-karate self defence-
Do you ask yourself,
if and how your karate-training can help you
⇒outside your dojo in
⇒real life self defence situations with
⇒totally different dynamics and settings than in your dojo?
Do you want to
⇒deepen your karate practice and
⇒transform it from a hobby to a true way of life?
⇒ Then this is for you!
Karate Self Defence offers many possibilities, to apply traditional karate-do for todays needs.
What you will discover here is far away from ´fantasy scenarios´, that we often see on YouTube or anywhere else. The goal of Karate Self Defence is to complete your training of junbi undo, kihon, kata, kumite and kihon bunkai. It includes also the essential topic of mindfulness and the states of mind with necessary ingredients, to make your effords applicable and stressproof in unpredictable conflict situations. Expect down-to-earth physical and mental techniques that build up on regular basic karate training and also much more skills and knowledge, that will help you.
Nevertheless avoiding violence and de-escalating conflicts always have first priority!
Karate was originally created for real life self defence.
- That implements the protection of yourself and your loved ones as well as other people and -ultimately- your inner peace and freedom.
- Practicing karate as a sport or social event and focussing just on gradings, competition and ´cool moves´ was not the original purpose (neither as a way of life nor for improving your self defense abilities) and will not be of benefit for those.
- The required abilities of protection contain physical and verbal methods as well as just your appearance and radiation. These qualities don´t only rely on proper technique.
- The foundation of effective self protection consists also on self confidence, self trust, a clear state of mind, situational awareness, mental preparedness, fighting spirit, the knowledge, what to do and other aspects that we can summarize as the concept of ‚warrior mindset‘.
- With a warrior mindset you are ´prepared´ and ´ready´ without living in fear and constant stress. That gives you a solid sense of inner peace and freedom.
- Karate Do offers much more than grading, competition, looking good in kata and boosting your ego.
Practiced in a holistic way, it has a huge transformative potential.
Follow me in making Karate Do your fulfilling way of life!
Please let me introduce myself: My name is Thomas Meißner. I live with my family next to the beautiful university-city Göttingen in Germany. Since my early years as a teenager I am involved in martial arts and meditation. At first I started my karate-training in the shotokan-style, since 1998 (for over 20 years now) I have been training Okinawa Goju-Ryu in the IOGKF. Comparing both, Okinawa Goju-Ryu Karate-Do is more a close-distance-style with some grappling-elements and close combat training drills. It´s details in kihon (basic technique training) are all well-founded, as the meaning didn´t get lost in sports optimization. Okinawa Goju Ryu Karate Do is not trained to look beautiful or to win competitions, it is -with all of the training aspects, including body conditioning- a preparation for reality. In my blog post about the 108 kata challenge you can get a glipmse about the deeper meaning of many training ingredients.
Since 2006 I run a dojo after my former sensei had to stop his training caused by health issues. Since that time I ask myself, if my students would be able to deal with violent assaults, verbally and physically. Students of martial arts should be able to defend themselves and their loved ones, I am absolutely convinced. This became my biggest concern, bigger than grading, competing or anything else. After many, many gasshukus, a lot of teachings from amazing karate-instructors, participating in seminars of other fighting-styles (including Krav Maga, MMA, BJJ, Pancrase) and finally after studying video-materials from security cams and mobiles with real violent content for hours and hours, I came to a point, where the traditional karate-syllabus makes perfect sense for todays demands when it comes to street defence. I don´t want to puff my chest and play the selfdefence-expert in this case. I think situations of violent assault are unpredictable and mostly different. There are no 100% experts in this field, there is no „one-size-fits-all“, just different ways of training. As a teenager I had -parallel to karate- my first contact with yoga and meditation. Espacially meditation has become a life long topic for me, mindful body movement like yoga and qigong also. As the senior karate instructors say, that meditation becomes a necessary supplement at a certain level of karate experience, I wouldn´t call it a ´suplement´ but I totally agree that there is a very high synergy. Being ware of the situation, one´s surrounding, vibes and also one´s own state of mind, one´s own stress response and so on are absolutely necessary ingredients for a serious martial art that can help in self defence situations. I would be happy if you gave me the possibility to offer my insights in terms of karate & self defence and maybe I can help you to:
- find a holistic and fascinating way to become an internal and external modern times warrior,
- find blind spots in your training, which you can start to work on
- find ways to stay brave and keep your peaceful warrior consciousness throughout the day
- learn effective selfdefence-techniques directly from a very smart and ages proven karate-syllabus that originates on Okinawa, where karate-do has it´s roots (before it became a sport).
