Episode 953 - Does Martial Arts Energy Have Relevance Today

In this episode Jeremy sits down and chats with past guest Hayashi Tomio about the energy of martial arts and its relevance today.

Does Martial Arts Energy Have Relevance Today - Episode 953

SUMMARY

In this episode, Hayashi Tomio discusses his journey of discovering and understanding the concept of Qi in martial arts. He shares his personal experience of realizing the existence of Qi during a training session and how it sparked a 30-year investigation into the practical application of Qi in traditional martial arts. Hayashi Tomio emphasizes the importance of understanding and harnessing Qi in martial arts training and explains how it can enhance strength and technique. He also highlights the significance of proper body alignment, breathing, and relaxation in cultivating and utilizing Qi. He explains that our bodies project an energy field, known as the subtle energy body or chi, which can be manipulated to enhance physical strength and performance. Hayashi emphasizes the importance of proper technique and body alignment in activating this energy field. He also explores the connection between the energy field and the mind, highlighting the role of mental control in harnessing the power of subtle energy. Hayashi shares insights from his book, 'Kiko: Hidden Power Electric Moves,' which delves deeper into these concepts and provides practical guidance for martial artists.

TAKEAWAYS

Understanding and harnessing Qi can enhance strength and technique in martial arts.

• Proper body alignment, breathing, and relaxation are essential in cultivating and utilizing Qi.

• The katas in traditional martial arts contain bio-energetic techniques that are often overlooked or misunderstood.

• There is a need for more practical and grounded education about Qi in Western martial arts culture.

• Qi is not in contention with biomechanics but can complement and enhance it. Our bodies project an energy field known as the subtle energy body or chi.

• Proper technique and body alignment can activate and enhance the energy field.

• Mental control plays a crucial role in harnessing the power of subtle energy.

• Hayashi's book, 'Kiko Hidden Power Electric Moves,' provides practical guidance for martial artists.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction and Background
06:21 The Epiphany: Discovering Qi
13:30 Unveiling the Bio-Energetic Techniques in Martial Arts
21:19 Manipulating the Energetic Field: Understanding Qi
26:32 The Importance of Body Alignment and Movement in Harnessing Qi
32:20 The Role of Kata in Cultivating and Utilizing Qi
37:15 The Synergy between Qi and Biomechanics in Martial Arts
40:03 The Lost Art of Kata
43:59 Exploring the Concept of Key
46:32 Bending the Unbendable Arm
58:43 The Power of Stepping to the Left
01:06:13 Introducing 'Kiko Hidden Power Electric Moves'

After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.

To purchase Hayashi’s new book, please visit:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=kiko+hidden+power+electric+moves%2C+Hayashi+tomio

or on his website at https://isshinkempo.com/shop/

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Show Transcript

Jeremy (00:02.022)

What's going on everybody? Welcome. It's another episode of Whistlekick martial arts radio. It's another appearance by Hayashi Tomio, AKA Chris Gertica, episode 412. We'll talk about that in a moment. Hang tight. If you're new to what we do, make sure you check out whistlekickmarshallartsradio .com for transcripts and links and all of that good stuff. And of course, whistlekick .com is the big place that we post all the things that we do. Because as an organization, we are much more than this show.

but hey, Ashi, welcome back.

Hayashi Tomio (00:34.924)

Yeah, it's nice to get face to face as I was saying a moment ago instead of to voice. Although on the other side, there's been a lot of Zoom classes happening since the pandemic. I think a lot of martial artists have had to get on the computer.

Jeremy (00:37.786)

Yeah, it's been a while.

Jeremy (00:46.246)

It's true. It's true.

Jeremy (00:50.918)

The best for us as an organization, the best thing that happened out of the pandemic was we no longer had to tell people what Zoom was. Because we were using Zoom for years prior to the pandemic and people would say, what is that? And we just, it's like Skype because people knew what Skype was. And then the pandemic hit and everybody of course knew what Zoom was. And now we use a different tool, we use Riverside. And what's Riverside? It's kind of like Zoom. So we're just, we're ahead of the curve, I guess.

Hayashi Tomio (00:58.37)

Yeah.

Hayashi Tomio (01:16.022)

Mm

Yeah, yeah. I still prefer the live experience as a martial arts teacher. We want to be able to touch and move.

Jeremy (01:24.186)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if I've been very open about this from for a very long time, if we had the resources, right, if this was a show that had big sponsorships, big money, all of our episodes would be in person because that would be so much more enjoyable, so much more fun. But I'm just thankful that we get the chance to do something because otherwise, you know. One of us would be making a very lengthy drive and.

The economics of what we do here wouldn't be working. Yeah. We're trying. We're trying. Yeah. So, on episode 412, we talked about you. We talked about a lot of things around you and, I, know, you and I talked about this just before we started rolling. don't want the audience to think that I'm, you know, this is a gotcha question. I would just like you to, to clarify for the audience. In a sense, you have two names.

Hayashi Tomio (01:53.858)

Yep. Well, you're getting good information out. So I hope to contribute to that as well.

Jeremy (02:22.906)

and they represent different parts of your life and different folk, folk I, my Latin teacher in the back of my head right now saying, don't say focuses. And just if you might explain to the audience why you have two names.

Hayashi Tomio (02:28.212)

Yeah, sure.

Hayashi Tomio (02:36.59)

Sure, I'll give maybe the short story here. So I interfaced with monastic martial art teaching in early 2000. It was a way of looking at our traditional training with a different goal in mind. And as a result of that intrigue, I was led to a noted Khenpo master who was also a Buddhist monk in England.

His name was Nagaboshi Tomio. I was later invited into that organization. And unbeknownst to me, you were given a temple name. Common in Asian temples that you're given a new name, kind of a rebirth. And that name was Hayashi Tomio. Now, I really happen to like Hayashi. I don't know why I like the sound of it. And I asked him, what did it mean? And they said that Hayashi meant forest.

or woods or tall tree. I'm six foot four. And Tomio was seeking the light. I love the name so much that I adopted it for my for my martial doings. So I now publish most of my books under the Hayashi Tomio name. And I have students who only know me as Hayashi. Either way is fine, because my old students, they're not changing. I'm Chris to them or sense me. Funny how without

Jeremy (04:04.412)

I like the imagery.

Hayashi Tomio (04:05.644)

I was going to say, we go through a lot of changes with titles. You you start maybe as a haji -kyu and then you're a senpai and then you're a sensei or in my case suddenly a shifu and yeah, it's quite interesting and interesting histories behind them all.

Jeremy (04:23.21)

Yeah, names are so interesting, right? Because it's, most people grow up, it's one of the few things that we kind of think is set in stone. And I know some people who, for various reasons, changed their name. You know, they put it down, the name they were given, went over there, they adopted a completely different name to create some division in parts of their life.

