Issuu

S t r a n d s o f S t r i f e a n d L i f e V o l . III

The Frontier

O kuden

B ook 1 - Hands that C arried the Flame - From New York’s Rough Rooms to a Rooftop in India -

Mahipal Lunia with Hana Shin and Kuntal Shah

The Frontier

O kuden

The Frontier

O kuden

B ook 1 - Hands that C arried the Flame - From New York’s Rough Rooms to a Rooftop in India -

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

Dedication For Claire Sastri, in deep gratitude for your patience, philosophy, and food—and most importantly, putting up with us when we were doing martial arts day in and day out.

Contents Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix 1. The Foundation: Taisabaki as Life’s Compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2. The Journey to Aiki jujutsu: A Seeker’s Path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3. The Crucible: Training Under Vilaire Sensei. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 4. The Art of Falling: Ukemi as Active Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5. Moving from Center: The Body as Unified Weapon . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 6. The Long Path: Lessons in Pain and Humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 7. The Teacher’s Teacher: Building a School in India. . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 8. The Philosophy of Combat: Fear, Doubt, and the Already-Dead Mind. 93 9. Teaching the Untouchable Student: Compassion in the Dojo. . . . . 105 10. The Three Levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. . . . . . . . . . 115 11. Solo Practice: Training the Body Alone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 12. Principles, Not Techniques: The Universal Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 13. The Business of Fear: Modern Martial Arts Schools. . . . . . . . . . 157 14. The Living Legacy: Lineage and Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 15. The Teacher Who Wouldn’t Teach: Lessons in Worthiness and Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 16. Live Blades from Day One: The Philosophy of Real Consequences . . 203 17. Beyond the Physical: When the Soul Begins to Teach. . . . . . . . . 215 18. The Test That Shows What You Lack: Teaching Through Revelation. 229

19. Mastery Transfers: From Martial Arts to Music to Woodworking. . 241 20. Determination Over Domesticity: The Non-Negotiable Practice . . 251 21. The Honest Teacher: Admitting What You Don’t Know. . . . . . . . 261 22. Bad Teachers and How to Handle Them: Lessons from Observation . 269 23. Sen-sen-No-Sen in Business: Martial Principles Beyond the Mat. . . 279 24. Finding the Middle: The Balance Between Soft and Hard . . . . . . 287 25. The Energized Warrior: Energy Transfer as the Missing Principle. . 297 26. Beyond Mysticism: The Warrior’s Practical Mind . . . . . . . . . . . 309 27. The Living Lock: Ikkyo Through Yonkyo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 28. The Continuous Thread: Don’t Stop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 29. Advanced Transmission: Chokes, Complex Controls, and the Choice to Reveal . . . . . . . . 341 30. Weapons as Extensions: The Knife, the Stick, the Principle. . . . . . 353 31. The Ten Fundamentals: Foundation Under Pressure. . . . . . . . . . 363 32. The Teaching Legacy: From Student to Colleague. . . . . . . . . . . 373 33. The Return: Completing the Circle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Appendix: Letters from Students. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Preview of Book 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

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Foreword You are holding the first book of a three‑part journey about flame: how it is lit, how it is carried, and how it is given away without ever quite belonging to any one pair of hands. This book stands at the doorway of a long arc of practice and transmission that stretches across four generations, several continents, and seventy years of work on what it means to live as a practitioner. This is Book 1 of The Frontier Okuden. •

Book 1 traces how a small, severe lineage was forged and carried: from Japan to the rough rooms of New York, to a 10×12 room in India where an engineer‑turned‑teacher worked with a handful of students, and then into wilderness trainings, rooftops, and quiet corners across the world.

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Book 2 follows my own search, doubts, and failures, the long, uneven path of a student with a background in technology and mathematics who spent years wandering through arts, teachers, and methods before finding, testing, and finally committing to the standards you will see described here.

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Book 3 gathers the perspectives and field notes of the next generation, the students and peers who have received this work and are now discovering what it means to carry it in their own hands and in their own time.

Taken together, the three books describe four generations woven into a single meta‑journey: from teacher to student, student to seeker, seeker to guide, guide to those who will come after. The names and settings change; the core questions do not. I write this foreword as both a long‑time student of Srinivasan Sastri and as the Explorer-in-Residence at The Immersion Foundation. Sastri Sensei was trained as an engineer, and I myself come from the worlds of technology and mathematics; we both learned to think in systems, constraints, and proofs before we ever tried to map those instincts onto bodies in motion. In both my technical work and my practice, my focus has become almost singular: to understand, practice, and transmit the methods and ways I received from Sastri Sensei, regardless of the specific arts, contexts, or expressions. Whether I am in a wilderness training, a small room with a handful of students, or a seminar hall, I am, in essence, still standing on the same twin mattress in that 10×12 room in India, trying to be faithful to what was given to me. ix

