yang. Most western martial students are not really good at the Yin (internal) side of their training. They’re pretty good at the Yang (external), but not the Yin. So I’ve been studying how to employ the receptive side of technique, the drawing in of the opponent’s energy. The manner in which you posture, for example, with stances or with the pelvis; backwards, forwards, or neutral, determines the strength of your Yin, so when the opponent comes toward you, we can draw their energy, we call their ‘way’, with a Yin motion. By the time they make contact we’ve weakened them and we can then explode into a Yang counter. I’ve been studying the Yin and Yang flow in my solo kata training. Bodies are constantly shifting from Yang to Yin and so on. Therefore, it’s critical to clearly see where others are, what their energy is doing, whether they have the knowledge of this Yin/Yang interplay. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with my punches and kata.
Hayashi Tomio 19:29
Jay mentions the pelvic movement being significant. There’s probably those in the audience that do not understand the significance of something as simple as a pelvic tilt, forward or backwards. Roberto, could you comment on the relevancy of this action?
Roberto Andrade 19:48
There are different levels here. Echoing what everybody’s been saying, we are trying to stack body movements in our favor to be the most organized fighter. Taking apart technique is tweaking all these dials, to line actions up in your favor for any given technique. In so doing, you realize the subtle potential of all these different postures: foot placement, pelvic placement. Stacking, is when your pelvis is tucked in a certain way, different from a gross motor perspective. You’re tightening certain muscles, which can radiate tension to other parts of the body, either enhancing or detracting from your technique. If I take my hand and squeeze it into a fist, I’m using most of the muscles here [referring to the fingers and forearm], but if I continue to squeeze harder, I’m involving my bicep. Then my shoulder. I’m going to start involving muscles in my torso, until every fiber is working towards squeezing my hand. How can you take advantage of principles like this? How can you be as organized as possible? Are there areas where you want to be relaxing so you don’t inhibit yourself? If I’m trying to squeeze my hand, but also tightening up the muscles that extend my fingers, that’s going to inhibit my movement. It’s going to make me inefficient. The tension is going to make me slower, weaker, or going to take my attention away from where it needs to be. Something as simple as tilting your pelvis forward or backwards, just from a gross motor perspective, for any given technique, enhances that tension and where it goes for what you’re doing. From the energetic side, we can look at how the nervous system and energy in the body will flow. There are different locks that happen up the spine or through currents in the body. With control you can optimize your energy flow, like louvers in the HVAC, shunting energy one way or the other for a given outcome. So, if you’re really trying to draw, like you’re saying [referring to Jay’s Yin actions], you’re trying to draw energy [Ki] in, you might want to tilt your pelvis back for a technique. Or perhaps, find a way to draw energy in with your pelvis forward. We are learning how to create these organizations. Everybody has their own way of organizing their body depending on their given circumstances? These possibilities create all your different fighting arts? Somebody studying Praying Mantis style, living in the north of China, with its given conditions, will end up moving in a certain way that somebody living elsewhere might not. It’s all about optimizing available resources.
Jay Austin 22:51
How do you describe to an audience that doesn’t or hasn’t heard the terms Hard or Soft Gating? In your acupuncture practice, does this jive with the energy flows through the meridians, or does it bypass this? How does this work?
Roberto Andrade 23:25
That’s a big question. I would defer to sensei’s latest book on Kiko. There’s a lot to unpack here. Hard Gates would be similar to what I was talking about earlier, physically orienting and organizing your body for an outcome; for example, turning your foot in or out, tilting your pelvis, where you’re holding attention, something as simple as that. Soft Gates being a myriad of different actions, from adjusting headspace to breathing patterns to clear intention, etc. In the acupuncture or medical realm, we see it in terms of gross orthopedics; if a muscle is not firing, I can get in there and physically massage the fibers so that they lengthen or shorten. From the subtle energy side, I can use acupuncture, laser stimulation, magnets or heat therapy on places that are completely non-local to the injured area to get the muscle to fire or turn off. Hard gates would be me, physically, putting my elbow in your hip to get it to open, versus Soft Gates of needling your pinky to get your hip to turn on.
