Thanks to Senpai Zak Shearn and special guest camp administrator Tina Seifert, we were again able to produce a summer camp worthy of the Camp Kokoro name.  About 20 kids participated in each of our three, week-long sessions, which included field trips on a bus to Mystic Waters in Des Plaines, lots of great karate at Thousand Waves, and plenty of time for campers to build relationships with peers old and new.  Thanks to the staff counselors and junior counselors who made it possible!

I and other Empowerment Self-Defense instructors from Thousand Waves have also enjoyed the opportunity to venture out into the community to deliver our powerful programs to external groups.  From corporate gyms to senior living centers to not-for-profit home visitors, we are again making an impact across the city.  Organizations interested in arranging self-defense programs for their constituents should reach out to violenceprevention@thousandwaves.org.

As Chicago inches slowly toward normalcy and out of a pandemic mentality, we are experiencing a surge in new members – the back to school timeframe is traditionally one of our busiest.  I’m thrilled that so many new families are getting involved in our organization.  I’m increasingly optimistic that our growth will continue and that we will soon return to a sustainable financial trajectory for the future.

Sustainability is the focus of our strategic planning process, now underway.  We’ve contracted with external consultants who will soon begin an information gathering phase of our process – we want to broadly engage our community for input into the future direction of Thousand Waves’ important programs.  Thank you to those of you involved so far, and to those who will provide us with vital input into the process during the months to come.

Our people drive everything we do.  Many thanks to John Pappas, who retains a part time role at TW but who has moved on to a full-time job in the tech sector, and to Senpai Jeff Stone, who is now serving as Member Services Manager for Thousand Waves.  We’re also thrilled to see Senpai Zak Shearn leave our teaching corps to head off to college, especially since we were able to bring Senpai Lily Baumstark, Amundsen High School student and Camp Kokoro staffer, onto the paid teaching team.  Finally, we look forward to Senpai Lucia Frisancho returning full-time in October to help steer our children’s program into the future.

The past few years at Thousand Waves have been all about surviving.  I’m hopeful that we can now turn our attention toward thriving!

Osu,

Sensei Ryan

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

The second installment of the Time Capsule series featured Sei Shihan Sarah Ludden in a May 4 conversation with Council member Jeff Gore, entitled “On the Front Lines:  Art, Politics, and Martial Arts.”

In this interview, Sei Shihan Sarah emphasized the role that both her efforts as a dancer and her social activism played in her emergence as a martial artist.  Having pursued serious dance training in the late 1970s as she was finishing her studies at Northwestern, Sei Shihan Sarah moved to Oakland in 1981 to study with Dance Brigade, a multi-racial feminist dance company started by former members of the Wallflower Order, who are still recognized today for their path-breaking combination of dance with social justice commitments.

While studying dance in Oakland, Sei Shihan came to recognize the role that martial arts might play in her life.  With Dance Brigade, she attended a workshop, “Kung Fu for Dancers,” with Sifu Coleen Gragen, who would go on to become her kajukenbo teacher throughout the 1980s.

Like Shuseki Shihan Nancy, Sei Shihan Sarah comes from a recognized lineage of committed martial arts teachers.  Before starting the Hand to Hand kajukenbo school, Sifu Coleen Gragen studied with Professor Barbara Bones, who was named one of the top five competitive martial artists by Black Belt magazine in 1975.  Before she passed away in 2002, Sifu Coleen was recognized throughout the women’s martial arts world for her strength and skill in sparring and her commitment to the martial arts as a path to physical, mental, and spiritual growth.  As one of Hand to Hand’s early students, Sei Shihan Sarah often trained for six hours a day and became one of Sifu Coleen’s first black belts.

Sei Shihan Sarah’s commitment to this path helped her overcome an eating disorder, which had been especially difficult to face during her years as a dancer.  Studying under Sifu Coleen, she noted, offered her a rigorous physical practice that challenged her to honest introspection and, eventually, “to see her body as a temple.”  Sei Shihan found a mentor in Sifu Coleen as a martial artist with social justice commitments akin to her own. The Hand to Hand school offered political solidarity in a variety of forms, such as providing security services for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and raising money for the Uhuru House, an Oakland community center led by the African People’s Socialist Party.