Hayashi Tomio (04:49.836)

You might know about this. Historically, Japanese swordsmiths, when they improved their sword making techniques, would often change their names. So the name engraving on the bottom of the sword would be different. They didn't they no longer wanted to be associated with the less superior blades. And I think even though we keep our birth names for most of our lives.

Jeremy (05:02.104)

I didn't know.

Jeremy (05:13.946)

Okay.

Hayashi Tomio (05:18.434)

We do go through lots of changes like that Jeremy today. Yes, his similarities to the seven year old Jeremy. But but then there's a whole big difference. Yeah. So I kind of like the idea of adopting a new name, especially around the subject of this book, because I went through a big transition when I realized what I had been taught as a traditional martial artist was not the whole picture.

Of course, it took me a long time to come to that point, but when I realized that, I got super excited. And I like the fact that my new name kind of parallels that.

Jeremy (05:58.512)

Yeah, yeah, well, the imagery of, you know, tall trees seeking the light. I mean, I can't think of anything better for someone who is training and researching and has had, I'm gonna call it an epiphany. don't know if that, okay, all right. So you just kind of set this up in a way that begs the question of.

Hayashi Tomio (06:02.786)

Yeah.

Hayashi Tomio (06:15.084)

Yes, definitely.

Jeremy (06:21.284)

What are you talking about? So I'm gonna throw it that way. I know a little bit of what you're gonna talk about and anyone who listened to your past episode knows a little bit about what you're talking about. We're going deep today. What are you talking about?

Hayashi Tomio (06:29.954)

Yeah. Okay. I think I'd like to do just a little backstory here so that other martial artists that will see this will understand. I was probably a typical curious kid and a teenager in the mid to late 60s when karate, the term karate, karate, most people.

Jeremy (06:35.632)

Please.

Hayashi Tomio (06:56.334)

damage to the name, right? I signed up. I started formally training in 1968. I earned my black belt in 71. I loved what I was doing. I would train six hours a day. In some cases, I would do even more. I was asked if I would assist and teach, which I did. I went off to college, which I thought was a good idea. I didn't really want to cancel that out for the martial arts. But when I came back, I was asked

Jeremy (06:58.374)

you

Hayashi Tomio (07:24.974)

if I wanted to run a second facility. So for 25 years, I was super into what I was doing. I was studying essentially a Isshin -based art. I say Isshin -based because I got involved in Isshin -ruin and still had a very strong Shurin influence. And then I started studying Isshin -ru proper. And finally, I went into an outcrop of Isshin -ru called Isshin -kempo, which is what I teach today.

and I've taught for quite a while. All that time, studying those katas, looking at the bunkai of those katas, I figured I had it all figured out. I had a successful school, had hundreds of students, I had, had assistant teachers, we were teaching many different locations. And one day, working with a senior student, a man who was older than me that had

formerly been a frog man, what later would become the Navy SEAL. So he's a pretty strong and tough guy. We were working on some wrist releases, very simple staples that you might find in lot of dojos. And we're just looking at a few of the nuances in these releases. And all of a sudden, I get out of it with incredible ease, so much so that I said to him,

You need to hold me tighter next time." And he said, no, I was holding you as tight as I could. And I said, no, that's impossible because you're pretty strong. And when you're holding me tight, have plenty of ways I can get out of it. But the method I had chosen, I would not have been able to get out easily. And he goes, no, really, I'm I was holding as tight as I could. And I said, then something unusual just happened. And this to me was the epiphany that started a 30 year investigation.

into Qi, what the Japanese call Qi or the Chinese call Qi or the Indian yogis might call Prana.

Jeremy (09:28.656)

Did you suspect at that time that that was what had happened? Did you think I just had a key event?

Hayashi Tomio (09:33.486)

No, no, I didn't. No, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. And when I look back at my first 25 years of teaching and training.

I think most martial artists will definitely come across the topic of key or shape. You'll see some books that'll talk about it. Some go deep into it, mostly the internal styles, but the internal styles are a much smaller group within the larger group of martial arts in general. So if you're a traditional art stylist like I was, you might read about it, but in almost every case back then,

So I'm going I'm speaking late 60s, 70s, maybe 80s and 90s. I think the language started to change around the 80s and 90s. You could find more information. I was. Finding that it was too ambiguous what I was reading about, it wasn't connecting to anything solid with me. In fact, I said, OK, look, I train hard. I've been training long. If such a thing as key or she exists.

I must be doing it because I'm successful and I'm feeling good and I'm moving fast. I would now tell you as skilled as I might have been then, I definitely was missing something really big. And this epiphany that I had with this senior student got me to turn my head with a little more focus into, wait a second.

If this might be Chi or Ki, what just happened? Because I don't understand. I believe that my student was telling me the truth. wasn't. His mind wasn't wandering because we did it again. I said, go ahead, grab my wrist, his right wrist, grab my right wrist. Let me try that same move again. And I had trouble getting out of it. I would like to say one thing. There are plenty of tricks. And I don't mean that in a false manner.

Hayashi Tomio (11:39.732)

those of us who have been doing any kind of grappling techniques for a long period of time know that there's all kinds of body angling that will assist in these escapes in ways that the average person might go, whoa, whoa, how did you do that? We weren't doing that. We were looking at raw strength, trying to overpower another person.

So I said, OK, let me go back to some of the things that I read about. And again, I found extremely ambiguous. So I said, let's see if we can duplicate this effortless escape. And we tried for weeks. We had no idea the level of detail that you could bring into an escape as simple as a wrist release. And we eventually discovered

that there was something going on in our movements that was drawing from the rest of the body organization that most people would never connect as being instrumental in generating what I would call effortless power. The way you breathe, the way you stand, to some degree, yes, we have biomechanics and there's a lot of people that can break down the biomechanics.

of a technique in such a fashion to say, well, the reason you got out of that with more strength was because you turned sideways, you brought your hand closer to your torso so you could activate your torso. But what we were discovering was that what we had done had nothing to do with those biomechanics. As we started pulling this clue, trying to investigate deeper,

we started to realize that the traditional katana of Okinawa and Japan and China were teaching far more than the obvious block punch. The wrist escape, once I figured out what I was doing and I could duplicate it, I said, I need to bring some of the other senior students in here.

Hayashi Tomio (13:59.79)

These will be black belts with a minimum 10 years experience. Today, most of my senior students are 20 to 40 years experience to bring them in here to get involved in opening up this subject. So zoom ahead. I was in martial arts for 25 years with very little knowledge, very little substantiation of key in terms of its practical value for me.