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

This book began with a road trip. Ten students, three cars, twelve hours of driving through the night from Mountain View, California to Phoenix, Arizona. The destination was a weekend training with Sastri Sensei, a master in his eighties who taught their teacher, who learned from Henri-Robert Vilaire Sensei, who learned from the founders of aiki jujutsu: three generations of transmission compressed into one intensive weekend. The students arrived tired but electric with anticipation. They had heard stories about Sastri Sensei for years, the brutal training in India, the three‑year intensive that forged their teacher, the absolute standards that produced extraordinary martial artists. Now they would experience it directly, training with the source, asking questions, receiving corrections, connecting to the lineage that shaped their practice. Everything was recorded. Every conversation. Every demonstration. Every question and answer. Hours of teaching were captured in audio and video, preserving principles refined over seventy years of practice. Those recordings became this book. In the process of analyzing hundreds of pages of transcripts, extracting principles, organizing themes, and crafting chapters, something unexpected emerged. The story being told was not just about martial arts. It was about the universal pattern of human transformation that Joseph Campbell mapped across mythologies: the “hero’s journey.” A young person feels restless and incomplete (the “ordinary world”). They discover a practice that calls to them (the “call to adventure”). They find a teacher who challenges them beyond their limits (the “meeting with the mentor”). They face trials that break them down and build them up (the “road of trials”). They receive revelations that change everything (the “ultimate boon”). They return home bearing gifts to share with their community (the “return with the elixir”). This pattern repeats across three generations. Sastri Sensei spends twenty years searching across seven martial arts before finding aiki jujutsu. He undergoes transformation under Vilaire Sensei’s brutal testing and uncompromising standards. He returns to India and forges a small group of students, myself among them, through three years of intensive training in that 10×12 room. I carry that transmission to my Mountain View students. Those students make their own pilgrimage to Phoenix to connect with the source. Each cycle includes the call, the journey, the transformation, the return, and the sharing. Each generation faces trials that reveal character, revelations that shift understanding, and a growing responsibility to pass knowledge forward. The hero’s journey in this work is not individual; it is communal. Each person who completes it becomes a guide for those beginning it. The cycle continues through those who choose to answer the call, find genuine teachers, face real hardship, receive deep understanding, return to teach others, and refuse to compromise. This is that story. Not the tale of a fictional hero battling dragons, but of real practitioners facing the dragons of ego, fear, comfort‑seeking, superficial understanding, commercial pressure, and cultural drift toward mediocrity. Not a single hero, but a lineage of heroes, each generation answering the call, facing the trials, making the return, passing the knowledge forward. Srinivasan Sastri, whom I call Sastri Sensei, is an Indian engineer who spent decades searching across systems and continents for something that actually worked when pressure was real. He wrestled as a boy, then trained in multiple arts in the United States: systems that were elegant but collapsed under contact, systems that were brutal but incomplete, systems that were business‑savvy but shallow. Again and again he walked away from impressive forms that did not survive honest testing. Eventually he found a small dojo in New York run by a Haitian‑French teacher of aiki jujutsu. In that cramped, rough space—white rug on the floor, four students, no comforts—he encountered standards so high that most people quietly failed out. Surprise tests, sharp corrections, and long consequences for small mistakes were not expressions of cruelty but a way of burning away pretense and leaving only what was true. There, the engineer in him met a methodology that matched his own instincts: Nothing counted unless it worked under stress.

Foreword

When he later returned to India, he began teaching in a 10×12 room. A twin mattress served as a mat and the walls and concrete floor made every mistake count. For three intense years he committed to giving his core students everything he had—no withholding for later, no secret material set aside for advanced tiers. In that container he refined not just techniques but a complete way of transmitting understanding: how to build bodies, how to build minds, how to build character around a single demand—does this work, and does it make you more honest? That teacher, that room, that method are the ground from which this book rises. Years later, when a group of my students and I drove through the night to Phoenix, they had trained with me for years, living inside the standards that had been formed in that small room in India. They had heard stories of the engineer‑teacher who tested everything he touched. The Phoenix weekend was their chance to go to the source. For two full days we trained, talked, and tested. Every demonstration, every explanation, every offhand story was recorded. What began as an intensive training became something more: a moment in which three generations shared one space, the teacher who had forged me, the students I was forging, and the questions that passed between them. This book is the written form of that weekend, expanded backward and forward through time, and set in the larger frame of four generations. It is built from complete documentation, from hours of transcription and forensic analysis, from thematic reorganization of scattered conversations into coherent chapters, from principle extraction that makes explicit what was once only implicit in story and example, from scholarly rigor and literary care, from the weaving together of multiple perspectives: Sastri Sensei’s seventy years of work, my three decades of practice and teaching, the questions of students at varying levels, and the eyes of writers intent on preserving a way of thinking, training, and teaching. At its heart, our lineage begins with Japanese aiki jujutsu, passes through a Haitian‑French teacher who brought that art into rough American neighborhoods, moves into the hands of an Indian engineer who tested it against everything he had seen, and then into my own hands and the hands of my peers and students. What is preserved is a commitment to small, intense training spaces where comfort is stripped away and attention must sharpen, a testing culture that does not rely on rank or certificates but on whether you can function when surprised, afraid, and tired, and a refusal to separate technical skill from character. What is adapted is the environment, from basement dojos and small rooms to rooftops, wilderness, and modern urban settings, the drills and forms that keep principles alive across generations, and the language of instruction, which now draws from engineering, mathematics, neuroscience, and story so that serious people from many backgrounds can enter. Because “lineage” can sound abstract, it is worth saying plainly what we actually do. We practice a body of work that includes empty‑hand grappling and striking, weapons, and situational problem‑solving. Underneath those expressions, the practice is learning to move from center rather than from isolated limbs, to receive impact and fall as research rather than failure, to remain present and functional when you are afraid, tired, or outnumbered, to tell the truth about what you can and cannot do and use that truth to guide your training instead of your ego, and to teach others in a way that preserves standards without humiliating them. Over time, this practice seeps into the rest of life: how you have difficult conversations, how you lead teams, how you raise children, how you make decisions when every option costs something. We are not primarily transmitting a fixed set of techniques. Techniques change. Contexts change. Bodies age. What we are trying to pass on is a way of relating to the frontier in any domain: a way of seeing where comfort has replaced honesty, where image has replaced function, where talk has replaced practice; a way of training that designs conditions in which what is false in you will be revealed and what is true will be strengthened; a way of teaching that offers students real tests and real care at the same time so that difficulty becomes a form of love rather than a performance of toughness; a way of carrying what you have been given with enough humility to keep learning and enough seriousness to refuse to dilute it for convenience.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

