Power: Adding a Kihap with your techniques has been proven to give you more energy and power, which ultimately makes your strikes stronger. Core: When yelling, your core tightens. This makes it easier to take a hit in sparring matches. Breath: A power scream allows you to breathe when you are doing a technique. Overall, it helps you remember to breathe and improve your focus. Confidence: A loud and powerful Kihap improves confidence by making you seem assertive. Because of th

At the start of every school year, we talk about going back with FOCUS AND CONFIDENCE. We practice our focus with games and target drills. We don’t expect perfection but keep working to improve ourselves. When our attention does wander, we do our best to bring our minds back to the present moment. We repeat out loud (and to ourselves): “Focus our eyes! Focus our minds! Focus our bodies!” We’ve also been discussing the importance of attitude. We examined ways a bad attitude i

We are looking forward to coming back to our school programs this fall! We are excited to see our returning students and to welcome our new white belts! At the start of the year, we stress improving focus and building confidence. We need to return to our positive practice of paying attention and listening the first time. The children repeat in class: “Focus my eyes. Focus my mind. Focus my body.” It helps to bring us back on task when we’ve become distracted. To build confide

In class, we’ve been looking at how that spring break is like our beginning meditation. It’s a short break for your brain. There are many ways to meditate. We begin our classes simply thinking about our breath. It’s not always easy but over time, like anything we practice, gets better. The great thing about meditation is that you can do it anytime, anywhere. Here are some of the other ideas we talked about to help get us back on track when our minds start to wander: Use the p

“Focus our eyes! Focus our minds! Focus our bodies!” This has been our mantra for June. When summer draws close our attention flies to the window so we’ve been discussing the importance of finishing the year with strength. We looked at it as if we were watching a movie or basketball game. You wouldn’t want the actors or players to stop doing their best at the end. We expect the finish to be the best part. We should put that same effort into our school and classes. Whenever ou

sabonim–a Korean term and title signifying a master level martial arts teacher/instructor Our theme for the coming spring and  end of the school year is maintaining focus.  We remind our students and parents that like everything we want to excel at, this takes practice. We play a game with our grade school students, a modified Simon Says, to encourage focus, concentration and listening skills.  In order to be successful at the game you need to stay present in the current mome

We begin each class with some meditation time. Students sit cross legged, eyes closed for anywhere from 1  to 5 minutes. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Breathing in the positive, breathing out the negative. We meditate to help us focus. It encourages us to be present in the current moment. Letting go what happened earlier today. Letting be what may or may not happen later. Numerous studies on meditation comment on its benefits. Even a short daily practice can significantly