And then 30 years of research now looking back and say, gee, has been mostly misunderstood. has enormously practical value. And it may have been, may be, in my opinion,

the prime lesson that the katas were trying to convey. Because the question that I brought up was the following. Why are the katas of Asia configured exactly the way they are? Why are they taught, for example, pick any form, why is that form taught, to turn to the left first, to do a left mid -block?

Jeremy (15:05.04)

Hmm.

Hayashi Tomio (15:15.406)

or any other movement, why are most katas turns 45 or 90 degree angles? Why aren't they 50 degree angles or 95 degree angles? So I said, I'm to go into these katas with this new mindset. And I'm going to see if we can validate through these artifacts, the kata being the artifacts, because many of those original founders have passed.

Jeremy (15:24.294)

question.

Hayashi Tomio (15:44.91)

If we can find artifacts of key functioning, of key behaviors functioning. So my study over the last 30 years has been the function behavior of key in traditional martial arts, because I've studied traditional martial arts. what I've learned... Go ahead.

Jeremy (16:01.158)

And I want to jump in. I want to jump in because one of the things I want to make sure we do through this episode is I want to make sure that we make it relatable to people who have not had these epiphanies and this time. And there's two things that I think we need to put on the table at least to acknowledge. And the first is, know, what you're saying about kata, know, what we WhistleCac would generically refer to as forms, I agree with you.

Hayashi Tomio (16:11.98)

Yes.

Jeremy (16:28.536)

there is more in there. And the reason I say there's more in there is that the majority of us training in the West learned forms from a lineage that at some point involved someone from the West going into the military and training in Asia for one, two, maybe four years.

Hayashi Tomio (16:47.33)

Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy (16:50.146)

It does not take, we don't have to consider it conspiracy theory to say, wait a second, you're not gonna learn everything there is at detail, at a detailed level in that short period of time. I don't care what the subject is. It could be the most basic form of dance or weightlifting or anything, right? Running, show me a runner who peaks in their first four years, right? That doesn't happen with movement. There's too much detail. So that's the first thing.

And the second thing, my experience with, even though I grew up in a Japanese tradition, we called it Chi, was very much what you're describing. It's this vague esoteric explanation. What's Chi? It's energy. But I also had, not as powerful as your epiphany moment, but I've had some things over my time training that make me go, what just happened? And I think that that's...

When we have those, whatever you wanna call it, epiphany, light bulb moment, doors opening, I think a lot of people have been training 10, 20, 30 years have had at least a couple of those and it make them go, huh, but they may not have done the research.

Hayashi Tomio (18:05.75)

I agree with you. Absolutely. I think on top of the issue of a lot of these first generation masters who did not spend a lot of years, although some kept going back and forth, we have the additional issue that in Western cultures, there is no education about this subject.

This is not something that your mom or dad would sit down and say, by the way, Jeremy, I'd like to talk to you about an invisible energy that you can draw from, with the exception of intuition. And I think this is where some of these more practiced martial artists will have an experience that they can't quite fit into the biomechanical box. And when they try to explain it at best, it's an intuition that's something greater than

themselves or the kata has just occurred. And this was my problem too. I couldn't find the link. I couldn't find somebody that would say, here's how you ground chi in practical performance. And that's what I was looking for. I consider myself something what I would call a spiritual empiricist. If we're going to talk spirituality,

Jeremy (19:21.637)

like that.

Hayashi Tomio (19:23.816)

show me how it functions in my normal day to day, how it could function. I want to see benefits. I want to see something tangible that I could draw from. So there, I'm going to say there is and was there is and was a term in Okinawa that was called Kiko. It is from the old Hogan dialect.

The original language of Okinawa was Uchi Noguchi. Hogan was one of the dialects. And the word kiko literally meant to hear or to listen, we could say to sense. And it became connected or synonymous with the Chinese qigong, to sense energy. Now, if I told students of mine,

that we're going to work with Qi and Qi is this vital force that you can avail yourself of by being present in the moment. I think a lot of martial artists would go, well, aren't I present in the moment? And why am I not using this force? What do you mean? Where is this force? So in an attempt to bring it down to earth, to qualify it and

quantify it, we started doing strength experiments with all ages from, let's say, seven years old up to 95. And we started to look at very simple things like the wrist escape. If I grabbed your right wrist and I said to you, I want you with brute strength,

just see if you can lift your arm around my grip. We would get a sense of your physical strength. It wouldn't matter if you could get out or not. And I would say, Jeremy, you what do feel about your strength? And you might say, well, I couldn't get out of it. So where the chi comes in, where I think is a missing component in Western understanding is that we believe

Hayashi Tomio (21:50.166)

And there's actually very recent scientific proof of this, that we are manipulating an energetic field, primarily electromagnetic, and that our minds have the ability to make changes in this field. And when those changes are made, it results in some kind of signaling mechanism that causes the other person.

to either gain strength or lose strength fairly dramatically. We've been able to repeat these experiments thousands of times with success with all kinds of people. Not too long ago, maybe a couple months ago, I invited a fifth don teaching Ishan Roo about 20 miles away.

was interested in the subject from some of the publishings that I've done. And he came up here and he said, can you help me understand Qi and Sanxin Kathe? For people who study Okinawan martial arts, you might know that Sanxin is really one of the premier Qi cultivating forms, although I find very few people able to ground that statement in the form itself.

Again, it becomes very ambiguous. We'll just do the breathing, just tense up correctly and so on. And I think we can do better today. So he came here and I said, we're going to start with the stance. Excuse me. We're to start with the salutation, just the opening, just the way you stand before you even attempt to do anything. And here's what I said.

I'm going to have you attempt some strength maneuvers on me, just raw strength. I'm going to ask you to see if you can push me out of my stance. And I want you to push directly against my strong leg. It could be a couple of different stances. You can either push me out or you can't push me out. We'll see. I don't care. It doesn't matter. We're just establishing a base understanding of your strength. By the way,

Hayashi Tomio (24:20.224)

I have had students or I've had individuals been somewhat skeptical. And I said, then bring a friend and I will have you two do it so that you don't think I am, you know, tricking you into believing something.

Jeremy (24:33.552)

Yeah, because we should acknowledge at some point that this is a very divisive subject within the world of martial arts and that, you know, without naming names because I'm a much more gray area person than most, right? And there are a lot of people out there, know, it's everything is black or white. That's not me. I carve out space for the things that I don't know. I don't default to it. can't exist.

Hayashi Tomio (24:42.102)

It has very good lighting.

Jeremy (25:03.098)

But there are people out there who have been caught fabricating things and it creates a sense of distrust. And I would suggest that this subject overall, like a lot of things in martial arts, we are behind where we could be because...

Hayashi Tomio (25:08.216)

Yep.

Hayashi Tomio (25:12.432)

It it was absolute.

Hayashi Tomio (25:21.57)

Yes.