Jay Austin 25:01
Soft gating is one of the things that keeps me interested in the advanced training, because I had to apply this to the katas I’d been doing previously with Hard gates for thirty years. I had to brain map the Soft Gating with the intention of the moment.
Hayashi Tomio 25:23
I would describe Hard Gates as biomechanical or gross physical movement. For example, if I ask someone on the street to make a fist, throw a punch, they will do a gross physical motion and punch. When we look into the Soft Gates, as Roberto was saying, we’ve got to include one’s head space, our intention, not just breathing but also one’s rate of breathing, and what part of the lungs we are activating. Essentially, we look at how much our body is involved in the action? If I take the concept of when a punch became more than a punch, it’s when I first realized that a punch just wasn’t with my arm, but the rest of my body. Also, punching, on my tiptoes is not going to have the same impact-ability as taking a resistance stance, which can absorb the shockwave. But when we get into subtleties of the hip being forward or back, if the hip alignment is not optimized, the punch will not be optimized, even though I’m happy with the sound of my fist against the bag. I think everybody here would agree that at some point they began to realize if they weren’t making these more subtle, nuanced shifts in their movements; the correct breathing, when to breathe, you would see less optimization and this is where it’s significant, because it wouldn’t really matter if it was just a 5% increase in power. We’re talking about a doubling of power, at least a 50% increase. We’ve all experienced this outcome firsthand. I would say that everybody had the observation doing their first solid Kiko experiment, that it didn’t seem real. I’ll give it over to Tim to comment about his early experiences with the Kiko.
Tim Smith 27:31
In addition to working with Tom, I work with a fellow named Bob G., who is about 100 pounds heavier than I am. Normally, I have a very difficult time pushing him out of his stance, which is one of the ways we test whether our Soft Gates are applied properly. But using the proper Gates, I can pretty easily push him out of his stance. That was one of my eye-opening experiences, because I just don’t have enough muscular strength to push him out of his stance without incorporating the proper Hard and Soft Gates.
Hayashi Tomio 28:07
This is an incredible feat that I don’t think people can appreciate just seeing it. Bob weighs about 250 pounds. In a horse stance, pushed laterally, Tim could not budge him. The Kiba dachi stance is designed to withstand an enormous amount of pressure against it. I witnessed it. Even I was astounded. Not only was Bob moved out of his stance, he actually lifted up off of his feet and went back about four or five feet. We have a video of his push, and we’ve repeated the action multiple times. [turning to Tom] You’ve been pushed by Tim and flew up in the air. But if I ask the average person to push him out of his stance, they are unlikely to get him to fly up. When you hear the terms Hard/Soft, they can also apply to External arts, where it’s mostly the gross physical activity, which I think accounts for a good 80% of the martial arts taught in the US, and then there is this more rarefied practice, the Internal arts, what we call the Soft Gates, where we get into the technical subtlety to the point where we can execute extraordinary power moves.
Tom Lyons 29:27
Hard Gates can be subtle as well. Actions like tilting your pelvis, just because they’re physical in nature doesn’t mean they’re obvious to everyone. I was thinking about, when a punch become more than a punch. For better or worse, a certain level of repetition is required for your body to fully absorb the movements before you can really scrutinize them and play with the nuances. Otherwise, it’s overwhelming and you lose the Soft Gates entirely. By Soft Gates I mean intentionality. Think about driving. Sometimes it’s automatic, right? You wake up. I say, wake up. Obviously, we’re conscious, but it’s a different level of consciousness when you’re driving in a familiar place. You might be ten miles down the road, and everything was fine because your body knows how to drive. Similarly, if you get enough repetitions in, you can start exploring more subtle aspects without violating the postural requirements of the Hard Gates implicit in what you already learned, and start to look at the little details. One of the other things that sustains me, this exploration is a ton of fun, and I actually do care about that 5% too. 5% is worth it!
Hayashi Tomio 30:33
Hold that thought. I was thinking we should discuss some of the weeds you’ve personally encountered in your training evolution. Obviously, martial advance does not just go in a straight line upwards, every day. It’s a beautiful day with martial arts. Everything is working out fine. You grasp every concept easily. Anybody can jump in. What are some of the hurdles you personally have experienced.
