What does NinjaEveryDay mean?

When you think of the word “ninja” it can bring several images to mind, most specifically a black clad espionage agent from feudal Japan. But if you see the word ninja in marketing today it routinely is used to describe something that’s fast, powerful, stealthy, with a superhero like quality. NinjaEveryDay has become the name for my pursuit of being more and more centered, powerful, intelligent, authentic, more capable every day.

In Japanese philosophy there is a term “tatsujin” that means “one who has reached “full actualization””, or one who has unleashed his or her potential. Another Japanese philosophical pursuit is “kaizen” and that means “constant improvement”, or striving to be a little bit better every day. So, NinjaEveryDay has become the word or concept that I used to describe my “kaizen” practice directed towards becoming the “tatsujin” or the fully actualized person.

There are several ways that I choose to push my personal development. Martial arts practice, the pursuit of increased physical capacity through fitness, meditation & mindfulness, wilderness skills & woodsmanship, and marksmanship.

The martial arts have been a pursuit of mine for most of my life and professionally for the last 20 years. I spend most of my training time practicing To-Shin Do (a modern approach to the tactics used by one of the ninja families of Japan) but I’ve also spent significant time on Jiu-Jitsu, and a few years training in and fighting in Mixed Martial Arts. Martial arts have always fascinated me and been a focus of mine and I’m lucky enough to have been able to make it a career. Way more than a business, running the Chapel Hill Quest Martial Arts dojo has been like being the caretaker of a temple. The “ideal” and idea of passing on ancient warrior arts have pushed me to try to be the best that I can be. Also, being the representative of my art in my area, I’ve wanted to represent it well. That drive to uphold the dignity of the art and to represent it well motivated me to focus on developing the best technique that I could, and I’m still trying to hone my craft. Along with the technique development I saw the need to enhance my physical attributes. In Jiu-Jitsu and MMA competitions we competed against opponents of the same size and similar experience levels, so physical attributes routinely made the difference as to who came out victorious.

Fitness development started as a way for me to augment my martial arts practice but quickly became a discipline in-and-of itself. I wanted to have power and strength enough to overwhelm my opponent, I wanted the speed and stamina to push a pace that my opponent couldn’t keep up with, and I wanted mobility and flexibility enough to do things that my opponents just couldn’t do. After some time the fitness training became a personal test and opportunity to challenge myself. As a practice the training began to develop and bring about my innate capabilities such as physical strength, speed, stamina, mental discipline, toughness, follow through, time management, the pursuit of new knowledge, and even organizational abilities. As I developed and gained momentum I wanted to learn more to have even more of an edge. It’s cliche to describe something as “95% mental” but I kept hearing and reading that from all of the masters and champions that I studied. So naturally, martial arts and fitness development pursuits led me to Meditation.

Meditation and mindfulness practice started as another part of my martial arts training that eventually expanded into a practice in and of itself. Developing my focus, calm under pressure, and learning about different meditation practices from around the world, and increasing my knowledge different meditation techniques for visualization and goal-setting and even ones that help to carry over into fitness training have become part of what I would call broadly my meditation practice. This sort of exploration in mental enhancement as permeated into all of my other pursuits.

Wilderness skills as a practice, again started because of my particular choice in martial arts. Ninjutsu has an emphasis on personal preparedness and the ability to be self reliant. Also being “in touch” with nature is very integrated into the ninja mindset. I’ve enjoyed testing myself in uncomfortable situations and utilizing nature immersion as a meditation practice “booster”. Learning survival skills like fire building, shelter construction, water purification, and navigation, have increased my feeling of the ability to rely on myself and again have become an overall practice that I’m just going to call wilderness skills. There is a saying that is popular in “survival” communities, “The more that you know the less that you have to carry”. This transition to carrying less gear has sparked an interest in minimizing the material things that I hang on to, though I have a long way to go to be considered a minimalist. This reduction in clutter also has the effect of enhanced mental clarity. My exploration into wilderness skills led me to hunting and fishing, which led me to pay attention to preparing wild game meat, which led me to pay attention to nutrition which brought me back to the practice of increasing my health and vitality.

My classical martial arts practice led me to explore modern self-defense and self protection strategies. To be a complete martial artist I believe that you should have some familiarization with modern weaponry which in turn led me to develop handgun and rifle marksmanship skills. Initially I shot occasionally but when I injured my knee and had to have surgical repair I was unable to train hand-to-hand techniques to the degree that I wanted I really started to shoot much more. I found that marksmanship required a “stripping away” of unnecessary movements to be more efficient and a “clearing of the mind” to be more accurate, both which mirrored the meditation goals congruent with my mindfulness practices. Wanting to expand on this “action meditation” and to have something that I could do with my wife and do at my home I begin to explore archery. The single minded focus to hit the target with my bow quickly became one of my favorite meditation practices, which brings us back to hunting, nutrition, and woodsmanship.

So what may seem to be a very wide range of topics all comes back to the idea of how can I be more ninja every day. I hope you choose to join me on this journey as we explore methods to improve ourselves, make ourselves stronger, more capable, more fearless, more self-reliant, and better protectors and community members.

Ninja Every Day