from the February, 2015 issue of Kiai!

Anniversary Year Kicks Off with Stories of TW History

By Senpai Ryan Libel
2nd Degree Black Belt and TW Director of Operations


Sei Shihan Nancy and Jun Shihan Sarah share a funny event
from TW history.
On Wednesday, February 4, we hosted our first Thousand Waves 30th anniversary event – a special Meditations on Activism program celebrating “Thirty Years of Feminism, Martial Arts, and Self-Defense at Thousand Waves”.  Senpai Pamela Robert opened the evening with brief remarks, followed by a Q and A with Sei Shihan Nancy and Jun Shihan Sarah, led by Sensei Martha Thompson.  The broad purpose of the discussion was to speak about and celebrate our organization’s history.  Close to 50 members, alum and friends gathered, grabbed some light snacks, and enjoyed a backdrop slideshow highlighting the early years of The Women’s Gym and Thousand Waves, artfully assembled by TW Visual Communications Manager Yesica Barrera.

As the slideshow ran, Sei and Jun Shihan spoke about their early martial paths – Nancy’s began “as a young feminist” in Goju Ryu karate, in New York City at the Women’s Martial Arts Center.  She embraced the hard training and the activist spirit permeating the school.  The school struggled, as many martial ventures do, and when it folded she made the bold decision to begin studying Seido Karate with Kaicho Nakamura in Chelsea in the late 1970s.  It was fun to hear tales of a young group of feminists walking into a traditional dojo – Sei Shihan said that there were certainly women already training in Seido, but that there was no doubt the new crew she brought into the fold shook up the place a bit.  


Sensei Martha interviewed Sei Shihan Nancy and Jun Shihan
Sarah about the history of Thousand Waves, as a slideshow of
historical photos played in the background.
Jun Shihan Sarah shared that her path at that time had taken her away from Chicago, where she had found an earlier home studying at Northwestern.  A dancer, she moved to the San Francisco Bay area to join a troupe, where she immersed herself in the activist spirit of the time and found a fast home in the civil rights movement. Her early art was deeply connected to ideas of racial justice.  Sarah found a teacher, Professor Colleen Gragen, whose spirit embodied her own passions, and she began training in Kajukenbo, an eclectic and practical art that also spoke to her aesthetic sensibilities.  Over the years, she met Nancy through national women’s martial arts organizations, and when Nancy’s partner Jeannette Pappas died Sarah moved to Chicago and began studying Seido.

By 1995, the Women’s Gym outgrew its home philosophically and physically – for one thing, boys who had trained in the children’s program were becoming men, and it was heartbreaking to imagine losing them as students.  Further, Nancy and Sarah both knew that their own experience training with men had done a lot for their art.  Another philosophical nugget became important too – the Women’s Gym, with its sauna and spa atmosphere, was considered a place of refuge for women, not a bad thing necessarily, but Nancy and Sarah were also interested in their school being a place to safely work through challenges.  In 1995 Thousand Waves moved to its current home and began welcoming adult men.

We incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2001, a decision that Nancy said flowed naturally from not only the activist spirit that informed her and Sarah’s early work in New York and in the Bay Area, but also from the way Thousand Waves had always been run – as a community center.  As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we are more committed than ever to delivering self-defense programs to the community, to providing a place where all can come to train regardless of economic means, and to creating a culture of respect, empowerment, and peace.  We’ll keep a focus on our 30th Anniversary all year long. The main event will be a spectacular Art with Heart martial arts performance we are planning for an off-site venue on October 3. Save the date!