Roberto Andrade 31:10
I specifically remember getting my blue belt when I was about ten years old. You [referring to Shifu] pulled me aside and said, “All right, Roberto, I’m going to give it to you this time, but now you really have to start training.” That comment went off in my head and back to what Tom was saying in terms of repetition—really putting the time in, which, for me, being a busy teenager, busy college kid, the biggest obstacle has always been time. I’m sure most people ask themselves where do I find the time? I think a lot of this boils down to intent. If you make the time, it will be there. That’s one lesson I still struggle with. I’m sure all of you do. Life is going to throw a million different things at you, and depending on how dedicated you are to your art, which for me, has been my whole life, literally, if you just keep putting the time and repetition in, you will cover a lot of ground.
Hayashi Tomio 32:31
Finding the time is not just a problem for martial artists. The issue of time is a broad social concern for everyone today. My observation is people are getting overwhelmed with the amount of information coming at them, and struggling with responsibility on their part to respond back to it 100%.
Roberto Andrade 32:47
If I was to teach you one technique and you don’t practice it, yet you come back, and I Iayer on another technique, you might be able to get it. But if I give you four, five, six, techniques more, if you’re not training, these techniques will not get into your system. You’re going to be constantly juggling all this information in the forefront of your brain. You’re not going to be internalizing it, and you’re not going to be opening up your mind to broader, more subtle, concepts. For me, heavy, repetition has been the key. I just make time for it. I have a family and kids, which obviously takes away some of my attention, and occasionally, I have some physical ailments. I’ve blown my back out and was unable to train in high school. I blew my shoulder out. I still showed up to class, my arm tucked in my belt, I kept going until my arm was better. If you’re dedicated to the art, to training, and what you’re going to get out of it, I think you’ll end up making the effort and finding the time to train. For me, that’s been the biggest thing, making the space so that I can do the repetitions and gain the concepts. Without the repetition, you cannot really advance. You become head rich and body poor.
Hayashi Tomio 34:10
I agree, Jay I and I were having a conversation a couple days ago about a concept called the Red and the White, and Jay was making an observation about the early training days. I wonder if you could pick up on that train of thought.
Jay Austin 34:25
In the early 70’s, at the Bank Street school in Summit, NJ, I showed up pretty much as an open book. I was around eighteen. Bank Street Dojo was what I call a Red School, which means very heavy on sparring, people basically attacking you full force. You learn quickly how to survive. But as your skill sets got a little bit better, you start figuring out how to maneuver better. This is what we call the White fighter, someone using his brain, his tactics, his tools, his strategies, and not just seeing red …
Hayashi Tomio 35:07
You mean Red as an animalistic or animal instinctiveness as opposed to White or analytical skills? [Shifu clarifies].
Jay Austin 35:11
Yes. We had a very unique set up at Bank Street, as I said before, with full-time professionals. There were three or four instructors, who all had a different way of looking at the Red and White. Shifu was more of a White fighter, which I found myself attracted to later on, after I picked up the more important Red skills. In discussing Soft and Hard Gating we’re really talking about this mysterious thing called Ki. A lot of systems and schools, including the general public, don’t believe in Ki, or have no context for it. So maybe we don’t call it Ki. We call it energy manipulation, as Tim and Tom spoke about, how by optimizing certain actions, we increase our power 50 to 100%. Shifu has reversed engineered all the katas to employ Kiko, proper mind intention, and the Hard and Soft Gating to this end.
Hayashi Tomio 36:23
I want to clarify your statement ‘…all the kata within our system’. Certainly not every kata. Isshin Kempo is an offshoot of Isshinryu. Isshin Kempo was the late William Scott Russell’s interpretation of Isshin ryu. We use all of the traditional Okinawan kata of Tatsuo Shimubuku’s Isshinryu system as our base. I have spent the last thirty-one years “reverse engineering” these forms in light of their Soft Gating principles – currently missing entirely from mainstream Isshinryu, meaning we are looking deeply at these moves in terms of the Kiko, (energy work), which, as Roberto and Tom have noted, are the nuances embedded in the form. We have all discovered that there is far more nuance than what mainstream has been observing today. I’m sure there’s some very good schools out there that are observing it, but they seem to be few and far between in my research. And it’s exciting, and that’s why all of you are here. You are part of that excitement.
