Dear all
I trust you, your family and students are in good health. We are passing a difficult time in our history. Unfortunately, we lost many lives in this period. This pandemic resulted in the loss of jobs, disruption in education and affected our lives in general. It has shown us we all face challenges despite differences.
We all had to temporarily close our dojos due to this issue. Now, I am happy we can finally resume our dojos after this difficult time. It is important that we follow advice from the World Health Organsation and government rules to prevent this virus from further spreading and to keep ourselves and students safe. I hope Dojos that have not already resumed will be able to open soon.
One thing we learned from this is that we must continue our self-training no matter what the situation is. Certain training such as Kumite will be missed but we can improve other valuable training such as Kihon, Ido and Kata at this time. There is one thing we must keep in mind. That is, the hardest fight you will ever do is within yourself. This period made us remember that this is true and how important this is.
Just like many of you, I was able to do virtual training via Zoom to many of our members around the world. The first training was hosted by the Moscow branch as an international virtual training session. Also, we were able to hold a training session for our members from Asian countries. As many people requested, I was finally able to upload all Kyokushin Kata from Taikoku to Sushio on YouTube. The next plan is to start working on an official KBKS DVD. I was delighted to see our instructors from some countries organising various activities. It was lovely to see our members from India who organised a virtual Kata tournament, a wonderful two-week summer camp by the Russian branch and a mini Kata tournament organised by the England branch.
Hopefully, in the future, we will be able to carry on with our work and organise important events together such as seminars, tournaments and dan examination. I will let you know about upcoming plans in the course of time.
I thank all of you for keeping Kyokushin Karate alive and for working continually. It has touched and brought value to the lives of many. We will get through this situation and we will persevere. Please keep you and your families safe.
Osu!
Yours sincerely,
Shihan Prasanna Fernando
President
Kyokushin Budo Karate Shakai International Honbu
United Kingdom
Dated on: 12-09-2020
