Activities in Panama

I visited Panama for 2 weeks to educate the members of the Martial Arts Organization  known as “Hisao Lee,” under the leadership of Soke Fabio Perez about TIMD. Hisao Lee has 15 schools which group together the largest number of black belts in Latin America. The total number of students is around 3000 and they have around 200 instructors.  

Background of Hisao Lee

Maestro Fabio was only 8 years old when he began his organization. He wanted to find a way to teach other children the values that their parents were not teaching them. There are so many broken families in his poor neighborhood that most children got influenced by the negative values of their friends “in the street.” From the first moment that he saw somebody doing martial arts, he knew that teaching the martial arts as a discipline was the best way to teach young people values. Teaching martial arts is secondary to him, because his main focus is to teach values. Next year he will celebrate their 40th anniversary and about 100,000 young people have been connected to them and had their hearts touched by his excellent organization. Counting the family members influenced by Hisao Lee, the population affected is much larger. During the past 39 years, Maestro Fabio has been very careful about being open to different trains of philosophical and religious thinking, he is an unusual evangelical Christian. Very humble. This enabled them to listen to the teachings of Dr. Sun Myung Moon, whose thought is the inspiration behind Tong Il Moo Do, and whose leader and founder is Grand Master Dr. Joon Ho Seuk.   

History of TIMD and Hisao Lee

In 2006, Master Fabio began connecting with TIMD, when he responded to our invitation and participated in Martial Arts for Peace Tournament in the Philippines. There he understood the essence of our style and felt strongly that he must share it with his top instructors. Although open to different types of thinking, Hisao Lee had always maintained a very strict policy to never mix their style with any other style. Students and instructors were not even allowed to watch videos of other styles or to read martial arts magazines. So this was a huge change in policy and it has not been easy for them to open up. Since 2006 until now we have been sharing with them and teaching them TIMD.  

Recent Activities

During these 14 days in Panama, I have been teaching their top leaders the IEF Values and explaining Unification Philosophy during the mornings and some evenings and giving TIMD classes and filming during most evenings. On the last night before my departure, we met to talk about our future relationship. I provided all their top people with a complete DVD of videos that included all the TIMD techniques, as well as the TIMD Philosophy Manual, videos of all the forms, the Chung Hyo, applications of the Pyung Hwa Eui Bong and the Cham Sarang Eui Bong, all made especially for them. At this meeting with their top leaders, they asked to go together, the TIMD website as a group. After viewing the video tapes and exploring the website completely, at the end of our meeting,  they expressed their formal decision to affiliate themselves with TIMD International.    

Conclusion

Master Fabio Perez is very inspired by TIMD International and is eager to educate all the other Martial Arts schools in Panama about the values expressed in and through the IEF materials.  He will mobilize his members to organize Tournaments and Events related to do this and he has already created the Panamanian Federation of Martial Arts and Self Defense in anticipation of teaching the IEF Values lectures to all the other martial arts schools. For several years, we have been sharing with him Dr. Moon’s concern that without formal and constant training in sound values, martial arts students and instructors can easily be invaded by bad values and materialistic thinking, things that that are the opposite of traditional martial arts values. He is already seeing the drug dealers trying to invade martial arts in Panama, using martial arts schools to launder money and recruit people for their organizations.  

Special Request

Shortly before we finished filming, Maestro Fabio asked that we make a special video of the “The heart of Warrior Form” of Hisao Lee which has a profound internal meaning (*). I would appreciate it very much if we could put this form on our TIMD International web site so that Hisao Lee members can feel that they have contributed to World Peace and are a recognized part of our international organization.  

Final Note 

Finally I would like to thank deeply Dr. Regis Hanna and Mrs. Nancy Hanna as well as Mr. Toribio and Mrs. Angela de Lora who untiringly supported our efforts and made all of this possible.  

I had the opportunity to meet Dr Joon Ho Seuk this year and I felt his great heart of love towards all the instructors around the world, so I can only be thankful for everything he has been doing for TIMD and martial arts around the world.    

Meaning of THE HEART OF WARRIOR FORM

1) Harmony with everything that surrounds us

2) At service of God

3) Man and the four cardinal points

4) Purifying earth and wind

5) Guard positions of a warrior

6) The dawn of a warrior

7) Giving heart and receiving virtue

8) Control of the three elements (earth-water-wind)