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Great Masters

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Great Masters

Great Masters

plants, that without the sun I could not live. There in London, I met several compatriots. Master Ishimi was staying in the next room. I asked him if there was sun in Spain and he told me that it was the country of the sun, he told me about the joy of the people, that there were hardly any Karate masters and that there was no representative of the Goyu Ryu. Encouraged by masters Funashako and Yamaguchi, I decided to come and meet him. Master Ishimi made everything easy for me, he had even found me a place to give classes, the Samurai gym. I arrived with a small suitcase to get to know this and a week later I called Dusseldorf to send me the rest of my belongings, I didn't even go for them, I had found what I was looking for."

The rest, dear reader, belongs to the history of Spanish Karate.

In those days, the general secretary of sports, contacted Mr. Fernando Franco de Saravia, Judo master and Federative. He organized the first martial arts festival. In it participated the Korean masters of Taekwondo Choi, Shik, Kim, Cho, and the Japanese masters of Karate Ishimi, Igarashi, Hiruma and Yamashita. That was the first meeting of the master with their majesties, the emeritus kings, but not the only one.

"I participated in several exhibitions for their majesties, apart from going to the Zarzuela as one of the participants of the Karate delegation, as a member of the Japanese community, in the visits of the Emperor of Japan etc. I remember that His Majesty was very nice, kind and affable, a man of the people. The queen was also very nice, she spoke only English. She is a great lady, more aristocratic. The King, on the first visit of Emperor Aki Hito greeted me effusively and said, 'Master, my friend, may I present to you the emperor of Japan.'"

Apart from his majesty, many famous and not so famous people showed their interest in knowing Karate. The master remembers with pleasure, his tireless task of spreading and teaching, at that time, the Goyu ryu in Spain.

How important was and is the style for him, and what differentiates it from the others?

"In Karate, each style performs a special emphasis on something. Goyu ryu places that emphasis on breathing and concentration, on circulating the energy well. Air is the force of life, you can't see it, but without it we could not live. We must learn to breathe in and out correctly so that the air enters and leaves the tandem correctly, from here all the psychic and bodily forces of man come out".

To enhance the energy, every day the master performed mudras, breathing exercises. But what are they and how are they performed?

"The seven vital points or mudras are some positions of the fingers of the hands that must be executed together with a pronunciation of certain mystical words to reach the perfect state of meditation, i.e. your being is unified with the whole."

These exercises, the teacher explained to us in class, had nothing to do with the development of other special senses such as for example the third eye.

"This is located in the middle of the forehead, thanks to it you can perceive what another person is going to do; this applied to Karate is to feel, before you are attacked, the blow that is going to be executed".

All those explanations gave rise to some of us having certain doubts, so what was the "Do"? -The teacher explained with a dismissive smile: "Do is a way of understanding the "Do".

"Do is a way of understanding life, of knowing how to behave well with friends and family. To work, to train correctly. It means finding your physical and mental balance with the world around you".

Yosuke Yamashita, in order to put all this into practice and to keep his senses awake, he used to do voluntary fasts every year. "What happens at parties or parties where you eat and drink a lot? The next day or at night you don't feel like eating, you feel bad, you need to cleanse your body and you just impose yourself to eat less or even fast. Fasting is essential to maintain a balance between body and mind. It is a test of mentality, endurance, cleansing and purification both physically and mentally. After this all the senses work better."

Are they so important, why do you have to keep them awake? "If you compare wild animals with humans, they still have developed sight, hearing, taste, the instinct to hunt, to fight for survival etc. But if you take them and put them in a zoo and provide them with food, after a while it's another animal. It's kind of lethargic, it hardly moves, it becomes lazy, it's sleeping all day long, it becomes sleeping, it becomes friendly and inoffensive. His senses are atrophied. Over the years he ceases to be what he was. He becomes cowardly and totally dependent on man. It has lost its instinct, its strength, its aggressiveness, its ability to fight. If you look at a lion or a tiger in a zoo, it has nothing to do with one in the jungle. The great difference between the former and the latter is that the latter have their natural senses awakened.

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