The title of this work carries those intentions. Frontier points to the edge where what you know ends and what you must become begins, not only deserts, rooftops, back rooms, but also the frontier inside you, the boundary between your current capacities and the demands of a life you have not yet fully stepped into. Okuden is a Japanese term that refers to inner teachings or hidden transmission, not in the sense of tricks held back for the favored, but in the sense of understandings that only become visible once you have walked far enough and suffered honestly enough for them to make sense. They cannot simply be handed over in a weekend; they must be grown into. We call this work The Frontier Okuden because it concerns those inner teachings that reveal themselves at the edge, what can be passed, hand to hand, in small rooms and hard places, when both teacher and student are willing to stand at that edge together. This book is for martial artists who sense there is something more than a collection of techniques, for teachers seeking to improve how they transmit, for learners in any domain who understand that principles of skill development transfer across fields, for people whose lives are in the midst of transformation, and for seekers who know that depth exists and refuse to settle for the superficial. It is not for people who want quick results without effort, comfortable encouragement without challenge, techniques without principles, or mysticism without mechanics. It tells the truth: Most training is mediocre, most students quit, most schools optimize for profit rather than teaching, genuine skill takes years of intensive practice, standards cannot be watered down without destroying the thing they claim to preserve. What you hold in your hands is seventy years of practice distilled into principles, three generations of transmission documented as completely as we know how, one weekend in Phoenix that captured the essence, months of analysis that extracted the patterns, and an invitation to begin your own journey. The invitation is simple: Pursue genuine mastery rather than casual competence, find real teachers rather than convenient instructors, face actual hardship rather than comfortable simulation, develop deep understanding rather than superficial familiarity, transmit completely rather than partially, refuse compromise not just in martial arts but in all the places that matter to you. Most people will not accept this invitation. The cost is too high. They will read these pages, perhaps feel inspired for a while, and then return to comfortable mediocrity. A few will accept. They will recognize that this depth is worth pursuing, these standards are worth maintaining, this transmission is worth preserving. For them, this book offers a roadmap. The ten students who drove from Mountain View to Phoenix accepted that invitation in the simplest way possible: They gave away time, money, comfort, and certainty. They returned changed, not because two days in Arizona magically transformed them, but because they had seen the source and understood what they were part of: a lineage of practitioners who chose mastery over mediocrity across three generations and seventy years. Now the same invitation is being placed in your hands, in a different medium. Not a weekend in Phoenix, but a book that documents that weekend and the decades that led into it. The medium is different. The invitation is the same: pursue excellence, refuse compromise, become who the practice makes you.

Mahipal Lunia Long‑time student of Srinivasan Sastri Explorer-in-Residence, The Immersion Foundation March 2026 xii

Foreword

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The Foundation: Taisabaki as Life’s Compass Ten students drove through the night from Mountain View, California to Phoenix, Arizona in three cars, their bodies stiff from the journey but minds electric with anticipation. They came to train with Sastri Sensei, their teacher’s teacher—a man in his eighties with seventy years of martial arts experience. What they discovered that weekend would fundamentally shift their understanding of aiki jujutsu. The secret wasn’t hidden in advanced techniques or esoteric principles. It was there from day one, so obvious they’d almost missed it: taisabaki—body movement—is not a technique. It’s the foundation of everything. As Sastri Sensei put it plainly: “Taisabaki, to me, is the magic that makes so many people tell us, ‘I want to move like you.’” This chapter reveals why a man who studied every major martial art for decades believes that if he could teach only one thing for the rest of his life, it would be taisabaki. Not the flashy throws. Not the painful controls. Just movement—intelligent, flowing, adaptive movement that transforms combat into a dance where you’re always in the right place at the right time.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

The Question That Changes Everything Picture this: A bright sixteen-year-old walks into your dojo after studying karate for six years. He can throw a decent roundhouse kick. His blocks are crisp. He’s won some tournaments. He thinks he knows how to fight. You tell him to throw a roundhouse kick at your head. He does. You step slightly to the side—not back, to the side—block with one hand, and suddenly he’s on the ground wondering what happened. He didn’t see a fancy technique. He just saw you … move. “What did you do?” he asks. “Taisabaki,” you tell him. “What’s that?” And now you face the fundamental teaching challenge: How do you explain that the thing he just experienced—being completely outmaneuvered by simple body movement—is more important than every technique he’ll learn in the next ten years? This was the question hanging in the Phoenix dojo that weekend as Sastri Sensei, in his late eighties, moved through techniques with students many decades younger. His knees didn’t bend like they used to. But when he moved, even students with thirty years of training found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, wondering how he got there. “Just to clarify,” a student asked during the weekend. “What would you consider a quintessential technique of our system? If I’m hearing you correctly, it’s not some advanced technique, it’s not your yamarashi or something like that. It’s taisabaki, it’s the thing that you learn on day one that is the ‘special sauce?’” “That is the sauce, yeah,” Sastri Sensei confirmed. “Because if you are in the right structure and position like a cue ball, you can go wherever you want. Then it depends on your knowledge of the controls and throws and such.”

The Billiards Revelation Sastri Sensei leaned forward, his hands moving through the air, painting the analogy that would unlock everything: “It’s the same old thing as when you’re playing billiards. You don’t just hit the cue ball saying, ‘I’m going to pocket that red one over there.’ You hit it in such a way that it goes over there, gets some of the balls in position to hit them.” Stop. Read that again. Because embedded in this simple billiards metaphor is the entire strategic philosophy of this particular school of aikijujutsu. Most martial artists think tactically: This attack comes, I do this defense. Linear. Reactive. One move. Sastri Sensei thinks strategically: This attack comes, I position myself so that whatever he does next, I’m already in the perfect position to counter. Spatial. Proactive. Infinite moves. The cue ball doesn’t just sink one ball. The cue ball positions itself for the next shot, and the next, and the next. That’s what taisabaki does. “When you do a taisabaki,” Sastri Sensei continued, “you should be there to immediately shift and do something else in case what you’re doing is not working.” “And there’s always a chance it’s not going to work,” he added. “It is a fallacy to say, ‘Oh my tactics are good, I’m always going to succeed in what I do.’ Because the other person is not going to stand there and wait for you to do it.” Think about that. Most martial arts instruction operates on a fantasy: cooperative opponents who throw the attack you trained for, then freeze while you execute your perfect technique. Real fights aren’t choreographed. The opponent moves. Adapts. Counters. And if you’ve locked yourself into a single technique, a single line of attack, you’re finished. But if you’ve positioned yourself properly—if you’ve done the right taisabaki—you have options. Multiple options. You’re the cue ball positioned for any pocket on the table. 16

Chapter 1 • The Foundation: Taisabaki as Life’s Compass

The Magic Nobody Talks About “Taisabaki, to me, is—” Sastri Sensei paused, searching for the right word. Then: “The magic.” Mahipal Lunia, his senior student and head instructor at the Mountain View school, jumped in: “Magic.” “Yeah,” Sastri Sensei continued. “It’s the magic that makes so many people tell us, ‘I want to move like you.’” Magic. Not in the mystical sense. But in the Arthur C. Clarke sense; any sufficiently advanced technique appears magical to those who don’t understand it. When you watch a master of aiki jujutsu fight, it looks magical. They seem to always be in the right place. Attacks miss them by inches. They flow around opponents like water around rocks. You can’t quite track how they got from here to there. But it’s not magic. It’s geometry. It’s positioning. It’s taisabaki practiced ten thousand times until your body knows, without thinking, exactly where to be. “I tell them, Sensei,” Mahipal interjected. “The only thing I practice is taisabaki. I don’t know anything other than taisabaki.’” “That’s what I do myself even today,” Sastri Sensei confirmed. “I would go through various taisabaki and I won’t think about it, I’ll just make it up as I go because I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to pre-plan anything. I want to be spontaneous.” Read that carefully. A man with seventy years of experience, countless techniques in his arsenal, and this is what he practices: movement. Not techniques. Because if your movement is right and your structure is correct, then techniques become obvious. If your movement is wrong and your structure is wrong, no technique will save you.