Jay Austin 37:35
My personal challenge has been brain-mapping the standing grappling skills, doing a technique so much that through osmosis it bypasses the ego, until it’s natural, like driving. It was a challenge for me to watch two people doing a very relaxed grappling move that looked so simple, until I tried it myself. This process takes a while, and a lot of hands on, with a lot of good training partners because this stuff is also dangerous. You can blow out your shoulders with the wrong move. You have to trust your training partners. My motto is ‘tap early and often’. All this keeps me interested, but the grappling, applying the Soft and Hard Gating, the mental reorientation, and the yin/yang, has been a challenge, but it’s something deeply engaging outside of my work.
Hayashi Tomio 38:52
I’m going to pass it over to Tim and Tom, because you two have trained together for an enormous amount of time. It’s so true that you can be with a partner who means well, but if they don’t understand their own physical strength, and particularly, if they’re charged up with a Kiko technique, they can damage your joints. Maybe you can comment on the incredible benefits of knowing each other and getting comfortable with each other’s energy levels.
Tim Smith 39:28
Because we have worked together so long, we understand how not to hurt each other, and it’s actually pretty huge almost all the time. Often, when walking out of class, we’ll say, ‘Another class, no injuries.’ What a win! There’s no ego involved between us. We’re best friends, and we both want to improve for love of the art. That’s what we’re there for.
Tom Lyons 39:54
I want to add, you get a familiarity with another individual’s energy. This just goes back to what sustains me in martial arts. It’s the interaction that Shifu mentioned. I started out doing Hatha yoga before I started doing martial arts, but yoga is a solo practice. You’re in a room, there’s a community, but it’s still a solo practice. The exchange with another body is key to my enjoyment and my development here. I have great familiarity with the way Tim’s body works. I know where his old injuries are and how to hopefully, preserve that. Occasionally, we surprise each other with a Kiko technique that launches somebody across the room, but then we figure out how to dial it back, and manage our level of intensity so nobody gets hurt. It’s been a lot of fun.
Hayashi Tomio 40:33
Let’s finish up and talk about the aging martial artist. Jay and I are in our 70s. You guys have got some time to go. What has been your observations about your own aging process and the way you train today?
Tom Lyons 40:56
I think my aging has also contributed to the study of the subtleties. Jay mentioned going through his young man, Red stuff, which is necessary and fun, but not sustainable in the long term. You need to know your limits. Once you understand them you can explore other less risky avenues to generate power. We talked about Hard and Soft gates. I want to go back to the subtlety of Hard Gates and give some examples of nuance; thumb position, foot position, pelvic position, intra-abdominal pressure, breathing. Okay, breathing, I guess you classify more as a Soft Gate, neck position for me, because I have a tendency to have a forward leaning neck. I’ve seen the influence of all these postural elements, and there’s a ton of them. It’s true, it is hard to look at these nuances closely until you have done the repetitions to make some of the other stuff autonomic, right? Then on the Soft Gate side of things you have intention, breath, and the subtleties of intention. It’s not just, what do I want to accomplish, but where am I putting my energy in my body to actually accomplish it? And there’s even more esoteric studies like compass directionality, colors, the phase of the moon—everything matters! Some things matter more, though. Roberto referred to stacking the Gates. That’s the process of optimization, but there’s always primacy within this notion of Gates. Finding the primary Gates is cool, because situations do not always give you the ability to stack everything ideally. But if you know what to do, or what’s most important, you can fix it.
Hayashi Tomio 42:41
How about you Tim, as an aging martial artist?
Tim Smith 42:49
I have to agree with Tom. When I was in my teens and 20s, full-contact interested me more. Now that, I’m fifty-eight the idea of fighting is less interesting. Mastering the subtlety and the detail is more exciting. When I first began to spar, overcoming the opponent was an important foundation, but there’s a phrase Tom uses, ‘the exchange is a conversation.’ Even though we’re doing a physical technique, it’s still a kind of conversation. Learning how to interact with another person on a physical level, and also on a more subtle level, energetic level is what sustains me. You know, long past the notion that I’m going to compete in a tournament.
