Naming of the School

In naming the ryu great care was taken to choose words which had the appropriate meaning to convey the nature of the system.

	SEI SHIN - Seishin, means many things: Cultivation of the mind, putting ones heart and soul into the effort, sincerely devoting ones self, mentally, physically, spiritually and morally to your art. There are two sayings related to Seishin which reinforces this ideology. "Seishin Tanren," Forging the Spirit, man's attempt for perfection. Cultivation of the mind, putting ones heart and soul into all endeavours, sincerely devoting ones self, physically, mentally, spiritually and morally to your art. "Osu No Seishin," a shortening becomes, Osu. This derives from Oshishinobu, which means to persevere while under pressure therefore we see strength of character development through hard training. In other words our motivation to train should not be simply to gain physical strength in order to dominate others and feed our egos but to keep an open mind, to learn and grow, so that we may become a better person.
	MIZU - Water, a simple substance which makes up the majority all living things. It exists in 3 states which given the correct conditions are freely interchangeable and flowing. In nature it is one of the softest things in the world but has the ability to penetrate rock.
	RYU - A Ryū (流, literally "flow", with the derived meaning of "mainstream"), or ryūha (流派, literally "mainstream school (of thought)"), is a Japanese word referring to a school of thought in any discipline. In English, the word is frequently used to refer to schools of Japanese Martial Arts. In the original Japanese, ryū and ryūha are synonymous, with ha (originally meaning "tributary") being a smaller division than ryū (originally meaning "body of water"). Ryū is also often translated as "style" (style of martial art, style of calligraphy, style of flower arranging or tea ceremony, etc.). Therefore our ryu embodies a flow of everything which makes up our art from the source passing through all our students and onto their students and so on thus again linking with the water imagery.
	TATAKAI - Appertaining to war, battle and the battlefield.
	JUTSU - Jutsu was chosen because it is the correct romanised pronunciation of the kanji which mean technique/art which sums up the nature of the system. Commomly in the west this has been mis pronounced as jitsu (実) however this is a romanisation of a different kanji the one meaning “truth/honesty”. (In English we pronounce the romanised spelling "jutsu" as "Juht-zoo". However, the Japanese pronounce this same romanisation as "jewtz" [almost a "jitz" with a soft "i" sound]. Sometimes they even vocalise the "almost-silent" ~u ending. When hearing the proper Japanese pronunciation complete with the vocalized ~u ending, "jutsu" sounds like "jitsu" to the western ear. Therefore, early romanization was "jitsu. The kanji for "truth" is romanized as "jitsu". Again, to the western ear, it looks the same as described above. However, when you hear a Japanese read this kanji and romanization, it will sound like "jee-tzu" [a long "e" sound]. So when you hear a Japanese say, "Jitsu wa ..." he/she is saying, "in actuality/truthfully/honestly speaking..." .)

Japanese like all languages, names, words and phrases can have several phonetic meanings but this is what they mean to practioners of our tradition.

精神.水流戦術 - Mind Water Flowing Strategy

If you want to verify the translation of our style, then you can use Babel Fish, the well known Internet Translation Tool. Simply follow the steps below:

1. High-light the kanji above and 'Copy' it.
2. Go to the Babel Fish website at http://babelfish.altavista.com/.
3. Paste, the kanji into the main textbox.
4. In the dropdown box, select "Japanese to English".
5. Click the "Translate" button.

At the time of writing, Babel Fish translates this to "Mind Water-flow strategy".

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