The India Demonstration: Hiding in Plain Sight “I remember when we were in India, we were doing this particular demo,” Mahipal recalled during the weekend. “Sensei said, ‘Okay, we’re not going to show them our taisabaki. We’re going to mix our taisabaki up.’ All these guys were sitting with their video cameras, and our legs were doing one thing and our hands doing a completely different thing. And yet it worked.” “Yeah,” Sastri Sensei nodded, remembering. “When we did the demos, I remember you guys asking me the first time, ‘Are we going to practice?’ I said, ‘No, we’re not going to practice.’” This is profound. They were deliberately mixing up their taisabaki during demonstrations so observers couldn’t record and copy their system. But—and here’s what matters—it still worked. Different footwork, different angles, different combinations. Still worked. Why? Because taisabaki isn’t a sequence to memorize. It’s a principle to embody. Once you understand the principle—position yourself advantageously relative to incoming force—the specific footwork becomes almost irrelevant. You can do taisabaki 1, 3, 5, and 6 combined. Doesn’t matter. You’re either in a good position or you’re not. “For me,” Sastri Sensei explained, “I have to do everything spontaneously. I cannot predetermine something. If I do that, if I don’t wing it, I feel like I’m not being very efficient. Because that is life: to wing it. You cannot pre-plan everything, especially a defense.” A student pushed back, clarifying: “But you have to have the tools in the box so that when the situation does present itself, you’ve got just the thing for it, right? So it’s the daily, monthly, yearly practice that allows you to be spontaneous.” “Yes.” Sastri Sensei agreed.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

The Eight Movements That Contain Everything Stand up. Actually, stand up right now. Because you need to feel this to understand it. Someone throws a straight punch at your face. What are your options? Most martial arts give you two: Step back and block, or step forward into it. Linear thinking. Forward or backward on a line. Our system of aiki jujutsu gives you eight fundamental directions—and infinite combinations of those eight. Let me show you what that means. •

Taisabaki 1 and 2: Step forward and to the side at forty-five degrees. You’re not where the punch is going anymore. And you’re close enough to strike back immediately. The punch sails past your head, missing by inches, and suddenly your opponent has a problem: You’re inside his defense, he’s overextended, and you’re perfectly positioned for a counter.

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Taisabaki 3 and 4: Step to the side and slightly back, again at an angle. Different angle, same principle: You’re not where the attack lands. Now you’re at his flank. He has to turn to face you, and in that split-second of reorientation, you own him.

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Taisabaki 5 and 6: Pivot around your opponent, almost like you’re dancing. He throws the punch; you’re not there anymore. You’re behind him, or beside him, and he’s still looking where you used to be.

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Taisabaki 7 and 8: Step back, but not straight back—at an angle, maintaining your defensive line while creating distance.

Eight directions. Eight options from any attack. And here’s where it gets interesting: You can combine them. “You do the block, you go around the guy. There’s nothing that says you have to stop there,” Sastri Sensei explained. “You can go to the other side, show up in front of him again, you can go back the other way doing taisabaki 3 or 4, and you dance. That’s what it is.” Dance. Not fight—dance. Because when you truly understand taisabaki, combat becomes fluid, continuous motion. You’re not throwing one technique and stopping. You’re flowing through positions, always moving, always adapting. The opponent throws a punch; you do taisabaki 1, but as you’re moving, you see he’s trying to counter, so you flow immediately into taisabaki 5 and 6, and now you’re on his other side. He spins to face you; you’re already doing taisabaki 3 and 4. He can’t catch you because you’re not stopping long enough to be caught. “If you can do that,” Sastri Sensei said, “you’ll be such a passive-aggressive fighter, that the guy won’t be able to touch you and you can laugh in his face.”

The Principle: Never Back Away “My policy has always been to get inside the attack and never to back away from an attack,” Sastri Sensei stated flatly. Wait. Get inside the attack? That sounds insane. Every instinct screams at you to get away from danger, not toward it. “Because when you go inside an attack, you’re safer,” Sastri Sensei explained. “But when you back away from an attack, there’s more opportunity for the other guy to keep coming after you, and there’s no time for you to go on the attack. Your role becomes defending, defending, defending.” Think about it. You’re on the ground. Guy’s trying to stomp you. If you roll away, he follows, keeps stomping. You’re playing defense forever, and sooner or later, defense fails.

Chapter 1 • The Foundation: Taisabaki as Life’s Compass

“But if you roll towards him, he doesn’t have the room,” Sastri Sensei continued. “He’s crowded,” a student confirmed. “Yes. So you can take him down and bring him down to your level and fight him to your level.” This is the counterintuitive genius of taisabaki. It’s not about avoiding contact. It’s about positioning contact. You step into the attack—but at an angle, so you’re moving to where the force isn’t, while simultaneously moving to where you can damage your opponent most effectively. “Even if you look at our taisabaki 1 and 2, we’re not stepping back, we’re stepping in,” Sastri Sensei pointed out. “All the taisabaki, if you notice, is stepping into the attack. 3 and 4, you’re stepping in. 5 and 6, you’re stepping in. 7 and 8, you may be moving back but you’re stepping in to block it.” Every single taisabaki movement steps into the attack. Not away. Into. Because in aiki jujutsu, safety isn’t found in distance —it’s found in position.