Jeremy (25:26.399)

there's been some closed mindedness due to...

warranted skepticism.

Hayashi Tomio (25:34.018)

Yes, I totally agree with you. I'm right there with you, which is why I wanted to ground it into something practical. I've encountered some of the skeptics and I say, you're invited any time to come here. And if I can't work it on you, I'm going to figure out why it's not working on you. Yeah. And you can have a friend and I believe I can figure out why it's not. And I'd to talk about that later, too, because

Jeremy (26:02.032)

Sure, sure.

Hayashi Tomio (26:02.414)

We really addressed that head on. So this individual who'd been studying martial arts for I think he's close to 40 years in. Here he is. And I said, you just stand normally and then you do these two or three strength tests on me. So we established a pretty good base. He couldn't push me out of my posture. He couldn't twist my wrist down without cheating and doing something with his hands. I said, OK, I'm going to have you now stand.

with your feet vied, very typical opening and salutation of a form, and your hands held at your side, palms lightly touching your thigh. And all I want you to do for four or five seconds is just concentrate on your lower dentienne. That would be the lower torso region. Okay? And just relax and don't worry about the outcome of anything you're doing. I go flying backwards. And if he brought a friend, his friend will go flying backwards.

He goes, my God, what's going on here? I said, even in basic of basic moves and postures, there was something understood that has not been translated and grounded. I spent the entire hour just talking to him about the stance and having him demonstrate the difference in strength.

from standing the way he thought he should stand to the proper way that would organize this field around him, which my theory is it's electromagnetic, to the point where he could concentrate that field and the result is shown in the musculature that has a much greater charge. Now, all the contas that we've worked on.

And I've spent 30 years just to get through the eight Ishen Rue kata are extraordinary lessons in chi work. They are extraordinary lessons biomechanically. They're great ways just to stay in shape. But I contend that if you learn a traditional kata, I don't care what the kata is, you're never told about chi or ki, you're only getting

Hayashi Tomio (28:26.638)

half the story. There's something else going on. And it can be broken down in very pragmatic steps. I've had guys that are, first of all, I have to tell you something about me, you probably can't tell, I am thin. I only weigh about 150 pounds. I'm six foot, I'm six foot four. Yeah, so, so

Jeremy (28:50.34)

And you're tall too, yeah. Yeah, you are a thin man for sure.

Hayashi Tomio (28:56.238)

I have students that are in 6, 2, 3, and they're 260, 270. And when they grab me, forget about me getting out by normal means. I mean, I have to really know my stuff. But if it's just brute strength, I'll say, OK, you grab me again and I'll make some very subtle changes in my breathing, my state of relaxation, maybe a stance.

And they can't hold on to me. And they can do it. They cannot hold on. I don't mean they let go. That's not it. I'm not saying, they let go. I do. You would notice because I ask people, said, what did you think the strength difference was between my first method or you doing it with somebody and you're escaping from that lock? And they go, easily 50 percent stronger, easily. Now,

Jeremy (29:28.454)

So.

So a quick, yeah, no, I understand what you're saying.

Hayashi Tomio (29:55.918)

That's extraordinary. And this is the reason why I stayed in it, because if it had been a five or 10 % increase, we could chalk that up to almost anything. You didn't sleep well last night, full moon, you had a red pepper for lunch. It could be any of those things. So Jeremy, I've conducted tens of thousands of tests. I'm engaging in dialogue with martial artists outside of my system.

And we're getting some amazing lessons out of the forms. Like, for example, you don't have to know this form at all just to appreciate what I'm saying. I'm to pick up a simple experience here. So I've been practicing a saison kata, saison kata of Ishenru. There's like five major saison katas. It's very straightforward. Yeah. And

Jeremy (30:55.648)

to the audience. Isshinru is one of the styles I grew up with.

Hayashi Tomio (30:58.318)

Yeah, yeah, right. Okay, so I'm practicing that for, let's say, 52 years. All right. I've gotten pretty good at doing it. I know it. It's like a special room I can go into in my head. And I remember back when I was in my late 20s, I think that I was going to transition away from Ishen Kempo, which was a breakaway system from Ishen Roo, back to Ishen Roo.

And I was sent to a no longer living martial artist named Frank Albanese, who was a student, I believe, under Steve Armstrong out in Tacoma, Washington. We're going back in time right now. And I remember Frank Albanese, the Ishenroo people said, no, we want you to do Ishenroo. We don't want you to do the Ishen Kempo. They were very, very similar.

And just for your knowledge, when people say, what is Ishen Kempo? I say it was one person's interpretation of Ishen Roo and he started teaching under that name. So we do all the same katas, but we don't perform them quite the same. There are some nuances. So this individual said, you're turning to the left and doing a mid block with a punch, punch, punch. You need to slip step.

In other words, when you turn left, don't forget to slip step forward. I thought, OK, he's nitpicking on something. I don't have a problem. I'll do it. Zoom had 25 more years. We discovered that if you don't slip step and I test the strength of your mid -body block, your mid -body block is considerably weaker.

For example, if I took the average martial artist, traditional martial artist, said, put out a mid body block with bone edge or this way, it doesn't really matter. Shimabuku did the forearm mid block and I will try slowly to push that arm down to your side.

Hayashi Tomio (33:07.374)

If you slip step, your movement will probably be 50 % minimum stronger and you won't believe it. You'll how's that even possible? And if you don't slip step, arm will probably...

Jeremy (33:22.859)

And for the audience, what you're talking about when you say slip step is not only are we turning to the left, there's some forward travel.

Hayashi Tomio (33:30.542)

There's some forward momentum. Yes.

Jeremy (33:36.066)

It's not like all, and I feel fortunate that I know the kata you're talking about, right? Because this particular turn in this form is atypical in the way this is done.

Hayashi Tomio (33:36.78)

HMM!

Hayashi Tomio (33:44.066)

Yes, yes.

Hayashi Tomio (33:51.224)

That's correct. That's correct. Yes. Now, I would not have put any thought into that myself personally. If I was doing a bunk, I needed to get closer to you. Well, I would do that slip step move. If you're right on top of me, I won't do the slip step. But as far as the practice of the solo kata, if you don't slip step, then you are not moving your ki correctly. And in fact, what you are creating are counter currents.

that are causing your musculature to lose its contractibility. And this is why I say the katas that people are studying today, they're not getting the full picture. Because as you just established and I agree, so many first generation American martial artists were never taught. They were taught

specific kata movements, but they were never taught why. And therefore, what happens is we get what's called kata drift. So you didn't slip step. So your arms a little further off to the left or the right. So your punches center a little bit off center. Who cares? Nobody's really making those corrections. Now, I'm sure I'd get some strong feedback by this statement, but I believe that when the Katas of Okinawa

were introduced to commercialism. We saw the great beginning there and it has continued on not in every school, not with every teacher, but and not by intent. That's right. We just weren't given the skinny. So let's suppose I was an Okinawan master. You were you came to Okinawa to study with me. I could speak fluent English to you and I'd say German. The Qatas of Okinawa.

