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Do I Want My Youth Back?

Steve Rowe

Insight while training this morning… Thank goodness the morning nausea has gone (except fort the day of the Tensho seminar 🤷‍♂️), but I still wake up with chronic fatigue, meaning that even my morning wash and dressing has to be done in stages with rests between each stage, followed by a rest with coffee and toast before I can train. Tai Chi opens my spine, deep front line and through the connection, all the joints and myofascia. Despite the underlying fatigue and pain from the surgeries, amputation, cancer treatment and chronic arthritis in all of my body, the training makes … Continue reading Do I Want My Youth Back?

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History Of Our Dojo Building

Steve Rowe

The history of our Dojo building: An Uphill Struggle by Brian JoyceReaders familiar with Chatham Hill will be aware of the martial arts centre part way up on the south­west side. What they perhaps don’t know is that the site was used for religious purposes for about two hundred years. In the early nineteenth century, the families living on the Hill had a dubious reputation. Looking back in 1873, the Chatham Observer felt that: “there has always been…a moral element on Chatham Hill very difficult to subjugate; a wild, fitful, bohemian sort of spirit, often breaking out unexpectedly and requiring … Continue reading History Of Our Dojo Building

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How To Cope With Sickness & Anxiety

Steve Rowe

Youth is mostly filled with arrogance, narcissism and blindness to the fact that we’re actually alive. We assume that we’re the centre of the universe and are fully and subjectively consumed by our emotions and thoughts we are our anger, fear and hubris. The tempering of this is often when we have children and have to put someone else’s needs in front of our own. The centre of our universe shifts. Then comes illness, where in the beginning we are always going to recover, young people post memes like ‘it will get better’, ‘tomorrow will be a better day’ and … Continue reading How To Cope With Sickness & Anxiety

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War And Peace

Steve Rowe

Why do we take such a black and white view on dealing with violence? You can’t view violence without looking at peace and conversely you can’t view peace without looking at violence. One only exists because of the other. Martial Arts traditionally understood why this balance is important and for those of us that have taught peace and law officers at the sharp end of violence we have had to teach this balance. You all know my mantra of ‘a soft front and strong back’ because good manners, politeness, kindness and gentleness, patience, tolerance and compassion are the mark of … Continue reading War And Peace

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Don’t Kill Someone With Depression

Steve Rowe

The problem with ’copy and paste’ and ‘meme’ oriented social media is that people thinking they’re doing good can end up causing more harm. When they (in all good spirit) encourage people with depression to ‘speak out’, ‘talk to someone’ and ask ‘if they’re okay’ can exacerbate the depression if the depressed person feels: That if they do speak up they’ll make the situation worse by agitating or scaring those around them and end up withdrawing and isolating themselves. They feel a lesser person by letting others know and will be passively bullied by them trying to help or sort … Continue reading Don’t Kill Someone With Depression

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We’re Not All The Same

Steve Rowe

Some people fit easily into a life of servitude, are good children and grow up into jobs providing a regulated environment. That was never me. I hated school, didn’t study and failed any exams. Never got on with my parents and was always the naughty child and odd one out. I left home as soon as possible and didn’t like jobs with a regulated environment and went self employed as soon as possible. I’ve always worked and studied hard in my adult life, have been very successful when I didn’t need to rebel and have always trod my own path, … Continue reading We’re Not All The Same

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Look To The Old to Understand The New

Steve Rowe

温故 (On-ko) is to ask old things. 知新 (Chi-shin) is to know new things. This is really interesting, the idea or principle of learning should be properly understood and permeate everything in our lives and particularly our martial arts. We are often guided toward modern business and spiritual gurus wasting a lot of time and money, not really understanding that there’s nothing ‘new’ in the universe and that truth stands for all time in all things. If we know how to look, the roots are deep and worth researching. For me, ‘truth’ in the way the world works, the underlying … Continue reading Look To The Old to Understand The New