I’ve mentioned before that none of the HISKF sensei’s ever entered the dojo with the dream or goal of becoming a sensei one day – each was called to it by circumstances.\u00c2\u00a0 By happenstance, the\u00c2\u00a01970’s would find Sensei Peter heading up a dojo in Michigan, Sensei Wayne heading one up in Oregon, and me teaching a group in VAFB California.\u00c2\u00a0 This was several years before Sensei Trish\u00c2\u00a0was born, however, by the early 2000’s, she was teaching a group of college students in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n
No one sought this out.\u00c2\u00a0 Sensei Wayne was assigned by the KAH to establish a dojo in Oregon.\u00c2\u00a0 Sensei Peter took over the reins of a dojo in Michigan when the original instructor PCS’d away.\u00c2\u00a0 Sensei Trish was asked by fellow students at Bible College to establish and lead a dojo.\u00c2\u00a0 I was similarly asked by a group of my airmen to teach them karate, but there is a backstory to this.<\/p>\n
My first real\u00c2\u00a0teaching experience was due to an inadvertent (and embarrassing) display of kotegaeshi.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine a very cold Air Force office (on the second floor of an old barracks) where the “hot” water\u00c2\u00a0radiator is barely working and the mid-morning temperature in my office is in the 40’s.\u00c2\u00a0 I am so cold that I’ve kept my AF jacket and flight cap on to keep as warm as possible.\u00c2\u00a0 I am wrapping\u00c2\u00a0up a morning briefing to my airmen when someone approaches from my blind side through a second door and his hand quickly reaches for my cap.\u00c2\u00a0 I am focused on my closing remarks\u00c2\u00a0to the group, yet, feel a spark of irritation that there’s some intrusion to my meeting when a hand flashes by my peripheral vision.\u00c2\u00a0 That hand never reaches my precious cap, as my own hand shoots up by its own volition\u00c2\u00a0and smoothly intercepts it, taking it, along with the person down in less than a second.\u00c2\u00a0 And – I have continued talking to the men.\u00c2\u00a0 The “distraction” quickly gets up and hurries to his own office.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00c2\u00a0was a civilian co-worker who really didn’t like military protocol, although he worked for the Air Force.\u00c2\u00a0 I believe this stemmed from his combat experiences in the 101 Airborne during\u00c2\u00a0the height of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968.\u00c2\u00a0 In his mind, he was justified in removing a cap that didn’t need to be worn indoors – however, he should have known better than to\u00c2\u00a0barge into a military briefing\u00c2\u00a0that he wasn’t a part of.\u00c2\u00a0 In less than 5 seconds, he was taken down to the floor, scrambled back up and hurried to his office.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile, I never stopped talking or looking straight at my airmen the whole time…it was kinda surreal, like an SNL skit.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I finished\u00c2\u00a0up and dismissed the men – who had sat perfectly still with eyes and mouths wide open during the entire incident.😘<\/p>\n
Immediately after, I rushed over to my co-worker’s office and apologized profusely for my reaction – he was gracious and accepted.\u00c2\u00a0 Till today, I don’t know who was more embarrassed, him or me.\u00c2\u00a0 A couple of days later, my NCOIC and another sergeant came into my office and sheepishly asked if I would be willing to teach a group of them, some of the “kung fu\/karate stuff” that they had witnessed.\u00c2\u00a0 Soon, we were holding daily training sessions at lunch in one of the large, unused rooms of our building.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a lot of fun and they all made it to the blue belt level (in the evenings, I also helped teach at the local Shotokan dojo on-base).\u00c2\u00a0 After about six months, my first little “dojo’ came to an end when I became a new father and studies from grad school began\u00c2\u00a0to consume lunch periods at work.<\/p>\n
And that’s the “rest of the story” of how I was first called to become a sensei.\u00c2\u00a0 Ironically, it’s inspiration came from an embarrassing moment involving the reflexive use of kotegaeshi – an Aikido<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0wrist throw or takedown, practiced thousands of times as a young teen.\u00c2\u00a0 How you figgah?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve mentioned before that none of the HISKF sensei’s ever entered the dojo with the dream or goal of becoming a sensei one day – each was called to it by circumstances.\u00c2\u00a0 By happenstance, the\u00c2\u00a01970’s would find Sensei Peter heading up a dojo in Michigan, Sensei Wayne heading one up in Oregon, and me teaching a group in VAFB California.\u00c2\u00a0 This was several years before Sensei Trish\u00c2\u00a0was born, however, by the early 2000’s, she was teaching a group of college students in Pasadena, California. No one sought this out.\u00c2\u00a0 Sensei Wayne was assigned by the KAH to establish a dojo in Oregon.\u00c2\u00a0 Sensei Peter took over the reins of a dojo in Michigan when the original instructor PCS’d away.\u00c2\u00a0 Sensei Trish was asked by fellow students at Bible College to establish and lead a dojo.\u00c2\u00a0 I was similarly asked by a group of my airmen to teach them karate, but there is a backstory to this. My first real\u00c2\u00a0teaching experience was due to an inadvertent (and embarrassing) display of kotegaeshi.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine a very cold Air Force office (on the second floor of an old barracks) where the “hot” water\u00c2\u00a0radiator is barely working and the mid-morning temperature in my office is [...]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2354,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions\/2354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}