Jeremy (35:28.43)

and certainly not by intent.

Hayashi Tomio (35:47.394)

were a method to preserve not only practical battle proven techniques and biomechanical principles of physical movement, but also, I'll use this term, is my term, bio -energetic techniques of movement. And those bio -energetic techniques are engaged through two primary methods. One, a term that I use is called hard gating.

and the other is soft gating. This is a bridge that I don't see existing in people being taught about key, not as far as traditional martial arts are concerned. Internal stylist, by the way, from my inquiries is there's very little dialogue about the subject because in Asia, the central way of teaching was you do, you don't ask.

You do. And if after 20 years you go, wow, I just experienced I am much stronger in that move. You're one of the fortunate ones. But there are far more unfortunate ones who never get beyond. When I say superficial, I'm going to say that synonymous with biomechanical. And there are some extraordinary martial artists out there. not taking away from the biomechanical. I'm not even implying that biomechanical

is somehow in a contention with the Chi. I think this is one of the controversies about Chi. Hey, I'm a serious martial artist. Somebody said I'm a world class champion. And you're going to tell me that Chi somehow is going to like go like this and I'm going to flying. Now, maybe that's possible. That's not what I'm looking for. I would say no, but I bet I can improve your technique even more so. So this bridge is.

Jeremy (37:43.351)

Yeah, can I jump in? Because when I record, I fill two roles, right? Like I'm here with you, but I'm also trying to fill the role of the audience, right? And so here's a question that I guess I have as both roles. The way you're using the terms Qi, Qi does the aura, which we have proven in Western science, right? The aura does exist.

Hayashi Tomio (37:44.652)

Yes.

Hayashi Tomio (37:51.372)

Again, I... Yes. Yes.

Jeremy (38:11.728)

part of the same subject. Okay, so.

Hayashi Tomio (38:13.666)

Yes. That which our bodies project, whatever you want to call it, you could call it subtle energy body, the subtle energy, we could call it a projection of chi, you have an energy field that exists around you. Science has proven it. What

Jeremy (38:32.582)

Okay, because, keep going, go ahead.

Hayashi Tomio (38:36.204)

What science does not know is the purpose of that energy field. There is no scientific equipment to date that can prove what that energy field even does. But literature in the martial arts is telling us from thousands of years ago that they understood something greater than the physical matter of the body.

is involved. And this is why I mentioned my study as the behavior and function of key. So let me swap out key and say for your energy field, that key is in part your energy field and your ability to manipulate it by two means. One you would not be aware of. I never have to mention key to you.

If I had you standing and crossed from me, I'd say, show me a kata movement, just two or three moves from any kata that you know. I want to test your physical strength right after that movement's done. Not the move on me. You're not going to block or punch or kick me. You're just going to do the move. And we're going to see if your physical strength went up or down. Let's say, let's say the test isn't just neutral, because I don't know what your physical strength is until we're tested. I say, OK.

Based on my knowledge, let me tweak a couple of things. Let's just try something. I'm going to you bend your knees so they're specifically over your toes. I'm going to ask you on that particular move to to breathe in or out. And I'm going to change your hand position just a slight. Let's do the test again. And all of a sudden you go, my God, what just happened? This is called hard gating. The katas, in my opinion,

got lost in translation because of the lack of time in assimilating them from the Western teachers. As a result of that, they never pushed the envelope. Am I doing these movements in the best manner that I was taught? And was I taught these movements correctly? So here I am doing Saisankhata. I now look back and say,

Hayashi Tomio (41:01.396)

No, I was close, but I'm not activating these forms. What does that mean? Well, without the slip step, you could press my middle block down across my body. can't fight it. With the slip step, you can't move my arm down at all. Would you like to take that with you into a situation of competition?

some kind of street encounter. Absolutely. So I believe that the katas were teaching a twofold lesson. One is that if you do the movements correctly, correctly meaning they activate the field to give the musculature enhanced contractibility, you could stand in any posture

And if the posture is a little too narrow or a little bit longer, or one foot's turned out, it may deactivate, not send the juice to the musculature that you want. And it can be proven. It's extremely practical. That's called hard gating. That's just assembling the body in a particular way to get the maximum out of it.

I would say the super weight lifters, have no choice but the hard gate. If their breathing is off, if that weight is up and it's just a micro inch off to one side, you see their knees collapse and give out. So we have natural athletes that are naturally attuned, but they're few and far between. The mainstream is getting a generalized kata.

And you and I both know that the average person in martial arts really doesn't even go past two and a half years. So when you get into 10 years, you're already crossed a pretty significant line.

Hayashi Tomio (42:59.534)

You know, I just wrote a 400 page book on Kiko and I'm really hoping to reach to the senior hierarchy. Men and women who have eaten all the low hanging fruit, they've done their katas so many times, they know them inside and out and they're not finding any new information. I will tell you, there's an enormous wealth of information. want to I like I like your T -shirt there because

Jeremy (43:21.968)

Mm.

Hayashi Tomio (43:29.356)

That's what I want to do. I want to bridge this gap. Yeah, I want to bridge the gap of understanding by putting it down to earth. So if someone says to me, what is key? I'd say key is the projected energy field. It's actually it's actually interpenetrating. It's not just on the outside of your body. It's moving in and out of your body that is moved in a manner

that brings you increased or elevated physical strength. But interestingly, if you're in proximity to another person, it can signal to that other person to not have the juice in their musculature. That's the really wild thing to make. And we can do lots of tests. We can just keep running these tests and you can see it. And it's because of the testing.

that we're moving forward on this without the testing. We would just be talking about a subject you and I would have no way to prove one way or the other.

Jeremy (44:38.27)

You know what this is reminding me of and and I I suspect people out there We probably have more people who have experienced or at least observed this than then the depth that you're talking about and It's an interesting test. I've seen done someone will say, know, they're trying to prove the or they're trying to prove the strength of that likely without even understanding the full depth of what you're talking about and they'll say okay, you know, they'll pick a a relatively

moderate -sized person out of the crowd, know, a volunteer and that person, you know.

mid -size and they say, okay, you know, I'm trying to pick you up and get all grounded in a deep stance and feel heavy and all that, right? And they can't quite pick them up. And then they'll just take their hand and without touching them, just kind of flick near their eyes and they'll grab the same person in the same way. And that person comes off the ground fairly easily. And the inverse of this test is they'll have somebody from the crowd try to pick them up.

