Meditations on God

From Hapkido to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Through Sumo and Aikijujutsu
The founder of traditional Korean hapkido, Choi Yong-sul, claimed to have studied under Japanese martial artist and founder of Daito-ryu aikijujutsu Takeda Sokaku for approximately thirty years, after having been kidnapped from Korea and adopted into the Takeda household as a child, before returning to Korea and teaching his version of Daito-ryu which eventually became known as hapkido. How much of this story is true, I do not know, but there is little doubt, amongst those who are intellectually honest, that hapkido has a technical, and therefore historical connection to Daito-ryu.* Beyond the historical, my interest in the story of Choi Yong-sul and Takeda Sokaku has always been technical.

Takeda Sokaku is famous in Japanese martial art history for his ‘mysterious strength,’ commonly referred to as aiki and his ability to apply his own brand of jujutsu against any volunteer, regardless of size, skill, or social status. Takeda was a harsh and ferocious man, but he was also highly skilled and well respected. There are many who came after him, including myself, who have sought his skills and the elusive aiki that is said to have made his jujutsu so effective.

In the arts that resulted from Takeda’s teaching, such as Daito-ryu aikijujutsu, aikido, hapkido, et al, it is common to avoid or even to denounce any kind of sparring or resistance-based competitive training. I always took this at face value as part of the culture and lineage I was a part of, even buying into and regurgitating many of the myths and justifications around the absence of randori (sparring) or shiai (competitive bouts) in the art(s) I was associated with.

Over the years, I dug deeper and deeper into the history of these arts and the life of Takeda Sokaku.** What I found was fascinating and much less straightforward than I previously believed. Takeda’s father, Takeda Sokichi, was a high ranking sumo wrestler and, in spite of his small size, Sokaku himself had grown up learning sumo from Sokichi and even competing in, and winning, many local sumo contests (against his father’s wishes).

In other words, not only did Takeda grow up sparring in competitive resistance-based sumo, but he was also very good at it. According to stories from his son and his students, when Sokaku would visit the various dojo he taught at, he would do sumo for fun before or after his classes or seminars. This is a practice he continued well into old age.

While it may be true that Daito-ryu aikijujutsu and its descendant arts do not contain sparring or competitive practice in their curricula, it is also true that their histories are inextricably interwoven with resistance-based sparring as an essential supplement to the core practices, at least if we consider what the founder himself did as being part of his art. This knowledge was one of the factors that led me to seek out Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) after receiving my black belt in hapkido. I was looking for my own personal sumo practice to supplement my Daito-ryu, so to speak.

What I found in BJJ was a rabbit hole of technique and strategy that I am still utterly fascinated with, as a supplement to and information source for the Taikyoku Budo that is now my main practice. BJJ continues to challenge and intrigue me and I can see myself wanting to roll well into my old age as much as Takeda wanted to do sumo when he visited his students in his eighties.

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

**For a great article on the technical relationship between hapkido and Daito-ryu aikijujutsu, read the chapter A Conversation with Daito-ryu’s Other Child in Ellis Amdur’s book Dueling with O-Sensei: Grappling with the Myth of the Warrior Sage

**For more information on Takeda Sokaku, I highly recommend Ellis Amdur’s book Hidden in Plain Sight: Esoteric Power Training Within Japanese Martial Traditions
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January 12, 2019

brazilian jiu-jitsu, choi yong-sul, daito-ryu aikijujutsu, hapkido, taikyoku budo, takeda sokaku
Some Small Part of What Matters Most
One of the defining moments for me, when it became very clear that we were building something truly special at Kogen Dojo, was the day that one of our instructors, now a black belt, brought his wife and two daughters in to train. I had known this man for several years and had shared the mats with him many times, but I had never, until this point, met his family.

The fact that this man who I looked up to and respected would entrust us with the care and well-being of his family meant more to me than any financial milestone we had reached at that point. Perhaps this is why I will never be a great businessman. It is the lives we touch that bring me the most joy and the most return on my investment. It is the community that has grown up around us that makes me want to continue.

This same man is now one of our lead instructors and his two little girls are some of our best students. It is not only them, however. At some point or another, nearly every instructor at our school has brought his or her family in either to try a class, to train regularly, or just to show off where they teach and train themselves. We are all extremely different people with our own goals and aspirations, but we all want what is best for our families. That there are those who consider what we have built to be some small part of that makes it all worthwhile to me.

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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January 11, 2019
Brevity for Whose Benefit?
When I was trying to get into St. John’s College, because of my poor high school records, they required me to take several classes at the local community college to prove that I could perform at a college level. I had to take an English, a math, a science, and a foreign language course, attaining no less than a B in each of them. After completion, I would be considered by the admissions department.

I registered at the community college and took their placement exams. To my shock, I was placed into an Honors English class, which meant that I was allowed to bypass the two lower level English classes at the school. English was the class in high school that convinced me to stop showing up, so getting into Honors English in college was surprising.

