Hoitsugan Seminars III

Well, I've finally been able to process all of the photos from the Hoitsugan Seminars III. The gallery of photos I've put up is here.

www.artofzenyoga.com/gallery2.htm

The Seminars were a fantastic experience. They took place on the campus of De Anza College in Silicon Valley, California. We had over 115 attendees with 45 different classes to participate in, taught by some of the best karate instructors in the world. The Hoitsugan Seminars are truly blazing a new path in traditional karate training. www.hoitsugan.com

Bringing Zen Yoga to the Seminars has been very gratifying. The response to the breathing & movement practice as a supplement to hard-style training is fantastic. The philosophy is perfectly suited to people looking to deepen their martial arts study.

in peace,
Aaron

Whole Health & Hoitsugan

It feels as if I haven't stopped since I got back from Australia and Japan.

We had a booth at the Whole Health Expo in Northampton, MA (http://wholehealthexpo.com/ )this past weekend and taught a couple of workshops. It was very well attended. I got the sense that people are really looking for something that will help them feel better. The problem is that we tend to look everywhere but inside ourselves for the answer. All the crystals, magnets, detoxifying foot baths and health drinks are wonderful, but without a body that is moving and breathing combined with a mind that is calm and undistracted, they are not really going to be of any real help other than to trick us into thinking we are fine...more on this later.

Need to switch gears this week. Thursday I'm off to San Francisco for the 3rd Hoitsugan Seminars. This is a series 47 karate seminars taught by some of the best martial artists in the world. I am honored to be a part of it and bring Zen Yoga to the program. I will be teaching 5 seminars over the weekend. Should be a great time!
more information is here: http://www.hoitsugan.com/hoitsuganseminars3.html

The new Zen Yoga Online Course starts this week and we are happy to have a good group of new instructors joining us. Always looking for people who want to explore things a little deeper.

in peace,
Aaron
http://www.artofzenyoga.com/

three days in Tokyo

Tokyo was intense. It never ceases to amaze me how many people there are. You literally cannot go anywhere in the city without there being 50 other people in the same place. It actually seems more crowded than it did last time I was there in 2003. Which probably isn't a news flash, but back then I thought there were already too many people.

The biggest difficulty I found was that most restaurants still permit smoking and there is nothing that ruins a good meal more than a mouthfull of smoke as you eat your sushi.

We held a Zen Yoga workshop at the Sun & Moon Yoga studio in Meguro. Leza Lowitz was the host and we had a full house. I taught the new 5-Elements 10 Zen Qigong form I have been perfecting.
The next evening I gave a lecture and book signing at Good Day Books in Ebisu. Ebisu is where I did most of my Shotokan karate training back in the 1980's when the headquarters of the Japan Karate Association was located there. It is still the location of the Hoitsugan, the private dojo of Sensei Nakayama, though he passed away in 1987. Speaking of the Hoitsugan, I will be attending the 3rd Hoitsugan Seminars in the Silicon Valley or Northern California - March 12-16, 2008
More information here: http://www.hoitsugan.com/hoitsuganseminars3.html

The final day of my time in Tokyo was spent at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan in Yurakucho. I met with Barry Lancet, Senior Editor of Kodansha International. We were joined by Sophie Hardach a journalist from Reuters news service and Kim Kyunghoon a photographer. They conducted an interview and photoshoot to be posted on their lifestyles site and made available to news agencies around the world.
Here is the link:
http://www.reuters.com:80/article/lifestyleMolt/idUST1251120080225

More soon, once I recover from my trip home.....
Aaron