- train stress-drills to make your practice and real-world-preparation as realistic as possible.
- stay mindful and present for increasing periods of time during the day.
- gain a fit and flexible body, that is ´always ready´and prepared.
- be healthy and feel good and self confident to dominate your life and achieve your goals.
We know, that learning too many techniques can lead to problems, when it comes to applying them outside the dojo. From this perspective, it makes absolute sense, to start working with junbi undo (=”preparing exercises”) and one single kata, until it becomes ones ´second nature´, as many senior instructors of the IOGKF are repeatedly teaching. In this program, you will start with the kata “Gekisai Dai Ich”, as it was tought from Chojun Miyagi Sensei to An Ichi Miyagi Sensei and from him to Morio Higaonna Sensei. For this kata, you can expect techniques for the whole range of possible attacks outside the dojo. Gekisai Dai Ni Kata + Saifa Kata are also included and the other katas follow step by step with regular updates. You can also expect a whole training plan, that shows you, how to integrate all the training aspects into your week and a whole module of videos and worksheets, that teach you the training and preparation of your mind. Another important aspect is the verbal part, from verbal skills to de-escalation. In this field you will also progress. Nutrition and anatomical aspects, that karateka should know, are included. With karate self defence you can expect a holistic system.
Around 15 years ago, Morio Higaonna Sensei (10th Dan, Hanshi), founder and former chief instructor of the International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate-Do Federation (IOGKF) emphasized, that there are three important aspects in selfdefence: Spirit, Technique, Conditioning.
Module 1: Spirit
Module 2: Technique
Module 3: Conditioning
Your body and mind are put into the right condition. The includes toughness, resilience, different kinds of strength (strength endurance, maximum strength, plyometric strength), including strong bones, pain resistance.
We can work on those three aspects isolated, but in fact, real karate occurs, where these three areas are overlapping. This is a central part of the whole video-library, I am offering here. You can expect to get detailed, in depth instructions for these three interconnected parts. During my work as a highschool-teacher I finished an education to become a mediator, so I am officially acknowledged to work in the field of conflict management. This also finds it´s place in this video-library as other content I learned in seminars (concerning family-/child-security and so on) will follow later on. I hope, until now you got a glimpse that this program is made to help and support honourable people. It´s nothing for hooligans, streetfighters, haters, extremists (except: karate-extremists), bullies, sexists and racists. Karate self defence is hate-free and for every gender, skin colour, religion, ancestry and so on.
“Is it something for me?”
Karate self defence is optimal for you, if you are
- looking for a self defence system, that goes deeper than learning techniques and suddenly ´remembering´ them in violent conflicts.
- searching for a martial art, that is effective in it´s curriculum and application, that gives you a justified sense of security and freedom from fear and will strengthen your mindfulness!
- open minded to become an internal and external modern times warrior in an ancient and holistic martial art.
- already practicing a martial art or training a selfdefence-system, even then you can benefit from this program!
Do you want to know more about my perspective on karate in it´s original purpose? Then have a look at my blog! Just click here.
Thank you for your time and attention, I hope to see you in the members-area! If you have any questions, please write an email to info(at)karate-selfdefence.com.
Arigato gozaimashita!
Very respectfully,
Thomas Meißner
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