7 days Tong-Il Moo-Do Workshop in Japan

The 5th TIMD Workshop in Japan was held from Feb. 8th to 15th at Tsuchiura training center in Japan with 17 participants including 8 black belts from Japan and Philippine. Founder Dr. Seuk's inspiring and encouraging message was read during the opening ceremony, and it made us have the determination to challenge our limitation.

We focused upon the preparation for the tournament this October in USA, and starting TIMD club on one of the college campus.

The daily schedule was divided into 3 sections; one is the lecture of TIMD philosophy for 1.5 ~2 hrs, another is TIMD training for about 7.5 hrs, and the other is discussion and report for 1 hr.

Most of them showed the deep interests in the lectures which covers character education, STD(Sexually Transmitted Disease), sexual revolution, marriage, family, and drugs because they never heard such lectures before.

Except one person, all of them passed the written test of the content of the lectures by scoring more than 70 points out of 100.

In TIMD training, early morning was spent for the breathing exercise, and circular movement, and late morning for practicing forms, afternoon for One Step Sparring and Free Sparring , and evening for Self Defense.

The team discussion was mainly on the lecture, training, how to teach TIMD after the workshop, and the life during the workshop.

There were such a beautiful dynamics of interaction between higher belts and lower belts. The advance students were so inspired and learned well by teaching selflessly white belts. The white belts received love and care from them. The quick improvement of white belts gave us great surprise, stimulation, hope, and moving experience.

One said, "During the practice I feel my heart is washed, and become straight. I feel my own thought disappear. And if I go further up, my original mind starts to feel joy."

Another said, "When I practice form, I feel my mind and body are united, and my mind is liberated. I heard, 'Because each form has deep meaning behind, practice of form is like prayer.' When I pray, the second thought often bothers me. But the practice of form makes me feel free from the second thought, and feel myself in deep prayer and emptying my own self."

The climax was each of 3 brown belts (2 of them were brown belt with black stripe) fighting 30 people (mainly Black belts) consecutively during the promotion test to challenge for Black belt. The free sparring during the test was the application of the tournament sparring system by executing all the techniques including choking and locking. Not only these brown belts, but also those who were fighting against them were so desperate to stimulate their fighting spirits to continue to fight. Seeing this, one female participant was moved to cry. At the end, all of us became one in heart. 2 of brown belts were in tears. They truly showed challenging and overcoming their limitation.

We were so grateful for the great support of Master James Paranada and Jr. and Master Rico Santos.