Finding a Teacher...

I read Pat's post on his blog about my response to Jory-san the other day. I think Jory-san was just interested in my particular reasons for picking Fugakukai, and for me to clarify what I was typing because it could've been stated better :) Since Pat's put in his two cents about what brings people to different places, I felt I should elaborate on how I got where I am. I didn't just fall into as I said. I'd actually forgotten how many other places of martial arts I'd looked at until I ended up where I am. As Andy can attest to, I tried Seibukan, a form of Okinawan Karate, for a brief time. Although Sensei Bill-Jack was an outstanding teacher, the art itself didn't "feel" right for me. I didn't "ride the waves", I wanted "THE WAVE". Me and Andy (who I enlisted in my quest for the metaphorical wave) once drove 4 hours to an Aikido dojo to look at it. They taught Aikido, which I wanted to learn, Iaido which he wanted to learn, and the dues were relatively cheap...which we both thought was a plus. I asked the teacher how sparring worked in Aikido (knowing it was a loaded question because I was wondering how he'd react), he sternly looked at me and said there was no sparring but delivered it in such a way that he was almost admonishing me for asking a question that a student who'd never seen Aikido before would ask, so I left. Before my tangent continues, the point I'm getting to is to make sure that anyone reading this doesn't just go to a dojo and stick with something that doesn't click with them until something better comes along, sometimes you have to go out and find it. I looked for a while until my friend from high school told me he knew someone that took it. So in a way I did fall into Fugakukai because I didn't seek out Bryce to point the way to Pat so I could learn...but I wasn't aimlessly going from place to place either. You'll know when you find a good teacher and when you meet the martial art that's for you. That being said, a lot of places are getting more and more commercialized so make sure the aim is in teaching you a martial art, not selling a bunch of t-shirts and trophies. Find out the style of a school and research the history of it and make sure the person teaching you knows a little about it...you'd be surprised at the results sometimes.