Private research on the Chinto - Seipai kata connection

  

It was in the later 1980s, after I had trained with many people, and had seen how they each approached the question of how to utilize kata techniques for defense. At that time I finally began my own study of what Isshinryu technique might accomplish.

Having no tradition of kata application to call on I went in many directions and discovered there were multitudes of answers that would drop an opponent. In every case if someone attacked, they fall down and go boom.

I was told by a very accomplished friend that Sanchin was not for defense, only for body development. So, I spent a lot of effort discovering many ways to use Sanchin kata.

I observed how use of Naifanchi techniques became a 'cult' as all that was needed. However, I saw the best use of Naifanchi in a different way, rather its development of the turning waist could be used as a development tool for use in Chinto kata technique.

I began to see Chinto as my personal choice. And I worked to tear it apart and better understand how its techniques might be utilized.

One very interesting potential I did not see others utilizing was the idea that the use of the turns in Chinto kata might also be a weapons system.

 

Part of my inspiration came from an interest in the martial uses of Pa Qua (Ba Qua). Unfortunately, I never had the chance to study it, but I had read as many articles and books on Pa Qua as I could. Those sources sparked my imagination.

I had also seen the Goju Kata Seipai and paid attention to the many turning techniques the form utilized. So one morning in the spring of 1993 I pulled out a video of Hiagonna Sensei on Seipai and for several hours that Sunday morning i taught myself the form. I make no claim that I truly got the form, but it was sufficient for my purposes.

 

A short while later that Sunday morning I was on my driveway working on Seipai. This was before my Tai Chi group came for class.  The first member who showed up for Tai Chi had come over to my group from a Goju program. He walked up my driveway looking at what I was doing.

He spoke, "How can you know that form, Seipai, at my former school that was only taught to 3rd degree black belts?"

I responded that 'I taught it to myself from a video tape this morning.'

He went "Wow" and then proceeded to perform the form with me. There were a few differences from what I taught myself, but overall, it was the same form.

I was not interested in being pure to an instructor. I just wanted to understand the form better, to then investigate how the movement of turning might also be used as a weapon.

Eventually I arrived at a theorem that Kata Chinto and Kata Seipai could work together to be an awesome way to defend yourself. And Naifanchi kata might be the beginning training that would supplement the development of the waist for use in both forms.

I continued my private research on this. I did believe in what I saw Isshinryu could accomplish and of course that is what I taught my dans.

Several years later I met and had occasion to train with Sherman Harrill. Then that meeting became the direction I took most of my own studies on Isshinryu.

But I stand by what I worked out, that the combination of Chinto and Seipai had much to offer too.