seido karate - Barbara Ravage

32
PRIMETIMECAPE COD
NOVEMBER 2008
HEALTH & WELL-BEING
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32
SEIDO KARATE
The spirit of not quitting
Paula
Feinstein
(left) teaches seido
karate at
Orleans
Elementary
School.
Seido
karate is
the ideal
martial art
for those
50-plus. It
involves
a mindbody-spirit
emphasis
and slow
progression
through the
levels. What
it will bring
to your life,
as it did for
Paula, (in
addition to
fitness) is
a focused
determination to face
challenges
when they
arise.
Q6H'04RS6IQTU49(I'46V'FW8I0
“H
BY BARBARA RAVAGE
ave you always
wanted to study
karate but just
never got around
to it? Do you feel
like you’re too ‘old’ or ‘out of shape’
to start now?” Those questions will be
familiar to anyone who has perused
the Nauset Community Education
catalogue. The person asking them
holds a fifth-degree black belt in seido
karate, a Zen-based style that emphasizes “the training of body, mind, and
spirit together in order to realize the
fullness of human potential.” She also
happens to be a cancer survivor just
months away from her 65th birthday.
Paula Feinstein has been studying
martial arts for about 40 years, and
seido karate since 1974. Although she
took up karate as a way of defending
herself, it has become a way of life.
“When I first started thinking about
karate it was because I worked in the
really bad neighborhoods of New
York,” she recalls of her years as a
caseworker for the city’s welfare agency. “This white face went into a sea of
blackness, and I really felt afraid.”
Seido karate is a traditional Japanese
style founded by Kaicho [Master]
Tadashi Nakamura. A central tenet
is what he calls a “non-quitting”
spirit. “No matter what the obstacle
or difficulty – emotional, physical,
financial – we want students to feel
that, though they may be set back,
they will never be overcome by any of
these problems… This is the modern
interpretation of the bushido spirit of
the samurai.”
That spirit has helped Paula face
significant challenges in her life
– from raising a troubled little boy
who is now the father of two and
recently retired from the U.S. Navy as
a Chief Warrant Officer to making a
real difference within the New York
PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 33
City social services bureaucracy, and
battling her own cancer.
After graduating from Long Island
University, Paula worked as a production manager for McGraw-Hill Publishers and a statistician for American
Can Company. But the Bridgeport,
Connecticut native decided she
wanted more human contact. She
found it during a career that began
in 1968 as a caseworker in what was
then the city welfare system. By the
time she retired in 2002, she was
associate commissioner for childcare
in the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. In the
years between, she used her master’s
degree in resources management to
help establish 100 child care centers,
run a district office, and her proudest achievement, direct an eight-year
project to implement the first electronic imaging project to reconcile the
accounts for the entire social service
delivery system in NYC.
But the work took its toll, especially
after September 11, 2001. Her office
was near Ground Zero, and she knew
a number of people who died in the
World Trade Center. “I think September 11 made a lot of people rethink
what the heck they were doing. It
changed my perception in every way,”
she says. Despite the insistence of
environmental protection authorities
that air quality was acceptable, many
of her colleagues suffered breathing problems and pneumonia. “They
kept saying, ‘No no, the air is fine.’
But you’d have to be deaf, dumb, and
blind not to know the air was not
fine,” she says, adding that the city car
she drove from her home in Queens
would be covered with dust so thick
she couldn’t see the windshield by
day’s end.
In the midst of all that, Paula
learned she had endometrial cancer.
“The doctor said, ‘I have good news
and I have bad news. Which one do
you want first,’” she recalls. She opted
for the bad news, but when the doctor told her she had cancer, that’s all
Paula heard. “Her mouth kept moving,
but I thought, ‘I have to get out of
here,’ so I never heard that my cancer
had a very high rate of recovery. I was
incredibly lucky. If you have to have
cancer, that’s the one to have.”
After the initial shock, Paula swung
into action, proactively exploring
treatment options and making informed choices. “That’s something
karate has done for me. Every time I
face a crisis I get very, very deliberate,
very intensely focused. I go right into
the problem. I don’t see anything else.
I just get from point A to point B. It
works for me,” she says. When she was
younger, she describes herself as an
amoeba, shaped by whatever came at
her. Now she calls on her karate training for a different kind of self-defense.
“It’s much more self and much less
defense.”
Seido karate challenges the self both
mentally and physically. “As you get
older, your attention level goes, your
ability to concentrate goes, your balance goes,” says Kyoshi Paula, as her
students call her, using the Japanese
honorific for “teacher.” Stamina and
strength begin to wane as well. Seido
karate keeps you moving both physically and mentally, so you are able to
retain or even regain those abilities.
Much is made in fitness circles about
developing “core” strength. Seido
PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 34
33
Quickhits
WebLinks
!"#$%&'()*+)',-&.$/-&.