The Fear Problem “It is difficult for a lot of people to step into an attack and that only comes by giving up the fear,” Sastri Sensei acknowledged. “And adopting the philosophy that I will get hit, I will get knifed, I will get shot. Remembering that and being brave and stepping in. Even if you get hit, you’re moving, and the effect of that strike is not going to be as much as it would have been if you had not moved into it.” You will get hit. Accept that. Martial arts isn’t a force field. But—and this is everything—if you’re moving when you get hit, especially moving into the strike, the damage is reduced. Why? Physics. A punch generates maximum force at full extension. If you’re moving backward and the punch connects, it connects at maximum power. If you’re moving forward into the punch, you’re catching it early, before full extension, when it has less power. And because you’re moving at an angle (taisabaki), you’re not taking the strike square-on. It grazes. “Let’s say you’re moving into a punch coming at your head. If you notice, you’re not moving in like this,” Sastri Sensei demonstrated, presumably moving straight forward. “You’re moving in like this.” “Right,” the student confirmed, seeing the angled movement. “Because you’re going that way. He’s moving fast and you’re moving fast, so the punch probably will graze you, but it’s not going to hit where he intends to strike you and knock you out on the temple.” Graze versus knockout. That’s the difference taisabaki makes. And it comes from overcoming fear—the fear that says, “Get away from danger,” when the correct response is, “Get into danger, but at the right angle.”

The Kata Rebellion To understand why the focus on taisabaki is revolutionary, you need to understand what it replaced. Sastri Sensei spent decades studying traditional martial arts before finding aiki jujutsu. And in every single traditional system, the answer to “how do you fight?” was the same: kata. Kata—pre-arranged forms. Sequences of moves performed solo, against imaginary opponents, in precise order. The theory: practice the kata ten thousand times, and when you need to fight, the movements will emerge automatically. The problem: kata trains you to move backward. “Even to this day when you walk into another martial arts school, all the moves they show you from day one is moving backwards in a linear way,” Sastri Sensei explained. “There is no moving around, there’s no stepping to the side. It’s always moving back, back, back. You train that movement for so many years that you think that is the only move. You don’t even think there might be something else.”

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

“That’s the muscle memory that you have,” a student confirmed. “Yes, that’s the only knowledge you have and since you have not been shown any other way of moving, you don’t know that something else exists in this world.” This is devastating if you think about it. You spend years—decades even—training your body to do one thing: move backward in straight lines. Then you get in a real fight, and every instinct screams, “Move back!” which is exactly the wrong response. You’ve trained yourself into a corner. “In our system, you come and you see different moves,” Sastri Sensei continued. “Now it opens your eyes, especially for somebody like me. When I was practicing traditional Japanese karate, we used to fight a lot in tournaments. I remember me and my other two friends always said, ‘Man, when that kick comes, there’s got to be a better way of blocking or dealing with it.’ And we used to think and think and think. Jam the kick and block it—this is the only thing we knew because it was the only thing we learned.” They knew there had to be a better way. They could feel it. But their instructors couldn’t teach them what they themselves had never learned. The knowledge gap perpetuated itself, generation after generation of karateka learning to step back and block, step back and block, never realizing there were eight other directions they could move.

The Moment of Recognition “Then I came here to our system and the first day Vilaire Sensei said, ‘We’re going to do defense against kicks today.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah?’” Sastri Sensei recalled. “‘I’ve been there,’ I thought. And then he called a guy and said, ‘Okay, do a front kick.’ So he does the front kick, and boom, Vilaire Sensei goes to taisabaki 1 and he blocks and takes the guy down on the whack.” “And now you’re interested,” the student prompted. “Yes. Because we never ever thought of taking a guy down like that when a kick came at you. We always thought maybe we could sweep the other leg or something. Other than that we never thought of that. Of course, now I’m paying attention. I said, ‘I’ve got to see this one again.’” That moment—that first moment of seeing taisabaki applied to a problem he’d been trying to solve for years— changed everything. Not because the technique was complex. Because it was obvious once you saw it. Step to the side, block as you move, and suddenly the kicker is off-balance, over-extended, and falling. No fancy technique required. Just positioning. “The best thing was when they did the defense against roundhouse kicks,” Sastri Sensei continued. “That just blew my mind away.” “Right, the inside turn situation?” the student asked. “Just went right inside, picked them up, boom. I said, ‘Wow!’” Mahipal interjected, remembering: “Sensei, remember you did that to me the first day I saw you? You just threw me against the wall.” “Just to clarify,” a student said, “this is like kokyu nage where you blend with it and move in, and just keep going?” “Keep it going, exactly. Going back to what I said before, continuously going, moving,” Sastri Sensei confirmed. “When you do taisabaki 5 or 6 defense against kicks, if you’re in and you stop the movement, you’re going to have a hard time taking the guy down because the momentum is not there, because the centrifugal force has stopped.” “You have to start it up again,” the student realized. “That’s why you’ve got to keep moving. So once you learn that idea, your techniques will be much more devastating and you will take people down effortlessly because that momentum is carrying on. You haven’t stopped and cut it at a certain point—you can’t do that.”

Chapter 1 • The Foundation: Taisabaki as Life’s Compass

The Infinite Combinations “Make it a curriculum where, after a certain level, you tell your student, ‘Hey, remember the guy you’re fighting is not going to cooperate with you,’” Sastri Sensei explained. “You have to make the situation, not him. He is not going to help you and say, ‘Hey, look, I’ll let you do this to me.’ So you have to move, you have to think.” This is the transition from beginner to intermediate understanding. Beginners learn: “For this attack, do this taisabaki.” Intermediates learn: “For this attack, you could do this taisabaki, or this one, or this one, or combine two, or three.” Advanced practitioners learn: “Stop thinking about taisabaki as responses to attacks. Think about taisabaki as continuous, flowing movement through space.” “Start with any taisabaki you want but I want you to tell me at least six different steps that you have taken with the taisabaki and move around,” Sastri Sensei instructed. “At least six. What is the purpose of that? To make the student think differently rather than just thinking taisabaki 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Because after a year of practicing like that that’s what you think. You think I have to do this for this and do that for that. But there’s no such rule. It’s universal, you can do whatever you want for anything you want.” Six movements. Minimum. Combining taisabaki 1 with 5 and 6, flowing into 3 and 4, finishing with 7. Or starting with 6, looping into 2, pivoting to 5. The combinations are effectively infinite because once you’re moving, you’re reading the opponent’s response and adapting. “At that moment, I don’t know what combination I’m going to do but I’m just going to let my body roll,” Sastri Sensei said. “Let it do what it has to do without thinking, I’m just going to move. If he initiates an attack, I’ll move and then I’ll be on the move depending on what I want to do.” No pre-planning. No predetermined combinations. Just movement responding to movement. This is mastery.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

What follows is practitioner reference material, distilled from the same principles Sastri Sensei demonstrated that weekend in Phoenix. Whereas the preceding sections traced the logic of taisabaki as it was taught and experienced, these heuristics and drills are designed to be returned to: consulted during training, tested against what your body knows, revised as your understanding deepens. They are tools, not doctrine.