In my senior year of high school, I was hanging out with people I probably should not have been and I was skipping a lot of school, living anywhere I could. My English teacher told my parents that he could not let me pass his class if I did not turn in my last paper. I was also informed that my only hope of graduating was to pass senior English and to not miss another day of school. I was honest enough with myself to know that I was not going to write the paper, so I just stopped showing up to school.

Here I was in college, enrolled in an Honors English class. The irony was not lost on me. The professor I had for the class, an amazingly intelligent man, was the head of the Humanities Department at the school. His class consisted of reading a variety of literary classics and then writing one-page essays about themes we found in the books or plays. The professor would then tear apart our papers word by word, line by line. It was humbling, but I learned a lot and I appreciated the harsh critiques.

Near the end of the semester, I asked the professor why he had us write one-page papers instead of longer papers. “Is it because you are teaching us how to be more concise with our ideas and our writing,” I asked. “Well, that is one benefit I suppose,” he said. He then paused and continued, “But why would I want to read poorly written three-page papers?”

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
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January 10, 2019
Self-Defense and Hakama on a Sunday Morning
For two years, prior to opening Kogen Dojo, a few training brothers and myself trained at my house in my basement dojo, Seiya Dojo. When the group moved into Seiya Dojo, I had given up my Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) training for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to to develop the Taikyoku Budo program. Secondly, I no longer had a BJJ teacher. After a while, however, I began to miss rolling (grappling for submissions in BJJ) and so I would invite a guest BJJ instructor into the dojo from time to time.

As things developed, I wanted more consistency, so I invited my friend (Dwayne) Bowie in to teach every Wednesday night. It was a casual arrangement. I would teach a standing technique and he would teach a ground technique that complimented it. Then we would all roll. There was a special synergy between us and the group began developing very quickly. Several of the folks who trained at Seiya Dojo are now core members of Kogen Dojo.

Bowie and I began talking about what we had at Seiya Dojo and how we wanted to open a school together someday. One thing we agreed on, as a fundamental principle of whatever we were going to do next, was that we wanted the BJJ program to be based around self-defense, something lacking in our area and in our own training. At first, we were going to try to attain ‘Gracie Garage’ status at Seiya Dojo, with that evolving into a Gracie Academy ‘Certified Training Center’ (CTC) once we found a commercial space.

As things progressed, a name kept coming up in our conversations. Mike Stewart Jr. ran a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu school about thirty minutes from us and his school was focused on the Gracie self-defense curriculum, as taught to Mike and his team by Relson Gracie. I knew of Mike because he had hosted a seminar which I attended featuring both Relson Gracie and Pedro Sauer at his school a year or so before that. Mike had a very active social media presence and both Bowie and I listened to a podcast where Paul Tokgozoglu interviewed Mike about his jiu-jitsu career and highly successful schools.

We decided to seek MIke out for business advice and, one thing led to another, we eventually opened up Kogen Dojo as an affiliate of Mike and his brother Jordan’s Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Maryland organization. The way Mike’s classes were run, especially the kids classes, the diverse group of instructors he had teaching his classes, as well as the business savvy he exhibited all impressed us greatly. The thing that sold me personally on the affiliation, however, was an interaction I had with Mike one morning in November of 2016.

On this particular Sunday, Mike happened to be in our area and popped into Seiya Dojo in the middle of a Taikyoku Budo class. He was not only enthusiastic, but also extremely generous and respectful about what we were doing, hakama and all. We were stuck on how to follow through on a technique called kaiten nage (rotary or wheel throw, also known as katasukashi in sumo). We wanted a submission that flowed naturally from the throw and he showed us how to set up a d’arce choke (a head-and-arm choke variation) he really liked. The interaction reminded me of the synergy Bowie and I had together and made me extremely hopeful about the future.

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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January 9, 2019
Try, Fail, Adapt, and Innovate
Not long after receiving my black belt in traditional Korean hapkido, I began cross training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ). Several months into training, my sparring partner of the day asked me if I wanted to start standing up, as opposed to on the ground which is how we typically started our ‘rolls’ at this particular school. I agreed, we slapped hands, and he shot in for a wrestling high crotch and dumped me on my back. I had never seen this move before, so I had no way to anticipate, let alone defend against it.

We rolled until someone submitted and then I asked if we could start standing again. We slapped hands, he shot in, I was on my back again, and we rolled. We repeated this process several more times and I got better and better at seeing and defending the shot and the takedown.

My partner grew up in a wrestling family. His brother even wrestled in the Olympics a few years back. He had been practicing and playing around with moves like this his whole life. Even with a decade’s worth of experience in hapkido, I had never even seen a wrestling shot and I had certainly never been dumped on my back by a high crotch. At first, I found this disheartening and I even felt a little bit let down by hapkido. Then, I got over it and continued training.

Eventually, I resigned from hapkido to focus on Taikyoku Budo and BJJ, but this type of experience was not why I left the hapkido group. In fact, this type of humbling experience just made me want to train more, to discover a hapkido-like way to counter a wrestling shot or some other similar move, and to bring that knowledge back to the group. Not all martial arts allow for innovation, however, and that is just fine. They are good for what they are good for. I simply wanted to train in a different way.

– Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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January 8, 2019