Hayashi Tomio (45:30.668)

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Jeremy (45:42.614)

Show that the biggest person in the audience can't quite pick up the person who is you know half their weight through through grounding and and so I'm just I want to connect that statement back to the aura statement and that this has been been shown right we can what can be Damaged the aura can be repaired or strengthened and that's what I'm hearing you talking about

Hayashi Tomio (45:48.622)

Yeah.

Hayashi Tomio (45:55.202)

Yes.

Yes, we can see that.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, I think my grounding is, is I'm looking almost exclusively on the strength issue. I'm interested in why that larger individual can't pick up the smaller one. I'm interested in what is behind someone flicking at your eye and you can't hold the stance. Is that biomechanical?

Is that a factor of the way the brain processes? Is there something greater? No, my answer is there's definitely something greater. But it could be some of these other things. For example, when the Aikido master Tohei, who started his own system when he broke away from Ueshiba, one of the demonstrations that he would do is he'd have a couple of people try to pick him up and they'd

could pick him right up in the air and then as they do it again and they couldn't pick him up. My interest is why? What is going on that he couldn't be picked up? Tohei would say, and now I'm using my mind, but there's no bridge for me. I go, well, I use my mind all the time. So, and I just tried it and I can't, but this is what I know from our studies. The field, this energy field, which is

Hayashi Tomio (47:26.97)

mostly electromagnetic, we have control over those currents. And if I can direct the currents to go down, you will notice that I seem to increase in my weight, even though if I were to stand on a scale, I weigh the same. Because as you come up to me,

to lift me. I am concentrating on moving energy downward. And that is countering your field. You're probably familiar, your listeners or your audience is probably familiar with the unbendable arm in Aikido, one of the principles. Okay, so some Aikido schools say if you can project your ki strong enough through your arm, it can't be bent.

Jeremy (48:14.127)

Actually, I'm not. can infer, but if you would please.

Hayashi Tomio (48:25.856)

And it can't. It's extremely difficult to bend somebody's arm, even a thin person's arm. So one of our questions was, well, what is the principle behind the unbendable arm? It's one thing to say that just key is flowing. OK, but what is key? Is it something like somebody across the street? Hey, can you come over here as an invisible person and make my arm unbendable? Ha, no one's going to be able to bend my arm. I said, listen, if there's an energy field and there's control around it, we should be able to figure out how to

bend the unbendable arm. I can bend the unbendable arms because I can cut off the key flow. I can cut off the way the field is functioning around that person where they cannot bend their arms. In my book, I met a long -term martial artist and film producer. He had done so well in the film production.

that he had always wanted to go to Japan and study ninjitsu. He spent seven years and he studied with one of Hatsumi, a regarded ninjitsu practitioner, one of his senior most students. Anyway, he came back and then he got involved in something called the Spear Method, scientifically proven evidence based technique. And he was actually here in my studio with another noted martial artist.

And said, can I do an experiment on you? I said, sure. What do you want to do? He said, I want you to hold your arm out and I'm going to bend it. I want you to have a fist. And I said, OK. He was younger than me by about 20 years. He was a good, good shaped guy. And I held, I tried to hold my best. That was pretty good. You got me. That was good.

He goes, yes, now the spear method, if you open your hand, I can't bend your arm. So I just opened my hand and he had trouble bending it. He said, but with your hand and a fist, I will bend your arm every time. He didn't explain. just said, from our

Jeremy (50:32.39)

This reminds me of Tony Blower's work when you said spear. So are we talking about the same system? Okay, okay. Tony's been on the show a couple of times. I just wanted to make sure. And so he would talk about, he would say outside 90, right? So a straight arm or, you know, not an acute angle and fingers splayed. He talks a lot about that within that system.

Hayashi Tomio (50:53.314)

Yeah. This is affecting the energy field. I knew that. So I said to this guy, how about let's do it again. I will just close my hand. You said I could not keep my arm from bending with a closed fist. He couldn't budge me. And he goes, well, wait a minute. How is that possible? I said, because you have learned a particular principle that I don't think you understand.

why it functions the way it does.

So I was mentioning hard gates. I believe that many of the old masters would teach their forms very detailed. And maybe you felt the difference between what was going on in the form. This would be subtle where you're like, man, I'm feeling really charged up from doing this. Just from the form without ever telling you anything about key. That's the hard gating.

But the soft gating method is the ability for you to perceive what those changes are in the field so that you can then get mental control over them. And you no longer need to take the slip step because now you're moving your energy the way the slip step would have moved it. But you couldn't feel the difference at that time.

If you look at an arc of long term practitioners, here I'm going to use some generic terms here because we in our disciplines will talk about hard and soft styles. But even within hard styles, you have hard and soft movements. For example, there could be a label of a hard block is a fisted block. That's all. And a soft block is an open hand block. But in terms of energy work,

Hayashi Tomio (52:52.598)

Hard is a particular attitude about what the way the energy is being directed consciously or unconsciously. And soft is a different way the energy is being moved, perhaps mentally. So the arc is that you may start as a biomechanically astute practitioner, hit some unusual intuitive things like, wow, I'm feeling really good. My punch feels way stronger.

And then hopefully, your mind opens up to where your awareness is directed that you just created a situation that defies biomechanics. I've had students say, I say to the student, I want you to pull me out of a posture. Here's my arm, grab onto it with two hands, stand any way you want, pull me out of the posture. But let's just test our strength. Some of the bigger guys can pull me out if I'm just being my typical strength. I said, OK.

I'm going to manipulate the field, they can't pull me out. And then I say, okay, I'm going to manipulate the field differently. I'm going to stand in a posture that you'll easily be able to pull me out of. I could pull them out of it. And they can't pull me out. And they go, why is that possible? I said, well, because I can get control of this field. Beyond my physical posture, I just need to move the energy. I don't need the posture anymore. I'm trying to ground what

what you have seen and what I have seen are maybe cool things or maybe, that's just weird stuff. Come on. You can't explain it. So I think it's a trick. And I'm to try to figure out this trick. I'm saying that these are not tricks. But I don't think anybody today or very few people today are thinking of Qi as these energy fields, which science has coined.

Jeremy (54:26.841)

Okay.

Jeremy (54:46.278)

Hmm.

Hayashi Tomio (54:48.45)

biofield, we are able to manipulate the biofield. The biofield is the wave part of a particle in a wave that make up our reality. I am moving these waves in the same way you could say something to me that might get me upset or make me laugh hysterically. That's a sound wave. Well, I contend that you're able to generate a physical wave that moves through your body, giving you enormous strength.

And when it hits the other person the right way, it depletes them of strength. They don't fall to the ground. Maybe that's possible. I'm not looking for that. I'm just looking for a thin older man like myself having an edge against big strong guys. And so the practical side is that's what I want. And if the Asians were teaching that to themselves, but they have held it back from us.