0-&1#'!)2)/-'#3'4)5-'4#1
62+-).$7'89':;<=>
http://capecodseido.com
-?@)&+A'B"#$%&5)*+)CD)5-D#1$-&1#E
D#@
F#'2-G&$/-2'3#2'D+)$$-$
H)*$-/'4#@@*.&/"'I1*D)/&#.
JK'I+12-1G-'()2BL)"
62+-).$7'89':;<=>
=:K?;==?M>::'
http://nausetcommunityed.org
F#'+-)2.'@#2-')N#*/'0-&1#'B)2)/O#2+1'0-&1#'!)2)/-'62G).&P)/&#.
web.seido.com
32
PRIMETIMECAPE COD
NOVEMBER 2008
HEALTH & WELL-BEING
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32
SEIDO KARATE
The spirit of not quitting
Paula
Feinstein
(left) teaches seido
karate at
Orleans
Elementary
School.
Seido
karate is
the ideal
martial art
for those
50-plus. It
involves
a mindbody-spirit
emphasis
and slow
progression
through the
levels. What
it will bring
to your life,
as it did for
Paula, (in
addition to
fitness) is
a focused
determination to face
challenges
when they
arise.
Q6H'04RS6IQTU49(I'46V'FW8I0
“H
BY BARBARA RAVAGE
ave you always
wanted to study
karate but just
never got around
to it? Do you feel
like you’re too ‘old’ or ‘out of shape’
to start now?” Those questions will be
familiar to anyone who has perused
the Nauset Community Education
catalogue. The person asking them
holds a fifth-degree black belt in seido
karate, a Zen-based style that emphasizes “the training of body, mind, and
spirit together in order to realize the
fullness of human potential.” She also
happens to be a cancer survivor just
months away from her 65th birthday.
Paula Feinstein has been studying
martial arts for about 40 years, and
seido karate since 1974. Although she
took up karate as a way of defending
herself, it has become a way of life.
“When I first started thinking about
karate it was because I worked in the
really bad neighborhoods of New
York,” she recalls of her years as a
caseworker for the city’s welfare agency. “This white face went into a sea of
blackness, and I really felt afraid.”
Seido karate is a traditional Japanese
style founded by Kaicho [Master]
Tadashi Nakamura. A central tenet
is what he calls a “non-quitting”
spirit. “No matter what the obstacle
or difficulty – emotional, physical,
financial – we want students to feel
that, though they may be set back,
they will never be overcome by any of
these problems… This is the modern
interpretation of the bushido spirit of
the samurai.”
That spirit has helped Paula face
significant challenges in her life
– from raising a troubled little boy
who is now the father of two and
recently retired from the U.S. Navy as
a Chief Warrant Officer to making a
real difference within the New York
PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 33
City social services bureaucracy, and
battling her own cancer.
After graduating from Long Island
University, Paula worked as a production manager for McGraw-Hill Publishers and a statistician for American
Can Company. But the Bridgeport,
Connecticut native decided she
wanted more human contact. She
found it during a career that began
in 1968 as a caseworker in what was
then the city welfare system. By the
time she retired in 2002, she was
associate commissioner for childcare
in the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. In the
years between, she used her master’s
degree in resources management to
help establish 100 child care centers,
run a district office, and her proudest achievement, direct an eight-year
project to implement the first electronic imaging project to reconcile the
accounts for the entire social service
delivery system in NYC.
But the work took its toll, especially
after September 11, 2001. Her office
was near Ground Zero, and she knew
a number of people who died in the
World Trade Center. “I think September 11 made a lot of people rethink
what the heck they were doing. It
changed my perception in every way,”
she says. Despite the insistence of
environmental protection authorities
that air quality was acceptable, many
of her colleagues suffered breathing problems and pneumonia. “They
kept saying, ‘No no, the air is fine.’
But you’d have to be deaf, dumb, and
blind not to know the air was not
fine,” she says, adding that the city car
she drove from her home in Queens
would be covered with dust so thick
she couldn’t see the windshield by
day’s end.
In the midst of all that, Paula
learned she had endometrial cancer.
“The doctor said, ‘I have good news
and I have bad news. Which one do
you want first,’” she recalls. She opted
for the bad news, but when the doctor told her she had cancer, that’s all
Paula heard. “Her mouth kept moving,
but I thought, ‘I have to get out of
here,’ so I never heard that my cancer
had a very high rate of recovery. I was
incredibly lucky. If you have to have
cancer, that’s the one to have.”
After the initial shock, Paula swung
into action, proactively exploring
treatment options and making informed choices. “That’s something
karate has done for me. Every time I
face a crisis I get very, very deliberate,
very intensely focused. I go right into
the problem. I don’t see anything else.
I just get from point A to point B. It
works for me,” she says. When she was
younger, she describes herself as an
amoeba, shaped by whatever came at
her. Now she calls on her karate training for a different kind of self-defense.
“It’s much more self and much less
defense.”
