Shorin Ryu karate

[SaiFightsMS]

i live in seattle, washington right now.. and i have a very strong interest in practicing shorin-ryu in a combat focused manner. however the art in question does not seem to have much popularity over here. i was just wondering how all of you that practice shorin-ryu wound up founding your teachers [is there some city or state that is a meca of shorin-ryu practitioners because up until i moved to seattle i had never even heard of it before].

 

I was fortunate to find my first instructor at a local YMCA.

 

There is also a group at a nearby university.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Is Kobayashi Ryu the Itosu or Matsumura lineage?

 

We (Seibulkan) are the Kyan lineage, and Matsubayashi seems to be acombination of the Kyan asn Itosu lineages.

 

Does your Chinto have the one-legged stances like Shotokan's Gankaku, or the "t" stances like the Kyan Chinto?

 

The Kobayashi lineage goes from Sokon Matsumura to Itosu to Chibana to its current head Nakazato.

 

Not sure exactly what you mean about Chinto, (I haven't seen it performed by other styles) but near the end, we do go through the sequence where we go up on one leg, the other leg raised and the foot placed behind the knee. The hand that is on the same side as the raised foot goes over the knee and the other hand is pulled up and into a fist...Sorry I couldn't explain that very well...

[SaiFightsMS]

Sounds like a low block in a crane stance to me.

[Shorin Ryuu]

The way my instructor explained it to me is that its actually a leg grab with the leg that is raised. The hand over the knee could probably be a block, but its probably a grab because of the next movement where the hands chamber to the side. Thats my interpretation, anyway.

 

Thats the great thing about kata, it could mean so many things

[Shorin Ryuu]

All the empty hand kata we have:

 

Naihanchi I-III

 

Pinan I-V

 

Passai Sho

 

Passai Dai (In some other styles, called Bassai)

 

Chinto (in some other styles, called Gankaku)

 

Kusanku Sho

 

Gorin

 

Kusanku Dai (In some other styles, the kusanku are called kwanku)

 

Gojushiho (Some styles call it useishi)

 

I don't know gojushiho yet, its a nidan form in my system

 

Update on this one...I learned gojushiho today...

 

I noticed we do it a little different than other styles in a couple of parts of the kata though

[hobbitbob]

Do you guys do the "drunken" steps?

[Shorin Ryuu]

Not really. I'm assuming you're talking about those ones to the sides. I saw some other style do Gojushiho somewhere on the internet and I saw them take those big drunken steps out to the side. I also saw a video of the head of our style do it and its really downplayed, but you can see it if you know what to look for. Plus his rhythm is a lot different than when you look at him do the other kata. I asked my instructor about it and he says we really don't emphasize it that much in Shorin Ryu. But you can tell there's a definite Naha influence there. I think it was simply borrowed from Goju Ryu (or at least from somewhere in Naha)early on in the development of Shorin Ryu , so throughout the years it has been changed a little.