Deep Heuristics from the Immersion Methodology •

If-Then Pattern: If your body isn’t moving before you see the attack, you’re already late. The decision to move happens before conscious recognition of the attack. This is trained through thousands of repetitions until “recognizing attack” and “body moves” are one event, not two.

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Positioning Over Technique: When uncertain which technique to apply, default to achieving better position. If you’re in the right position, the technique will become obvious. If you’re in the wrong position, no technique will save you. Position is the meta-strategy that supersedes all tactics.

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The Cue Ball Principle: Every movement should position you for the next movement, not just address the current attack. Be two moves ahead. Where do I need to be after this technique completes? Am I positioned to handle the opponent’s likely counter?

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Fear Transforms Through Acceptance: Fear diminishes not by avoiding danger but by accepting the worst outcome (“I’m already dead—what do I have to lose?”) then acting anyway. This paradoxically creates calm in crisis because you’ve already processed the worst-case scenario.

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Momentum Is Efficiency: Never stop moving completely. Even pauses are transitions between movements. Stopping and restarting requires more energy than maintaining flow. This is why advanced practitioners seem to move effortlessly—they’re not constantly accelerating and decelerating.

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Graze Over Impact: Moving into attacks at angles means most strikes that connect will graze rather than land flush. A grazing blow does 20% of the damage of a direct hit. This means you can absorb multiple grazes while landing one solid counter and still win the exchange.

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Train Movement Before Technique: New students should spend 80% of their time on taisabaki, 20% on techniques. Advanced students should spend 50% on taisabaki. Masters still practice taisabaki daily. This ratio is backward from most martial arts (which rush to techniques) but produces faster overall mastery.

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Forced Variation Builds Adaptability: Deliberately make students do “wrong” taisabaki for “wrong” attacks. Have them do only taisabaki 6 for five minutes regardless of what comes. This breaks the one-to-one attack-response mapping and builds true adaptability.

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Combinations Before Mastery: Don’t wait until students master individual taisabaki before teaching combinations. As soon as they have basic competence in three or four movements, start combining them. This prevents compartmentalization and builds flow from the beginning.

Chapter 1 • The Foundation: Taisabaki as Life’s Compass

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The Spontaneity Paradox: True spontaneity comes from rigorous drilling, not from “winging it” as a beginner. You must practice predetermined combinations ten thousand times before you can truly improvise. The body needs the vocabulary of movement before it can compose new sentences.

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Visualize Options, Not Outcomes: Don’t visualize yourself winning. Visualize yourself having multiple options from any position. The winner is whoever has the most options when things go wrong, not whoever’s plan works perfectly.

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Magic Is Geometry: What appears magical to observers (being in the “right place at the right time”) is simply superior spatial awareness and positioning. Film yourself training. Watch the geometry of where you position yourself relative to incoming force. Adjust until the geometry consistently favors you.

Practical Applications For Beginners •

Morning Taisabaki Practice (10 minutes): When you wake up, before breakfast, practice all eight taisabaki movements. Ten repetitions each. Focus on: Are your feet moving from your center? Is your whole body moving as one unit? Can you feel the angle of each movement?

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Walking Practice: As you walk anywhere—to your car, through the grocery store, down the hallway—occasionally do a taisabaki movement. Taisabaki 3. Taisabaki 6. Get your body used to shifting angles without preparation.

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Visualization Before Sleep: Lie in bed. Visualize someone throwing a punch at you. In slow motion, watch yourself do taisabaki 1. Then 2. Then 3. Feel your body wanting to move even though you’re lying still. This builds the neural pathways before you ever step on the mat.

For Intermediate Students •

Forced Variation Drill: Have a partner attack you randomly for three minutes. But here’s the rule: you can only use taisabaki 5. Nothing else. Adapt taisabaki 5 to work against everything—punches, kicks, grabs. Then next session, only taisabaki 3. Then only taisabaki 1. This breaks compartmentalization and builds true adaptability.

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Six-Movement Combinations: Set a timer for five minutes. Flow through six taisabaki movements without stopping. Taisabaki 1 flows into 5 and 6, which flows into 3, then 7, then back to 2, finishing with 4. Call out the numbers as you move. Next time, different combination. Never repeat the same sequence twice in a row.

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Partner Pressure Testing: Have your partner try to prevent you from doing taisabaki. They’re not attacking—they’re trying to predict where you’re going and cut you off. This forces you to fake, to change direction mid-movement, to truly flow rather than following predetermined patterns.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

For Advanced Students •

Strategic Positioning Drill: Film yourself sparring. Watch it back. Freeze frame every moment of contact. Ask: Where was I positioned relative to my opponent? Did I have multiple options for counter-attacks? Or was I locked into one response? Adjust your taisabaki to create more options.

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Teaching Variation: When teaching beginners, deliberately show “wrong” taisabaki for certain attacks. Then explain why it still works if you adjust angle or timing. This teaches that principles matter more than prescribed responses.

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Integration Practice: Take one taisabaki—say 3. Now ask: How does this movement appear in weapons work? In ground fighting? In escaping grabs? In throwing techniques? Find the universal principle (turning to put opponent off-line) and apply it everywhere.

A snapshot from Sastri Sensei’s old webpage describing his journey. Sticky note added by Claire Sastri (Ma’am).

