Administrative Director

Parnee Poet

Another year is turning, after six years and part of the AWMAI inception, Melanie handed her responsibilities to the ever capable and thoughtful Amelia. 

At AWMAI 2024, we learned from each other and continue to reflect on our time together and what AWMAI means to us. 

As I've said before, we are a part of our rich her-story and their-story of self defense and martial arts.  We hope you join us for our twenty fifth anniversary celebration and help enrich our legacy together.  I am grateful for all the teachers and siblings that have shaped our time and lessons, the ones I never met, the ones that I met through you and all your wisdom. 

Thank you so much to Tih Penhil for taking photographs to remember these powerful moments.

To twenty five more years stronger together!

Gratitude and Healing from AWMAI 2024

Jaye Spiro

Being at the AWMAI 2024 Conference was healing for me and many of us. We have all suffered and now we arise, healing from conflict. During our three days together, we experienced rejuvenation of our spirits. I felt this in myself and witnessed it in others. I am grateful to have received and participated in the acknowledgement of our collective value and the celebration of our varied and stunning accomplishments.  

I am grateful to Jennie Trower and the AWMAI board for creating a space for us to come together to feel the joy that is within us for martial arts and teaching. We are connected with a rare and common ethics which guide our work in creating for a more peaceful, fair, strong, beautiful and safe world.

The instructors from Mejishi performed an anti-war piece for the conference demo this year. The back story is that for me, as a Jew, I am especially moved to stand up against violence of all forms. Those of us with decades of martial arts experience remember our early roots in the anti-war movement. My generation - the elders from the 60's - were connected with many movements.  We stood up against racism, xenophobia, sexism and homophobia. But with the horrors of the Israeli-Hamas war recently - I felt such despair.  One day, when I was feeling hopeless, I looked at Mejishi,  the small school I founded 45 years ago in Detroit. I saw Arab students training with Jewish students, and African American and Caucasians practicing our arts together. I realized that we have to keep doing this in Detroit where the pain of racism is so deep. The scars  of Anti-semitism and Islamophobia are gaping wounds in our community.  We must continue building places where Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus and people of very different racial and ethnic backgrounds can build authentic relationships. 

Strengthened by the AWMAI conference, we went home to places far and wide feeling energized.  We are refreshed and determined to continue to bring the spirit of healing through martial arts practice into the world.

Spirit of Collaboration

Janet Aalfs

The recent AWMAI conference offered multi-layered gifts.  What an honor and a pleasure it was to share my work, to learn from so many wonderful instructors and practitioners, to receive a Hall of Fame award, to celebrate the shining group of awardees including our beloved Grandmaster Wen Mei Yu, and to feel everyone's generous energy.  My gratitude is vast.

For me, this event was a beautiful and skillful weaving of three core principles (from the Latin cor meaning heart) that our many diverse movement languages include:

• Healing – awakening compassion for individual and collective suffering;

• Creative expression – being more honestly and genuinely oneself while appreciating other unique selves;

• Protection – expanding and deepening overall awareness and life-sustaining skills of all kinds.

Martial arts has "art" in it twice.  Although martial is associated with the god of war, Mars is recognized through ancient roots as a deity of agriculture, fertility, abundance, and the underground.  Martial arts = abundant creative energy = the fabulous AWMAI Board who promoted an
atmosphere of collaboration, support, inclusion, and openhearted learning from initial introductions all the way through to the closing, and beyond.

This Poemotion© piece I performed during the class I taught, “Connecting Martial Arts Systems,” expresses my appreciation of the many ways and methods we share through intertwining roots*:

I fell
because of wisdom,
but was not destroyed:
through her I dived
into the great sea,
and in those depths
I seized
a wealth-bestowing pearl.

(excerpt) Makeda, Queen of Sheba, Ethiopia, ca. 1000 B.C.E.
From Women in Praise of the Sacred, edited by Jane Hirshfield.

Follow the natural
Flow, that which comes from within;
As the lotus flowering rises
Above the mud of the river pool –
Vast, vast, vast is Divine Wisdom.

Line 1: Jian Mei Internal Martial Arts
Line 2: Filipino Modern Arnis
Lines 3-5: Shuri-ryu Okinawan Karate

Shinshii Janet E. Aalfs is founder and director of Lotus Peace Arts at Heron's Bridge/ Valley Women's Martial Arts in Easthampton, MA, a not-for-profit community school since 1977.  She has been sharing her work locally, nationally, and internationally for more than 45 years.  Poemotion© is the name Janet has given to the weavings of poetry and movement arts that she enjoys creating and performing.
www.heronsbridge.org

*For more information about skills for cultural exchange: “Lotus Peace Arts: Cultural Exchange Through Martial Arts Roots,” compiled by Shinshii Janet Aalfs from “101 Skills That Will Open Doors to Effective Self-Defense Education Across Cultures,” created by a diverse panel of violence-prevention
and peace-building educators at the annual Self Defense Instructors Conference (2007 and 2008). Panel members: Darlene DeFour, Michele Elefante, Janet Gee, Zosia Gorbaty, Lynette Oliver, Lauren Wheeler, and Sarah Trembath, panel facilitator.

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