I want it. I want access to it. You want access to it. Can I give another simple example that might be interesting to your audience? So traditional martial arts, let's take something really simple. Someone is throwing a right punch at you. I want to do it this way to break down what I believe, how I believe Ki is functioning. Someone throws a right punch at you and you're going to

Jeremy (55:47.376)

get it. Yeah.

Jeremy (55:53.562)

Please. Please.

Hayashi Tomio (56:14.518)

says on kata says, teaches, you're going to step forward into a saison dachi. That's moving your foot one foot length forward, one shoulder width apart. And you're going to deflect that without with a middle block. And then whatever counter you want to do. So let's just look at you're just going to engage this person. Okay. Would you say that that's a pretty straightforward application? You're

I'm punching at you and you step in and you smash my forearm and maybe you hit me with a punch. Right. I bought a straight for as you get. Okay, so

Jeremy (56:49.03)

Yeah, but as straightforward as you get, I'd say.

Hayashi Tomio (56:55.374)

Let's say metaphorically that the katas that make up a system, however many and whatever systems like Shodokan would have 25, katas are 27, Ishinru has 8. I once did some practice of the Chinese war boxing method called the Luhai Bafa. That thing goes on forever. And the moves are like, that's the first move. I'm like, my God. OK. So.

We in the Japanese and the Okinawan, we have this very staccato practice. So we have this very straightforward move. And that's the way I did it for 25 years. said, yeah, and I had a good block. I could smash your arm. Your arm would go flying. And then for some reason, when I started looking at the crescent stepping, that semi circular step, you'll see in many styles, I go, why? And why the left?

And my students would go, what are you nuts? Why? Who cares? You've got good technique. You don't need to improve it. I go, no, I want to know why these guys chose to the left. I discovered something so amazing that when I said, if we look at the katas of a system, we could liken them to a book. And the first chapter in the Ishan Rube book is Sezon Kata.

And you open and go, wow, this is cool. I can't wait to get to chapter two. So you can cut that or whichever cut it is being taught. I believe there was some significant information being passed along. And this is what I discovered. If I step to the left outside of your lead foot, which is likely going to be a right foot, if I do that. So I'm not going head to head with you.

I'm actually going a little off to your side. Or in your case, you'd be going to my left when I throw. Would you believe that you will experience a pervasive total body energy drop?

Hayashi Tomio (58:59.831)

You won't be able to

Jeremy (59:00.299)

If we hadn't had the last hour of conversation, might, you know, I might be a little more skeptical, yeah.

Hayashi Tomio (59:04.27)

I'm just saying you would not believe it. I have engineers in my group. You should see their eyes go when I tell them what. And then when they experience for themselves with other students, not me, they go, I don't believe it. That's their common, that has been the general comment. I don't believe it. I said, yeah, but you just experienced what did you experience? I think I can tell you what you experienced. I don't know how these masters understood it.

Jeremy (59:11.599)

Hahaha

Hayashi Tomio (59:33.236)

I do feel many of the early masters were intuitive masters. They may not have been able to articulate it, but somehow in the construction of their kathas, they preserved it. We could say the kathas developed under two different auspices, very conscious development. I want to show these techniques. They're the most important. It's got to be done this way. You leverage here. You breathe here. Breathing as a fundamental of practice.

in my opinion, has been really degraded. If you there are techniques you want to breathe out on, there are techniques you wouldn't seem counterproductive you want to breathe in on. There are techniques in which you need to breathe a particular way. If you don't, I can show you you will not have the energy that's available to you. So the real fallback here is that

We have embedded in a lot of the traditional katas close to the mark, precise patterns that will activate if you're doing them the way they were intended and they will not activate. That's not talking about bunkai. This is something that's bigger than bunkai. And so you have a therapeutic value here as well.

Jeremy (01:00:58.403)

I think most of us have had an experience as we've learned, at least one of our forums where we've said, this feels inefficient. Why does this move occur in this way? I don't get it, I'm gonna learn it this way, right? And we could probably bat examples back and forth that would bore the audience, but I would just encourage all of them now to those of you that train in systems that have forums.

If you've been training more than a little while, more than a year or so, you're thinking of at least one example right now. And I think it's important that you notice that.

Hayashi Tomio (01:01:30.848)

I think, yeah, if they do notice it is good, I think without the proper direction, they're not going to be able to do anything with it. I mean, let's take you and I.

Jeremy (01:01:40.652)

No, but first you got to open the door first. have to recognize that the weirdness had an intent. And if you look at it only through the lens of practical, physical, power generating application, muscular power generation, it doesn't make sense. But you're talking about a whole other way of generating power. And when we look at it in that way, it may make sense.

Hayashi Tomio (01:02:00.206)

Absolutely.

Hayashi Tomio (01:02:07.52)

Yes, yes, I'm talking about a way to ground that understanding to build a bridge to say, if you do basic techniques with slight tweaks, tweaks you might never even think would influence the technique, you could jump dramatically in physical strength, in punch ability, in grab ability. We had a couple of grappling experiences where I said,

You cannot perform a grappling move the same way on the left side as you do the right side because energy does not function the same way in the body. And we have students doing arm bars and I say, try it this way. Go try your way. See how strong you are. And now I'm going show you the proper way to do this. Boom, the guy goes crashing to the ground. How is that even possible? How is that possible?

because the biofield, this energy field, is being manipulated by your actions. If you know what your actions are doing to the field, you can then take advantage of it. But if you're just doing it because that's way you've always been doing it, it probably isn't going to activate. Has anyone ever told you that it's quite possible kata's are

properly activated by facing the proper cardinal direction? No. No. That's never talked about. Has anybody ever told you in practicing Akata that the sound you make on what octave it is, is going to have an effect that's either going to add to or take away from your technique? Has anyone ever told you

that if you're performing a sequence and the first sequence is done incorrectly, the second sequence will lose energy for whatever it's doing. No, because we are functioning in and I don't mean this. This is not a condescending statement here because remember, I did it for 25 years. I didn't know any of this. We're functioning in a somewhat degraded performance level.

Hayashi Tomio (01:04:29.132)

I'll take it if somebody has a really great technique and I test and it tests as strong, I'll test strong. I'll say great. But I don't think most people will test strong. That's not been my experience. I had a Nike Budo master come here and he told me without any conversation about Ki, grab my wrist. He had it at his chamber at his side. And I go, why? goes, because no person has ever been able to stop me from extending my arm off my side. So hold on with both hands.

stand any way you want. And I said, okay, I'll try to hold him. I joke, say, I'll just do my Clark Kent hold. And then I was going to say my Superman hold for later. So I'm holding and I'm really am I'm standing in a good deep stances and kutsu dodgy. Boom, he pushes me right out. He goes, no one's been able to hold me. So can I do it again? I'd like to do one of my methods. Yes. Can I just hold with one hand? No, no, you need to hold with two. No, I'm just gonna hold with one.