Seido karate challenges the self both
mentally and physically. “As you get
older, your attention level goes, your
ability to concentrate goes, your balance goes,” says Kyoshi Paula, as her
students call her, using the Japanese
honorific for “teacher.” Stamina and
strength begin to wane as well. Seido
karate keeps you moving both physically and mentally, so you are able to
retain or even regain those abilities.
Much is made in fitness circles about
developing “core” strength. Seido
PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 34
33
Quickhits
WebLinks
!"#$%&'()*+)',-&.$/-&.
0-&1#'!)2)/-'#3'4)5-'4#1
62+-).$7'89':;<=>
http://capecodseido.com
-?@)&+A'B"#$%&5)*+)CD)5-D#1$-&1#E
D#@
F#'2-G&$/-2'3#2'D+)$$-$
H)*$-/'4#@@*.&/"'I1*D)/&#.
JK'I+12-1G-'()2BL)"
62+-).$7'89':;<=>
=:K?;==?M>::'
http://nausetcommunityed.org
F#'+-)2.'@#2-')N#*/'0-&1#'B)2)/O#2+1'0-&1#'!)2)/-'62G).&P)/&#.
web.seido.com
34
PRIMETIMECAPE COD
NOVEMBER 2008
Karate
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directly from Paula, though she attributes it to the blessing of studying
with Kaicho Nakamura.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33
“I feel like I found a treasure. There
are two things you can do with a
karate is all about “core,” but it goes
treasure: You can lock it up or you can
far beyond the anatomical sense of
open it up and show it to everyone. I
the word.
choose to open it up. Everyone who
At the center of the practice are the wants it can get this treasure.”
katas, formal sets of movement comPaula and her partner Marilyn
bining blocks, strikes, and kicks in a
Greenberg have lived in Orleans fullsymbolic combat with an invisible op- time since 2003, but they had been
ponent. Mastering the katas requires
vacationing on the Cape for years.
concentration and coordination.
When they decided to make it their
Because they involve both mental and permanent home, they asked a friend
muscle memory, the body and mind
which town she’d recommend. The
support each other.
answer was Orleans because, their
As Paula explains it, kinesthetic
friend said, it has the best library on
memory plays a part, but because
the Cape. They can walk to the library
seido karate is Zen based, “There a
from their home. In fact, they can
consciousness that permeates every
walk or bike just about anywhere they
element of the study. You begin to
want. “It’s an adorget a sense of self
able town,” the exbecause you’re
New Yorker says.
watching yourself
“It’s really perfect
and you have to
That’s something karate for us.”
block everything
After years as a
has done for me. Every project
else out. It’s a very
manager for
meditative kind of
time I face a crisis I get clinical trials, Marithing. That’s why
lyn is now studying
very, very deliberate, clinical pastoral
it’s called Moving
Zen. Seido karate
very intensely focused. counseling. Both
pushes you to take
women are active
I go right into the
that moment,
in Am HaYam, the
to be aware of
Cape Cod Haproblem.
every element of
vurah, or Jewish
your being, and
fellowship. They
PAULA FEINSTEIN,
if your mind goes
love the year-round
SEIDO KARATE INSTRUCTOR
off somewhere,
life here, welcomyou call it back.” Every class includes
ing friends in the summer, partaking
meditation, which is equally imporof all the natural wonders the Cape
tant as the physical aspect.
has to offer. “But when everybody
Despite the challenges, seido karate
goes home it becomes our Cape again.
is very safe. “You don’t start off beatWe have to pinch ourselves someing each other up. That’s why I think
times,” Paula says. “This is our home.
an older person can do seido. It’s all
We live here.”
incremental, so by the time you have
some direct contact, you know your
About the author
body, you know your moves, you
Barbara Ravage moved to Cape Cod
know who you are,” Paula says.
from her native New York City in
Paula’s classes, which meet at Or2000, after the youngest of her children
leans Elementary and Nauset Middle
went off to college. She considers heavy
schools, depending on the season, are
doses of ocean air and Cape light the
made up of 6 to 12 people, from rank
best cure for empty-nest syndrome. A
beginners (white belts) through blue,
yellow, and green belts. Those who
graduate of Barnard College, she is the
stick with it are promoted over time.
author of nine books, including a biograAll students are adults, in a range of
phy of Rachel Carson for middle-school
ages, shapes, and sizes. What they
students and “Burn Unit: Saving Lives
have in common are the non-quitting
After the Flames,” which explores the
spirit and a commitment to challenghistory and science of burn treatment.
ing themselves while supporting each
She balances her writing life with yoga,
other. Paradoxically, for a traditional
karate, and pottery. After years of makmartial art that involves combat and
ing do with two summer weeks on the
competition, seido karate puts great
Cape, her favorite part about living here
emphasis on trust and respect, for self
is that she’s already home.
and others. That is a gift that comes
❞
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35