Hayashi Tomio 43:52
….except for the tournament of everyday life, yes? That’s where it matters.
Tim Smith 43:55
When I took up boxing, I was never going to compete. I was interested in the mechanics of the sport. And same with karate today. I’m not going to get into a fight. At my current age those issues are long past, I’m glad to say. But the fact that the vistas have only increased over the decades, is what sustains me.
Hayashi Tomio 44:20
How about you? [referring to Roberto, youngest of the group] Have you learned anything from the old dudes here?
Roberto Andrade 44:26
I’m refusing to accept that I’m aging. I’m sure this is typical of my age? Hopefully, I’ll get wiser, but I don’t know. I think of it on multiple levels. Number one is the physical conditioning standpoint. When I was in my 20s, I just felt like I didn’t need to work hard. I didn’t need to stretch. I just got right into it. I’m was a tiger. As I got a little bit older and a little bit stiffer, I ended up valuing the subtleties and softening certain things. If you continue to maintain conditioning, you actually don’t really feel your ‘age’. I mean, if anybody has ever come to our dojo and moved around with these guys [referring to Jay and Shifu], these guys do not move like they are in their 70s. Everybody moves very, very well, because we’re trying not to cripple ourselves. We’re all trying to be wiser about how we move through Life. We’re not looking for a fight. We’re trying to be the better martial artist, reading the situation, trying to understand where to pull back, what doors to open or not to open, etc. This goes on multiple levels. Whether it’s with the physical side, I know right now how I’m feeling today, but maybe my knee doesn’t want to bend that way. I’m more mindful of how I go through my training today. Even from just a gross perspective of what you do to your body as a martial artist, you know like thinking of engaging and turning your body into like weapons, right? So, maybe you throw punches in the air all the time, but if you’ve never hit anything, the likelihood that your hand is going to be hurt the first time you strike someone in the head is very high. As long as you maintain good conditioning that supports your body and supports your health and the longevity of your art, you’re going to be in a good martial space.
Jay Austin 47:06
I’d like to talk a little about the psychological changes we go through, and how tightly constructed our egos are when we first start out. A lot of times we hit a ceiling in our training because of our mind set and we can’t figure out how to break through. This often has to do with a tightly constructed ego. We may need a teacher to sit down and talk this through. I find letting go is the hardest part of training, and then adding in the aging process, like still having the image of ourselves as twenty-five years old. How do we deal with this? I think about my own ego, what I have yet to let go of, and combining mind, body and spirit. I’m delving more into the spirit side at my age. This means acceptance where I am in life, my age, where I’m going, letting go of the ego view that I had of myself in the early days. Whatever my physical limitations, I’m using more spiritual, physical and emotional leverage, more Kiko, more breathing, more Yin to advance. I also look to see where my partners are in their life’s Bell Curve? The other guys teach me. I pick up a lot of information from observation.
Hayashi Tomio 49:09
If anyone in the audience has a question, we’re happy to take a few.
I want to say that as you go back in time in Asia, and look at the historical perspective of how and why martial arts were taught, you see three primary platforms. There’s the obvious, practical; There’s an enemy out there. I want to protect myself and my family, so I need martial skills. There’s also the therapeutic. For men and women coming from states of illness, injuries and certainly aging, as you go up into your middle decades from the 50s and 60s, you’re going to see an interest in preserving your vitality, preserving your physical body. There is also the concept of the meditative platform, which Jay was alluding to with this idea that states of mind, a state of mind, is not a static thing. The mind can expand and contract, just like breathing. And there are stages of mental development that can shift your perceptions, lift your consciousness to perceiving reality in a completely unique way, a way that might shift you for the better. I’ve often said that we all exist in a certain bandwidth of reality, and many of the limitations that martial artists encounter are less about the physical and more about the mental, so we want to expand the way we look at our art. When you do, you will see things differently. You will have new tools available, new insights will come from your martial training. The punch you thought was just a fist hitting with two knuckles suddenly becomes the whole body, suddenly becomes your state of mind that brought you into that particular moment in training. So, a well-rounded martial artist is going to be investigating each of these three platforms, for a thriving, vital life. Any questions from the audience?
