Dear Students, Teachers and Friends,

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Next belt test is July 10th.

Quotes of the Week

ALAN COHEN:
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly
secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is
no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and
exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is
power.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN:
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security,
deserve neither liberty or security


Lesson of the Week

18 Postures – Earth

The words "mother" and "earth" are many times used in the same
sentence, which lead us to understand the concept of security,
safety and nurturing attached to this principle. Just as a small
child feels comfort being held by its mother, we feel comfort as we
look into the universe and realize that we are on a planet that has
all the ingredients to keep us alive. This earthy feeling we achieve
from nature, our friends, parents and teachers, gives us strength
and courage to step forward and proceed forward on the path, even
though we do not know what lies ahead.

Winston Churchill once said, "Courage is rightly considered the
foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend." The earth
principle helps an individual develop the deep down quality of
unflinching courage and is one of the fundamental requirements for
leadership in any field. Fear, or the lack of courage is more
responsible for failure in management, and in life, than any other
factor. While fear will get you killed in combat, it is also true
that fear causes people to hold back, to sell themselves short, to
settle for far less than they are capable of in everything they do!

The warrior believes that you can do, have or be far more than you
now know if only you could eliminate the fear, doubts and misgivings
that consciously and unconsciously interfere with your realizing
your full potential. If there is anything positive about fear, it is
that all fears are learned, that no one is born with fears, and that
having been learned, they can be unlearned. In the dojo we work on a
constant basis to training our body to react in specific ways
towards a variety of conflicting situations, allowing us to
reprogram our reactions and eliminate our fears in combat.

The earth way of developing courage begins with understanding the
psychological origins of fear. The newborn child has only two fears;
the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears
that we experience as adults are learned as we are growing up,
primarily as the result of well-meaning but destructive criticism
from our parents. When the curious child gets into things and makes
a mess, the parent scolds and punishes the child, eventually
building up a pattern of fear connected with trying or getting into
anything new or different. As adults, we experience this as the fear
of failure, the fear of risking, of making a mistake, of losing.

Through the use of positive reinforcement and a nurturing attitude,
a Sensei or a parent guides a student or child towards accepting
risk because this is the path of truly successful people. If we fail
in one of our goals, we just need to get back up and try again.
Surrounding oneself with other positive and successful people gives
you the comfort and courage to continue on your path of constant and
never ending improvement, even if it gets hard at times. This is the
path of black belt excellence.

Respectfully,

Terry Bryan