When you attend a seminar you do not expect to be evolving psychologically as well as technically. Somehow by pure chance, this is what this seminar has been offering his participants for the last 17 years.
Originally this seminar was created to thank my students for helping me organizing the first taikai in Paris with Hatsumi sensei. Rapidly with the increase of length (2×5 into 10 days) we discovered that people attending the Jupi Seminar Camp (JSC) were also improving a lot on the human level. I am not a psychologist, but I am a bujinkan shihan with more than 40 years in the field of teaching and training martial arts. Learning a fighting art which will only give you techniques to fight is useless as we will rarely have the chance to use our techniques in a life & death encounter.
Over the years the “chance” has been structured into a very efficient system that pulls everyone up on his own path and the Jupi Summer Camps are now well famed all over the world. Each JSC has a definite theme to lead us in our progression, this year the main theme is 流れ, “nagare“, the flow. It connects perfectly with the theme of the year “rokkon shôjô” as nagare is the key to happiness. In his book “flow” M. Csikszentmihalyi explains it clearly:
“when we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will beenjoyable. And once we havetasted this joy, we will redouble efforts to taste it again. This is the way the seld grows. (…) Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.”
This flow in our actions, movements, thoughts, and behavior will be our main focus during this week, to that effect we will develop three other important aspects: fundamental techniques of the bujinkan, tachi kumiuchi and rokkon shôjô.
As I explained on the home page, this is “helliday”. Even though the food is good there are a few drawbacks that can prevent you from attending:
- We sleep outdoor in a tent and a sleeping bag,
- We take cold showers (mandatory),
- We will train for 54 hours in 7 days (more than 7 hours a day),
- All common tasks are taken care of by all participants (washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc),
- Nights are cold and days are terribly hot (or rainy),
- After a few days your body and your brain are so tired that you behave like a ghost,
- and worse of all you will face your true self for the first time in your life.
Each day of the week begins with a jogging around 6am and ends with the writing of your personal feeling about the day in the jupilog.
On the last day all jupilogs are put into one single file and given to all participants. The reading of these logs is always amazing after a few months have passed.
reach your limits
The secret of martial arts is not technical it is within ourselves. This seminar if you decide to attend to it, will change you in a better way. Last thing, everyone from beginner to shihan cries at some point during the seminar, this is normal and healthy.
Until last year only black belts were accepted. This year the Jupi Summer Camp is open to anyone with a minimum of 1 year of training in the bujinkan.
So, this is a real chance to participate but the size of the group is limited to only 24 participants this year.
So, are you really ready to join?
