Thousand Waves is Excited to Join Chicago’s Pride Parade!

06.17.2022 by Thousand Waves

Performing karate for an adoring crowd is so much fun! And it exposes Thousand Waves to potential new members. We also need volunteers to carry signs, pull wagons, and hand out flyers. Email council@thousandwaves.org if you want to join us on Sunday, June 26.

Spirit Challenge 2022: Closing in our Goal!

06.17.2022 by Thousand Waves

Our annual fundraiser, Spirit Challenge culminated with a week of special challenge events June 5 - 11. We documented some of the events photographically, and you can see many photos in our Facebook photo albums. The fundraiser supports our self-defense program, the Adapted Seido Karate Program, and our Ann Morris & Vada Woods scholarship fund. Please click to make a donation to help us get the rest of the way to our $90,000 goal!

Some Thoughts on Fear

06.17.2022 by Ryan libel

Despite all the talk of a deeply divided populace, it’s clear that Americans do have one widely distributed and deeply shared value: it’s fear. There’s no other explanation for guns outnumbering people in our country. Americans are not racing to arm ourselves for the hunt, rather we’re doing so out of fear of other Americans.

We hook kids on fear out of the gate – “Never talk to strangers” might as well be in our baby food. We lie to them from birth, telling them strangers are dangerous. The truth is, that when children are the victims of violence, over 90% of the time they know their assailant. I like to ask people in my self-defense classes how they would react to a random child asking them for help. I follow up and ask why they would assume other strangers are so different and horrible.

Another point I sometimes make in self-defense classes is that violence doesn’t come out of the ether – as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. A great many of us believe instead that people are either great or awful. We root for good guys and fear bad guys. But that’s not really the way humans work, at least not the ones I know. The people I know can all do good and bad things depending on the circumstances. Generations of psychological research prove it.

If we were as committed to meeting the basic physical and emotional needs of everyone in our society, as we are to our fear, I think we’d create a very different society indeed.

I also believe the arts we share with each other at Thousand Waves – both Seido Karate and Empowerment Self-Defense – work to mitigate fear in our lives. When we have confidence in our ability to navigate challenging situations, we reduce the fear we carry around with us into our daily interactions. We’re less likely to lash out due to insecurity, a sub-category of fear, and more likely to be able to stay calm and respond thoughtfully.

And as our skills grow, so does our commitment to the ethic of least harm – we strive to do as little damage as possible to resolve a challenging situation. That’s a far cry from shoot to kill.

Sensei Ryan Libel is the Executive Director of Thousand Waves, and a Fourth Degree Black Belt.

06.17.2022 by Thousand Waves

John Pappas is a Brown Belt training member, and also on staff at Thousand Waves as the General Manager.

Briefly, how did you come to train in Seido Karate at Thousand Waves?
My mother did work-study at the front desk so my little brother (Damian Correa) could take classes. He wanted to focus on baseball, so she asked me if I wanted to try karate and after some arm-twisting, I said yes. Here we are 19 years later…

What is one thing you’d like to change about the world?
I would love for people to learn more history. I think a person can’t reasonably interpret the present and their position in it properly if they don’t know anything about history. History is so interesting when it’s explained as more than dry dates and names. There are things that really happened that nobody would believe if it was written as a movie script. Great comeback stories, awesome conquests, terrible defeats, crushing tragedies, inspiring efforts, any kind of story a person could ever be in the mood for is out there in history somewhere. Read narratives from both sides of a conflict and it can become clear that things aren’t always as simple as good-guy/bad-guy. Sometimes it is also just that simple, though!

What is one thing you do well?
I can be very disciplined. If I set a goal for myself, I can stand being as uncomfortable as I need to be to get that thing done. Restrictive diet or demanding exercise regimen or cold exposure, whatever it is, if I set my mind on it, I’m able to get through it and even bring myself to enjoy the source of the initial suffering.

What is one thing you do not do so well?
I can be very disorganized. But I’m working on it!

Who from history do you admire, and why?
Alexander the Great. Son of Philip II, who was an amazing diplomat and leader, and Olympias, who was also an impressively powerful person, pulling strings everywhere. He was personally tutored by Aristotle. Through a combination of diplomacy and brutal violence, he extended his empire from Macedon to Egypt, and all the way into India, conquering the Achaemenid Persian empire. All of that by the time he turned 30! What an insane adventure.

Other than Chicago, where have you most enjoyed spending time?
Glacier National Park. I actually haven’t been West of there, so maybe it gets better, but that was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. I went to Greece to see my family’s ancestral homeland (Langadia, Gortynia, Arcadia), and it was amazing, but the American West beats it out for beauty and nature.

What quotation have you found inspiring or interesting?
“You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.” – David Goggins (possibly in his book Can’t Hurt Me)

What foods do you like best?
I am Greek, so everyone always thinks I’ll love seafood, but my family is from the mountains. As far as I know from my dad, it was all about goats and sheep for my ancestors. I like the meat of most land animals. Maybe all of them. I can’t think of a meat I haven’t liked. If I’m ever in a meat market/department that has specialty meats, I’ll pick up anything I haven’t tried yet, and share it with my cat, Rabbit. We’ve both tried every land animal and bird whose meat I can find, and he’s also tried every sea creature I’ve had access to.

What is a book that has been significant to you?
Stephen King’s Needful Things. I was an only child (at the time), and devoured books. One day, when I was in 5th grade, we had a mobile library pull up into our apartment complex. They had very few books for kids, and I’d already read what they had (stuff like Phantom Tollbooth, Hardy Boys, and Chicken Trek), and so I looked through the adult section and found a story about the devil giving people what they desired. The mobile library driver looked at me funny, but he checked the book out and handed it back to me.  It was an eye-opening, wild ride for 5th grade me.

What are your musical favorites?
I love most music. Sublime, Hank Williams (1 & 3), Asian Kung Fu Generation, Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, Big L, Man or Astro-Man, anything with harpsichord – those are some of my favorites.

“Thousand Waves Member Spotlight: Ten Questions for…” is a regular feature of Kiai!
 In the next issue, Zoë Morgan will answer these same ten questions.