When Sifu Sarah Ludden first arrived in the early 1990s at Chicago Women's Seido Karate (the forerunner to Thousand Waves), our dojo had just expanded its mission to include classes for children and would open its doors to adult male training members by the middle of the decade.  As Thousand Waves grew to include a self-defense program, the ASK program for children with disabilities, and Camp Kokoro children’s summer camp, its enrollment at its height reached 420 students.

Throughout her years as the co-director of Thousand Waves, Sei Shihan Sarah never lost sight of the connections between the martial arts and her social justice commitments, which she first exercised under her teacher, Sifu Coleen.  In recent years and into her retirement, Sei Shihan Sarah has volunteered as an escort for women’s health clinics, helped sort care packages for local food pantries, learned Spanish to a conversational level, and currently, with her wife Shuseki Shihan Nancy, hosts a refugee family in their home.  As one of our founding teachers, Sei Shihan Sarah continues to embody the connections that she learned from her teacher, Sifu Coleen.

The lessons we learn from our teachers was also the subject of the April Walks of Life special meditation, “The Martial Arts and the Art of Teaching,” featuring Sensei Aileen Geary, Senpai Michele Curley, and Darren Tuggle.

As Sensei Aileen recounted, she first walked into Thousand Waves on January 3, 2000 as a fledgling teacher at Mother McAuley High School and, in her own words, as a “fledgling adult.”  Upon reflection, she now credits Thousand Waves with helping her understand teaching as a form of empowerment.  Sensei Aileen found herself drawn to Shuseki Shihan Nancy’s commitment to learning about how people learn, from her efforts to break down karate into its most basic parts or to provide “scaffolding” for students entering new phases of their learning.  From Sei Shihan Sarah, Sensei Aileen found a model for taking risks with students to help them learn material with a greater sense of commitment and precision.

Fellow educator Senpai Michele, who just retired this year, was already an experienced teacher when she came to Thousand Waves, but she recognized our school’s “master teachers” who constantly reminded her by example that “respect fosters respect.”  Darren Tuggle was also already an experienced teacher when he came to Thousand Waves: he graduated with his Bachelor’s Degree in the Teaching of English from UIC and for years later, he hosted classes of UIC Teaching of English students who worked with his students at Kelvyn Park High School.  In his Thousand Waves teachers, Darren noted their efforts to “recognize every student on the floor” while also exercising “differentiated instruction… by focusing on each individual student’s experience.”

In our June special meditation, “The Art of Business,” Kyoshi Marla Cohen and Senpai Mark Hubert reflected on their education as artists and filmmakers and their career paths through the advertising and filmmaking industries and with small businesses of their own.

For many years, Kyoshi Marla was the co-owner of Greenlawn Landscaping, and now she has returned to the fine arts world as an elementary teacher of health and art classes.  Senpai Mark explained that he had from the earliest age “held cameras in [his] hands,” and his artistic training still plays an essential role in his work as the Chief Operating Officer at Picture Day.

In their Walks of Life meditation, Kyoshi Marla noted that her late father was a collector of proverbs, which he hung around his house, and many of them reinforced the values of “non-quitting spirit” that both she and Senpai Mark noted are essential to discovering interesting artistic and professional opportunities. Senpai Mark also noted that Thousand Waves’ teachers regularly have a sense of “strength in humility,” a quality that he strives to embody when mentoring new photographers, who often have great ideas that contribute to Picture Day’s collective efforts.

As she led the final bows on this evening’s special meditation, Shuseki Shihan Nancy remarked about the presenters that “One of the secrets of their success is their tremendous capacity with giving and connecting people… they are both ‘people-connection people.’”  Through their generous efforts, both Kyoshi Marla and Senpai Mark have helped make Thousand Waves a space for physical and spiritual growth for each of us as members of a “people-connection” community.

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