December 31st, 2013

From Kyoshi Sal Scaglione Shichi Dan
Denshi/Shihan Ueshiro NoVA Karate Club

Kata Resolution

Happy New Year’s greetings to all SRKUSA Deshi across the globe. Our Hong Kong Club is now celebrating the New Year, soon our Isreali brothers and sisters will follow and then we'll all fall in line for a great year ahead. This is a great time of the year for us all, a time to reflect on the past and build upon our life’s lessons for the year(s) ahead. Oftentimes many of us develop goals and challenges for the upcoming year, capturing them as resolutions. While thinking about the topic for this TOTW, I went back into the archives and came across a TOTW from 3 years ago from Sensei Kazmi, one of my black belts in the Ueshiro NoVA Karate Club. It also was written at this time of the year and had a great thought he heard during one of his visits to Hombu Dojo from Kyoshi Mackay who stated that no matter what the situation we were about to face was, be it New Year’s, a wedding, a birthday, a big exam, applying for a new job, we should all do Kata.

This thought was again discussed at length by Hanshi Scaglione at the Black Belt weekend a few weeks ago. Hanshi noted that Master Ueshiro would say that all Deshi should do 10 reps of their favorite Kata and in fact that this was something Hanshi practices as well. As Black Belt weekend closed, Kyoshi Seeger challenged all of us to adhere to this training routine.

Developing resolutions has been a tradition in the Scaglione household since I was a child. Hanshi would collect and save all of them to review over the coming years. He still has many that were created in the 70’s & 80’s and I believe he’s still writing down his each year. Sadly, I don’t recall ever addressing doing more Kata in any of those old resolutions, but I am doing it this year. Just one resolution, the only one I’ll need to have, and that is to perform 10 Passai a day. Whatever else I hope to accomplish in 2014 will come about as the result of the one thing I most need to focus on all year, doing 10 Passai per day, every day.

The message is quite clear and we do not need 1 Jan to put this resolution into play. Following the example of Master Ueshiro and Hanshi Scaglione, our leaders have encouraged us to make Kata a part of our daily routine. As Master Ueshiro stated, “executing 10 of the same Kata daily all of the other Kata will fall into place and improve as well the Kata being done daily.” I’d venture to say that the rest of your life will benefit as well.

Domo Arigato,
Kyoshi Sal Scaglione
Shichi Dan
Denshi/Shihan
Ueshiro NoVA Karate Club