The Journey to Aiki Jujutsu: A Seeker’s Path Some people stumble into their life’s work. Sastri Sensei spent twenty years methodically searching for his. From Indian wrestling at age twelve to Kempo karate in New York, from Chinese Praying Mantis to Shotokan, from Isshin-ryu to aikido, he trained under masters across four continents and a dozen systems. Each art taught him something. Each art also revealed its limitations. He was looking for something that none of his instructors could articulate—a way of moving that made sense, that worked against resistance, that didn’t require memorizing hundreds of kata or limiting yourself to linear attacks. The search became obsessive. He’d join a school, train intensely, advance to higher ranks, then realize: “This isn’t it.” And he’d start again. By the time he found a three-line advertisement buried beneath a large aikikai listing in the New York phonebook, he’d accumulated more martial arts experience than most instructors would gain in a lifetime. But he was still a beginner. Still searching. That tiny advertisement—“School of Aiki Jujutsu”—changed everything. This chapter documents the relentless search that prepared him to recognize the answer when he finally found it. Because sometimes the journey matters more than the destination. The twenty years of searching taught him what not to do, which made him the perfect student for what he was about to discover.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

The Weightlifter’s Epiphany The story starts with blood. “I think from the day I was born I was interested in physical activity,” Sastri Sensei began, settling into his chair in Phoenix. “Growing up in India, through my primary school days, high school days, when I got up in the morning I went for a run. And those days in India where we lived, they used to have donkeys. We used to go donkey-riding. You’d grab a donkey and you ride them in the morning, stuff like that.” This wasn’t casual exercise. This was a twelve-year-old boy who needed movement the way other people need air. He found Indian wrestling—the ancient art where the first lesson is: Never extend your fingers. Always keep them like hooks, protecting them, because extended fingers get broken. He learned to feel his opponent’s weight shifts, to sense weakness in their stance through touch. These lessons—learned at twelve—would resurface decades later in aiki jujutsu. Then came weightlifting. Not bodybuilding—Olympic lifting. The clean and jerk. The snatch. Power lifting, where you measure strength in pounds hoisted overhead, not mirror muscles. “One day I went to do my weightlifting class. And I’d always been sort of a rogue type—was always like, ‘I am a tough guy,’” Sastri Sensei continued. “I always did a snatch style, a squat style. I never did the split style. So I went in there and I grabbed it and I snatched, I mean right down. I always wanted to do that because once you come up, your legs have to be strong.” “Right. If you’re in the hole you have to get up,” a student confirmed, understanding the physics of a full squat snatch. “So I always said I want to see how strong my legs are. At night when I went home, pain, pain, pain. I didn’t warm up. I never used to warm up for anything. Pain. The next morning my neck was swollen up like that. I couldn’t turn my head, I couldn’t do anything.” What happened next reveals something crucial about how Sastri Sensei approaches obstacles: he doesn’t avoid them, he finds another path. “They found a blood clot so they had to take it out and that sort of put a stop to my weightlifting. Then I started doing bodybuilding, lifting weights, and I kept doing it.” Setback? Yes. End of training? Never. He simply pivoted. If he couldn’t do Olympic lifts, he’d do bodybuilding. If he couldn’t do bodybuilding, he’d do something else. This pattern—obstacle, pivot, continue—would define his entire martial arts journey.

The First Teacher: Boxing and the Golden Gloves Champion “But Sensei, you’d already done boxing before that,” Mahipal interjected during the Phoenix session. “Oh yes! That’s in India, the boxing,” Sastri Sensei confirmed. “When I was doing wrestling and everything, I had a friend who was a Golden Gloves level boxer in India. In his weight class he was like the champ there. I used to first just go and help him out and then I got involved learning about boxing.” He didn’t seek out boxing instruction formally. He went to help a friend. While helping, he observed. While observing, he learned. While learning, he practiced. This informal apprenticeship model—learning through immersion rather than formal curriculum—shaped how he would later teach. Boxing taught him distance management, timing, head movement. It taught him that you don’t need complicated techniques if your fundamentals are solid. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut. Four punches. But thrown with proper footwork, proper weight transfer, proper timing? Devastating.

Chapter 2 • The Journey to Aiki Jujutsu: A Seeker’s Path

America and the $800-a-Month Sensei “Then I came to this country. New job, being new here and everything. For a couple of years I didn’t do anything physical,” Sastri Sensei explained. “Then I said, I got to get back to something. I missed it. I missed working out. Then I said, what am I going to do? That’s when I said, you know what, I think I’ll go try martial arts.” He was twenty-six. New to America. Working a steady job. And that restless need for physical challenge was eating at him. He didn’t know anything about martial arts—”All I knew was the guy did kicks”—but he opened the New York Times and found Larry de Merit’s Kempo school in Forest Hills. “Larry was the freestyle boxing karate champ in those days before Chuck Norris,” Sastri Sensei recalled. “He was a student of Ed Parker, Kempo karate. He came from Los Angeles and he started a school.” “Those days Larry had a good gig going, $800 a month with a contract,” Sastri Sensei continued. Think about that. In 1973, $800 per month. For martial arts classes. With a contract. Larry de Merit understood something about American business that traditional martial arts schools didn’t: Market yourself professionally, charge professional rates, deliver professional service. “For that money he took from you, Larry had two one-on-one classes every week, and then you could work back with a regular class as many days as you wanted. I learned a lot of self-defense, again body grabs. Larry taught me a lot of good stuff there.” This is crucial: private lessons. One-on-one attention. Customized instruction. Sastri Sensei was learning not just Kempo techniques, but how good instruction works. Years later, when he built his own school in India, he’d spend hours with individual students, refusing to move on until they understood. He stayed with Larry for six years. Advanced through the ranks. “I was planning on staying in Kempo karate for a long time,” he said. Then Larry sold the school, and moved back to Los Angeles. The new owner, Rocky, was cut from different cloth. “Rocky and me never got along. Rocky was just as arrogant as he was in those days and I wouldn’t put up with his shit. So I said, ‘I can’t go to this school anymore.’ So I was going to quit.” Six years of training. Gone. Not because the art failed him, but because the instructor relationship failed. This would become a recurring theme.

The Chinese Connection: Closed Doors Opening “I was talking with a friend of mine who worked with me named Teddy Liong and I said, ‘Teddy, you know, I got a problem,’” Sastri Sensei continued. “Because Teddy did martial arts. He went to a Chinese school, he was Chinese. But in those days the Chinese would not take anybody if you’re not Chinese, very closed.” This was the 1970s. Traditional Chinese martial arts schools operated like secret societies. You had to be Chinese, or have a Chinese friend vouch for you, or prove yourself worthy through some extraordinary demonstration. The knowledge was guarded jealously. “Then he says to me, ‘Hey you know what, if I could get you into my school would you want to go?’ I said, ‘Really? You could do that?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Let me go and ask.’” The instructor was a man named Lee. Young, only slightly older than Sastri Sensei. But his uncle was legendary. “They always said if his uncle and Mohammad Ali got into a telephone booth to fight, his uncle would win.” “So he’s good at the tight game,” a student observed. Lee agreed to take him. And immediately, Sastri Sensei encountered a teaching methodology that would profoundly influence his own approach: brutal simplicity.