Amanda Lyons, Audience Question 51:45
We frequently view Ki as something immaterial, and I feel like the panel has spoken about the different ways Ki can be perceived. I want to hear from the panelists, what are some of the sensations that you experience when you execute a Kiko technique correctly? You’ve talked a lot about different ways you might experience energy flowing in your body. The second part of my question is something that my dad said about different orientations of energy movement and the effectiveness of transitions between these orientations. When you are directing energy in different ways, whatever that means to you, whether you’re rotating Ki in one direction or another, whether you’re moving energy up or down, do you experience something different? Is the sensation of energy flow different?
Hayashi Tomio 52:44
As Jay was saying, some people don’t believe Ki, as a vital energy, even exists, and science has not yet proven exactly what it is, so that leaves the topic open-ended for martial artists, particularly martial artists who have been doing practices for as long as we have, and haven’t seen or experienced it. If I have this question correctly, you are asking, is Ki a palatable thing that can be sensed in your body and how do we sense it when we’re moving it in different manners? I’ll let you guys jump in first, and then I’m happy to add my perception.
Roberto Andrade 53:32
First, in terms of Ki’s tangibility, a lot of self-suggestion can distort what Ki feels like. Because Ki has been sensationalized. I’ve enjoyed this side of it. I love Jedi things with Star Wars, and watching fireballs thrown across a television screen, but when we over-rationalize the concept, that is, look for something that’s not there, it creates a big hurdle. Having done Qigong for a very long time, I’ve seen a lot of people who think they’re doing something correctly with their energy, but nothing is actually happening, that is, physically not happening. The key difference is when you think something’s happening versus when you feel something’s happening. There’s something about internalizing a sensation like touch versus a thought, even though thought forms have energy, or be as tangible as any other physical object. Ask anybody with PTSD. They know it’s a thing. I’ve always likened everything to the sense of touch. Anytime I made strides in terms of my own sensitivities, it’s been trying to use this notion as a gateway. Like, how am I feeling blood flowing through my hand, etc.? One of the problems in trying to apply these techniques martially is that when everything’s organized it’s effortless. And I would say it’s not so much what you feel as what you didn’t feel. There’s a lack of resistance, because everything is just connected, and all of a sudden, it’s the idea of being in the flow—everything’s just organized. You may have this rush like you’re getting pulled or pushed. In terms of sensations of Ki or energy, it feels to me like pushing two north magnets together— that sort of pressure. When I’m doing visualizations, I can feel this pressure move to different areas of my body. I know everybody describes it differently. Everybody sees the color red differently, but we all agree it’s red. Some people might feel Ki as warmth, tingling or buzzing. I invite people to understand whether it’s in their head versus an actual physically feeling. When you bring things into a martial context with bunkai, you can pressure test these sensations. If I think I’m moving my energy into my arm, okay, let’s test that. If, you can’t move it, try again and again until you can. Eventually you start to break the mental barriers down, and have the sensation of this connected feeling. Everyone’s going to put their own words to it. For me, it feels like a pressure that’s either there or not, and whether something’s effortless or requires a lot of effort. The other sensation I get is that of being vacuous. Sometimes I feel filled. My body feels strong and connected, or the opposite. All of a sudden, it feels like somebody just uncorked my vitality drain and it’s just gone. I’ve got nothing. I feel frail and can’t hold the block, the lock or whatever it is. But everybody feels it differently.
Jay Austin 57:25
There is a word you used [referring to Roberto’s commentary], which is really insightful— effortless. My early training focused on relaxed power. What does it mean to be totally relaxed and still have power? I’ve seen this in my training all the time. The more relaxed I am, the better my energy can flow. And we sort of get into the weeds where, I want to be totally energized but still get that velocity going because gross physical speed isn’t always in sync with your Ki flow. That’s a whole study in itself. In my early days, we did a lot of weight shifting from stance to stance. Scott Russell was a master of that. He could hit you one inch and you’d go flying. It was incredible. He accomplished it with a shifting of his weight, and being totally relaxed. Complex torque is also important. When I started training again with Shifu I learned I could accomplish the same thing without the massive weight shifting—using Soft Gating instead. But it was a transition to go from one to the other, from Red to White. Hopefully I can combine the two.
