KJN Giacobbe in Cornwall!

This last weekend was spent entertaining a very important guest who had come all the way from New Jersey to see us in Cornwall Last October four of us from ISK travelled up to Bedford to attend a seminar taught by Grandmaster Giacobbe which we greatly enjoyed and I’m sure is mentioned in more detail somewhere in this blog. We must have made an impression for the KJN offered to come and teach us down in Cornwall and although it was a bit of a nerve-wracking week trying to organise everything so it was all perfect for the Grandmaster’s visit, it turned out to be a fantastic success.

KJN arrived from Wales on Friday night and the next morning a small group of us took him around Falmouth, visiting Pendennis Castle (which was new for me as well) and then going for a quick lunch on the harbour. Luckily it was the most beautiful day so we got to show off Cornwall at its best! After lunch we whizzed over to the Dojang for our three hour seminar which was both hard work and a great lesson in the history and spirituality of Tang Soo Do. After a little work on basic line work and a loose warm up and stretch we worked on the Pyung Ahn forms which was great for me as my next grading form will be Pyung Ahn Sa Dan and I’ll possibly be competing with the 5th one in America so it was very good to get the opinion of an 8th dan on them! We then worked on Bassai Sho, one of the hidden forms that he had taught at the last seminar, which I’d been practising occasionally so still vaguely remembered. The form is a lesser relation of Bassai Dai, and is not widely known outside of Korea so it was a great honour to be taught it by the KJN. After splitting off and practising the form for a bit we then came back together to work on something called Ti Ji Ne bo (excuse spelling please!) which are a set of nine military yoga forms which were taught to soldiers in…oh dear it was either Korea or China, memory fails me!! Will have to check back on that Anyway, these forms are only 8 or 9 moves in each direction, moving on a single line with the focus on perfecting each stance and moving fluently between each one. The forms revolve around the philosophy of Um and Yang. Tang Soo Do is essentially an aggressive art – we learn how to kick, punch, etc etc and sometimes neglect the softer and more passive side of learning a martial art. These yoga-style forms aim to counterbalance this aggression and allow the mind and body to relax. Having said that, the forms were incredibly tiring! Holding very low stances for ten or fifteen seconds is exhausting and builds up a serious amount of lactic acid in the thigh muscles. The seminar was absolutely brilliant and the KJN will hopefully come and visit us again later in the year.

That evening after a quick rush home for a shower and change we were off out again, this time for dinner in Truro at a little Chinese restaurant which none of us had been to before. This was something of a mistake as the service was pretty awful and the waitress didn’t seem to know that there was more to wine than red or white. However the food was good and the company was awesome Grandmaster Giacobbe was full of interesting anecdotes and was eager to recount stories from his journey in Tang Soo Do. Like the first time we met him, he again came across as a very energetic and honourable person who I have been very honoured to meet and learn from.

Tang Soo!

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