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1

The Six-Month Ambush “One Saturday after class he says to me, ‘What are you doing today?’” Sastri Sensei recalled, settling into the memory. “I said, ‘Nothing.’ If I had known what he was going to do, I would have lied to him.” Six months. That’s how long he’d been training in aiki jujutsu. Six months of learning vocabulary—sankyo, nikkyo, kansetsu waza, kotegaeshi. Six months of drilling taisabaki. Six months of trying to understand why this art felt so different from everything he’d studied before. Most schools don’t test for yellow belt until six months. Some wait a year. The idea of testing for rank at six months, particularly when you came from other systems and didn’t even know the Japanese terminology yet, was absurd. “So I said, ‘Nothing, why?’ He said, ‘Good, I’ll give you a test today.’ I said, ‘What?’ There was no warning. ‘Test?! What do you mean, test?’” Picture this moment. You walk into class expecting normal training. Your instructor—who happens to be your friend, someone you hang out with outside the dojo—casually drops: “Oh by the way, you’re testing today. Right now.” “I mean, I knew control 1, control 2, but sankyo, what the hell is that?” “So this was your first test with them, right?” a student asked during the Phoenix session. “Yeah. And I had never bothered to learn the Japanese terminologies.” He’d been training hard—showing up consistently, working techniques, taking ukemi. But he hadn’t bothered memorizing the Japanese names because in his mind, he was still exploring. Still evaluating whether this system was worth the commitment. Still operating from the casual learner mindset: I’ll get serious about terminology when I’m sure I’m staying. Vilaire Sensei had other ideas. “So he tells a couple of guys to stick around after class, and he asked me do this, do that … I’m like, oh man. And he’s telling me do kansetsu waza. I’m looking at his face like, what is kansetsu waza? So I had to ask him.” “How long have you been in this school at this point, Sensei?” a student asked. “For about six months.” The message was clear: You’ve been here long enough. Time to commit or leave. Either learn the terminology, understand the system, demonstrate competency—or stop wasting everyone’s time treating this like a hobby. “He said, ‘I know you’ve done martial arts before so I have to give you some rank. I don’t know where to start.’” This is a fascinating teaching decision. Vilaire Sensei recognized that Sastri Sensei wasn’t a true beginner—he had two decades of martial arts experience across multiple systems. Making him start from absolute zero would be insulting and inefficient. But where do you place someone with extensive striking background but zero grappling experience? Someone who’s been in hundreds of fights but never done a joint lock? You test them. Suddenly. With zero preparation. And see what they’re actually made of.

The Year of Punishment Fast forward. Sastri Sensei has continued training. Advanced through ranks. Now he’s testing for black belt level— along with Henem and Castanos Senseis, two other senior students. But first: kenjutsu test. Saturday in Rochester, New York. Zero-degree weather. They’d driven through snow to get there. The test begins. Everything’s going fine. Then Vilaire Sensei stands up. “‘One of you have your weapon on the wrong side,’ he said.”

Chapter 3 • The Crucible: Training Under Vilaire Sensei

They’d laid their weapons on the ground. Standard procedure before demonstrating. But one person—Sastri Sensei—had placed his weapon on the wrong side. Left instead of right, or right instead of left. A basic mistake. Something white belts learn on day one. “Then he said, ‘I’m going to get up and go and come back. Any more mistakes, and this test is cancelled.’” “For all of you?” a student asked. “Yeah.” Think about that. You’re testing with two other people. One person makes a mistake. All three tests get cancelled. This isn’t about fairness—it’s about standards. Either you know the basics or you don’t. There’s no partial credit for “mostly correct.” Cruz Sensei came over after Vilaire Sensei left. Explained the error. They corrected it. Vilaire Sensei returned. Test continued. They completed it successfully—no more mistakes. Got their kenjutsu black belts. Next day: aiki jujutsu test. Early morning. Same location. Same group. “Test again, same thing. We all line up and everything. Then he said, ‘I have the black belts here and I’m going to put it on each one of you before the test. If you don’t make any mistakes, the belt will stay on you. If you make too many mistakes, then the belt comes off and you won’t get the belt.’” The psychological warfare of this is masterful. You’re wearing the black belt during the test. You can feel it around your waist. It’s yours—conditionally. Screw up and watch him take it off you in front of everyone. “So he puts the belt on us. We’re all worried, ‘My God, we got it, but we haven’t got it yet.’” “Yeah, you have to fight for it,” a student confirmed. The test proceeded. Techniques, demonstrations, everything successful. Then came the final portion: fighting each instructor. “I got my turn to fight with Vilaire Sensei. I am not saying that I could have held my own on him, but I did not show him my full potential because I didn’t want to look like somebody who is standing up to the instructors. I respected my instructors, so I always subdued myself, held back.” In traditional martial art, you don’t go full-power against your instructor during testing. It’s considered disrespectful. Even if you’re capable of giving them serious trouble, you hold back—demonstrating competence without challenging authority. “So, he passed me out in the test. I was gone. I knew I was gone.” “You’re saying he choked you or something?” a student asked. “I don’t know what he did, but I passed out.” Welcome to your black belt test. You wake up on the mat wondering what happened. But the test continues. Because passing out isn’t failure—it’s education. Now you know what it feels like when someone really applies a technique with full intention. Now you have a reference point for what “effective” actually means. The test continued. Other students faced Vilaire Sensei. Henem Sensei got the finger-to-forehead treatment— Vilaire put his index finger on Henem’s forehead and held him completely immobile. Henem couldn’t move forward, couldn’t go around, couldn’t do anything. He got frustrated. Screamed. Eventually Vilaire took him down, completed whatever technique he was demonstrating. Then Guadalupe’s turn. “He was a big show-off,” Sastri Sensei recalled. Vilaire told him: Demonstrate defense against kicks. Kick once, defend once. Simple. “This guy comes in, throws a front kick and bends around, does a roundhouse kick.” Two kicks. He was supposed to throw one. He threw two—trying to show off, trying to make Sastri Sensei look bad. “I got pissed. I was not a novice when it comes to fighting. I was so angry, I went and punched him out. I stopped and said, ‘Oh, let me see what happens.’ Now, I shouldn’t have done that but I’ll be damned, this guy was

The Frontier Okuden - Book 1 - Hands that Carried the Flame