Tim Smith 58:59
Doing a Soft technique properly is the difference between overcoming resistance versus eliminating it. Good technique should feel effortless even when you’re exchanging the technique with another person. You don’t feel like you have to overcome the other person’s resistance. It’s just gone.
Tom Lyons 59:21
I have a lot of the same words as my classmates here. In my Qigong practice, the sensation of pressure between the hands, particularly the hands, are probably the most sensitive to that kind of stuff I can get the heat and the tingle feeling for sure. In practice, in karate, everybody mentioned effortless power. We talked about Tim’s launch. I’ve got fifty pounds on Tim, yet he’s launched me across the room, and I know he wasn’t trying hard. His energy moved right through me. I’ve had the same experience pushing some of my colleagues here. It’s a wonderful feeling. You want to do it again. It’s actually fun to get pushed that way. The reverse is when it’s not right. I get a shock through my hands like I just pushed into a post. It just happened yesterday in a class with Hayashi. When I’m not organized properly and I try something, it’s weird. Sometimes I can carry the technique through and still push someone out of a stance, but there’s that initial shock that I feel through my wrist, like I just hit a brick wall. If I am able to push through it, it’s all effort, not effortless. The other feeling that I get is what Roberto referred to as that vacuous feeling, the feeling of a vacuum, like being drawn into something, my body being moved before my partner lays hands on me. That’s an energetic thing. It’s not intentional on my part, but I observe it and, ‘Oh, here we go!’
Hayashi Tomio 1:00:49
My sensation of Ki has been very close to these other definitions; a vacuum feeling, a feeling of being drawn in, in some cases, feeling like I’m moving backwards before I’m even touched by the Ki-charged practitioner, which I find rather extraordinary. There’s another sensation I qualify as Ki, and that is, we project an energy field around us. We know this energy field is, in part, electromagnetic, and although I couldn’t tell you in precise language, I can feel this field around people. I get different senses from different people, in particular, when they are charged up. For example, let’s say I ask Tom to try a movement where he doesn’t quite know the external organizations for, say, the feet or the pelvic positioning. Say we’re doing a complex kata movement, and I ask him to push me. I don’t feel that I’m going to be moved, because I’m sensing his field is not disrupting mine. When he gets it right, when he organizes, I go, ‘here it comes!’ I can feel the wave. I think this level of subtlety continues to deepen as we train it further. Ten years from now, if we get together and have a similar conversation, we’re probably going to find that we’re picking up even finer and finer nuances about what it feels to be charged with Ki.
Jay Austin 1:02:48
One thing we haven’t talked about is the effect of Kiko on the other person. Maybe you could comment on that.
Tom Lyons 1:03:01
I wanted to add one thing on the feelings of the wave notion. Ki moves in waves. We have explored a number of different ways to move our energy. One is bouncing. When you bounce your Ki, it’s a different feeling you can actually sense, one that influences timing on the execution of technique. We’ve also felt the shock of a clear failure, when the timing is wrong, when you’re not hitting at the peak of the wave. Generally, it’s because you’re moving too quickly into the technique. Not that the move has to be slow, but the timing of the move has to be appropriate.
Hayashi Tomio 1:03:34
Think of it as upgrading your technique by bringing an electromagnetic shock value to it. You can’t see it. if I said to Roberto or Tom, charge up using whatever method you know, the average person wouldn’t be able to feel their charge. It’s a rare student who has never done any energy work who might have a sense something different has just taken place before any physically motion. We are acclimating ourselves to this level of subtlety.
If there are no other questions, let’s wrap it up. It’s been a pleasure listening to all of you gentlemen talk about your training. I feel like we could go on for hours across different topics. We can come back and focus on some singular topics next time. Thank you, everybody.