He couldn't get his arm out of the chamber. And he said to me, what are you doing? I said, this is what I've been trying to talk to you about the whole time you've been here. I want to talk to you about why I think this is all happening, as opposed to if you're lucky, you can do it. If you have an intuition, you might be able to find your way to have it again. That's too hard. It'll take you your lifetime to get there.

Jeremy (01:05:53.734)

Let's talk about the book, because we're going to have to start to wrap here. But I'm getting the sense, the way that you're talking about this, I've had enough authors on the show that I can tell when the things that they've put in the book are informing the things that they're saying. And I think I'm hearing a lot of stuff that is either directly from the book or related to the book. Am I right?

Hayashi Tomio (01:06:13.176)

This is Joe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because my head's been in this for the last 30 years. Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm excited to get the book out. So the book is called Kiko Hidden Power, K -I -K -O. It's called Kiko Hidden Power Electric Moves. don't know if people can see it. But my subtitle is A Revolutionary Discovery About Traditional Martial Arts for the Fight and Beyond.

Jeremy (01:06:19.397)

Yeah.

Jeremy (01:06:23.652)

I can tell. KIKO.

Hayashi Tomio (01:06:44.98)

I'm not discovering key or cheat. I'm very clear about that in the book. I'm discovering a bridge for anyone interested in the subject to have a grounded understanding of what's going on by bringing a more scientific language into it in terms of we are manipulating a very specific field.

Students reading it will be able to demonstrate themselves with partners if they wish.

Jeremy (01:07:22.106)

we have a link to that for that book? Where are you selling that? Is that Amazon? Okay, let's make sure we get a link. I'm just, looking in my notes here and I don't see it. So we just, okay, okay, yeah. Let's just make sure we have that. Cause I've got a feeling, you know, you, you, okay, cool. I heard you say in, that this is not a book for beginners. That this concept is not.

Hayashi Tomio (01:07:26.368)

Amazon.

Hayashi Tomio (01:07:33.292)

Yeah, I did early on, I did send it along, but I'll send another link. It's available as an ebook as well.

Hayashi Tomio (01:07:50.85)

This is correct.

Jeremy (01:07:51.11)

for beginners and, and, you know, those of you out there who've been training, you know, cause our audience spans the gamut. You know, if you've been training for a few years, you're probably going to feel frustration trying to layer this stuff into the stuff that you're still refining. Right. So I heard you say 10 years, you know, that that's to me, I'm hearing probably second, third degree black belt in most systems, something in there.

Hayashi Tomio (01:07:57.56)

Yes.

Hayashi Tomio (01:08:09.976)

That's true.

Jeremy (01:08:20.954)

But those of you who have been training that long.

I've done just enough with this stuff that I'm excited. And I was excited when we talked before and what I'm finding fascinating is that the audience knows, you may not know, just about a year ago I opened a school and went on this quest adjusting this curriculum. And there are a lot of things that are in it that I knew were important. There are concepts I know that are important.

but I didn't necessarily know why. And what I'm hearing from you is this becomes a future layer. And I even wrote down, I made a note, you might've seen me taking a couple notes as we were talking. I wanna recommend a book to my students for each rank because I wanna set them up to be able to read your book when they get to the right stage.

Hayashi Tomio (01:09:17.357)

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And I want to put a solid bridge for people. So anybody who would like to follow up and reach out to me want to have questions about this, I'm happy to to continue. You can go on to my site at ishenkempo .com. That's I s s h i n k e p o dot com. If you get my number or my email address,

Jeremy (01:09:29.818)

Yeah. How would they get ahold of you? What's the best way?

Hayashi Tomio (01:09:48.824)

feel free to reach out. I've been talking with martial artists in this country and outside, and I'm trying to get people excited because I'm excited. And I will tell you this, and I don't think too many martial artists can say this, I'm as enthused about my martial arts today as I was when I first started.

Jeremy (01:10:06.219)

Yeah, I don't think anybody has watched or listened to this episode and would deny your excitement, right? I mean, this is...

Jeremy (01:10:19.928)

you're into this and it's contagious, right? I feel it. I want to go train right now. It's funny. I want to go do Ishin Rukai.

Hayashi Tomio (01:10:28.62)

No, I want you to come down. I just want to show you just the standing position without even bowing. And that's it. All I need to do is and this is what I do with people. I say, I'm just going to show you one thing. You decide what you think and we can start pulling the clue together. But I guarantee you will never think of your art the same because you're going to have a means to go deep into it.

Jeremy (01:10:33.188)

I want to. I want to. We'll make it happen.

Jeremy (01:10:53.223)

Yeah, is there talk of seminars of extent? Okay, I hope so.

Hayashi Tomio (01:10:57.1)

Yes, I would like to. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's something. It's something on my table. I just finished this book and I just actually helped curate an entire magazine for Masters. I have a couple of feature articles in Masters magazine that just came out. I have one on Kiko and the pandemic gave me the opportunity to write a wild zany middle grade

martial art mystery epic because my students, know my students have asked me for years, the little ones, the kids, they always want me to tell them stories. said, well, this is what I'm to do now. I've told you guys so many stories. I'm going to write this incredible story. I'm just finishing it up. So I've been busy. yeah, my I think my next step here is to start going around to Ishenroo schools first. I would like Ishenroo people to get this first.

Jeremy (01:11:28.61)

You

Hayashi Tomio (01:11:53.614)

because it's not known by the mainstream practitioners. And this is going to revolutionize the thinking of students and that you guys can all take it wherever you feel it should go.

Jeremy (01:12:06.624)

I've spoken for quite a few years now that martial arts should get better, that with each generation, the body of knowledge should expand, our ability to process it and teach it should become more efficient, that generationally, the average martial artist should be a better martial artist.

Hayashi Tomio (01:12:17.612)

Yes.

Hayashi Tomio (01:12:22.86)

Yeah. You know, Jeremy, I'd like to bring back the excitement that I felt first doing karate, because kata is for you and I, we know that kata is a fabulous part of the training. For the world at large, kata has been pushed aside a little bit for the MMA and, you know, get into the fight. I'd like to see I'd like to see another wave of enthusiasm come back into the formwork, regardless of what form it is, Chinese, Japanese.

doesn't matter Korean forms, they all have these principles embedded in them.

All right, man, thank you for having me on.

Jeremy (01:13:01.466)

Yeah, Ayashi, thanks for being here.

Hayashi Tomio (01:13:03.212)

Yeah, that's great.