Special Meditation programs serve to enhance our regular meditation offerings with outside speakers on themes of interest.  Throughout this year, Sei Shihan Nancy will be conducting our regular 30-45-minute meditation classes between the Wednesday evening all-levels and black-belt classes.  Inspired by the practices of her teacher – Seido founder, Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura – these regular meditation classes feature a seated meditation, followed by a brief lesson to help practitioners “take the wide view” on principles of the martial arts within their daily lives.

Organized by the Council of Senior Leaders, the Special Meditations fall on the first Wednesday of each month after Sei Shihan Nancy and Senpai Michele’s 6-7 PM all-levels classes.

­The purpose of the Time Capsules series is to introduce new members to, and remind seasoned veterans of different aspects of Thousand Waves history as our dojo grows and changes.  The Council of Senior Leaders kicked off the series with a live interview of one of our dojo’s founders, Sei Shihan Nancy Lanoue, by Council member Senpai Jeff Gore.

In this interview, Sei Shihan Nancy discussed her training in the 1980s with a women’s martial arts dojo in New York before coming to train with Kaicho at Honbu, which was still in the early years of the transition from Kyokushin to Seido as we know it today.  A major theme of her account was the transition she herself experienced in the early 1980s, when she was a practitioner of karate as a rigorous and sometimes violent fighting form.

As Kaicho’s ideas and Honbu itself were changing, so was Sei Shihan Nancy changing as a student and beginning teacher of karate, when she came to Chicago to form the Women’s Gym in 1985.  Over the next 35+ years, that dojo, which offered classes initially only to adult women, evolved into Thousand Waves, our current dojo offering classes to students of all ages and genders.  A special feature of Sei Shihan Nancy’s interview was those in attendance who were part of our dojo’s earliest years, including Jun Shihan Martha Fourt, Kyoshi Sally Wigginton, Sensei Laura Cuzzillo, and Senpai Vada Woods.

The next event in the Time Capsule series will feature Sei Shihan Sarah Ludden, who will discuss her experiences as a Bay Area dancer, martial artist, and political activist in the 1980s before joining Sei Shihan Nancy at Thousand Waves in the early 1990s.  This event will be held at Thousand Waves, and streamed over Zoom, on Wednesday, May 4 at 7:00 PM.

The Walks of Life series also had a special kickoff with Advanced Brown Belt Michael Washington (MDiv, BCC), who spoke of his work as a hospital chaplain before and during the Covid pandemic.  Michael is currently pursuing Ph.D. studies at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary on the Northwestern campus, where his research interests include transformative learning for ministers, health inequity as it impacts black people, and ways that we heal from trauma.

During his talk, Michael focused on ways that partner work in Seido empowers, illumines, and grounds his work as a chaplain. Michael noted, “Chaplaincy is, among other things, the practice of accompaniment, and partner work in Seido Karate provides a wonderful way to relate to others, assess their needs, and pace conversation and gestures with them.”  Although Thousand Waves includes members from many faith traditions (and those from no faith tradition), Michael led an inspiring conversation that helped us contemplate the similarities among the different practices that help us cope with life’s challenges and learn to find healing and a sense of community in our daily efforts and the relationships we share with others.

Coming up next in the Walks of Life series will be a presentation by Sensei Aileen Geary, Senpai Michele Curley, and Darren Tuggle, who have devoted their professional lives to teaching K-12 children.  In their Wednesday, April 6 Special Meditation at 7:00 PM, they will discuss how their lives as teachers have helped inform their efforts as students and teachers at Thousand Waves, and how their karate practice helps them survive and thrive in a line of work that can be challenging as much as it holds for them rewards worth pursuing.

Senpai Jeff Gore is a 2^nd degree black belt, and a member of Thousand Waves’ Council of Senior Leaders.

Our Self-Defense program is going strong – we’re offering public workshops every other month, and have resumed offering workshops to community groups as well.  I’m especially pleased that some new self-defense teachers have stepped up to carry our work forward – please join me in thanking Sensei Aileen Geary and Sensei Pat Broughton for their dedication.  Thanks, too, to the many volunteer assistants who make our Self-Defense programs possible.

Camp Kokoro, our summer day camp for children, returns this year with three week-long sessions from July 11-29.  Registration is open now!  Join new camp director Tina Seifert and our wonderful staff of counselors for this special opportunity for your children to make and deepen friendships that can last a lifetime.  We’ll supplement Karate and other activities at the dojo with field trips to local attractions – check out the brochure and register soon – space is limited!

The Ann Morris and Vada Woods Scholarship fund continues to ensure all who wish to participate in our programs can do so.  Funds are available to support students who can’t afford our regular fees, whether in our ongoing karate program, a self-defense workshop, or for Camp Kokoro.  Ensuring that our karate is for everyone is also at the core of our Adapted Seido Karate Program, back in full swing thanks to the efforts of Kyoshi Tom West and our volunteers.

Now that we are back to a baseline of operations in all of our regular programs, the Board of Directors and I are ready to turn our attention toward organizational strategic planning, a process we last completed in 2017.  We’ll reach out to the membership for input in the coming months as we look to establish longer term priorities for our organization.

As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, we rely on the generosity of donors for much of our work.  Spirit Challenge is our major fundraiser – while we ran the fundraiser in the fall the past couple of years, historically we have held it in the late spring.  This year we’re returning to spring – we’ll gear up soon to fundraise throughout May as we head toward a week of Challenge Events that will run June 6-12. Thank you in advance for your participation!

Thousand Waves offers so much to counter the failures of peace that so often dominate the headlines.  I’m glad that we are again well-positioned to take the lessons from our name, which refers to the impact we can have on others when we act in peaceful ways, into the broader world.  Let’s keep up the good work.

Osu,

Ryan Libel
Executive Director