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Traditional Kosho Shorei Ryu Kempo
This 775-year-old Japanese warrior monk lineage art teaches the Principles of Natural Law, for personal combat arts and self-cultivation. Traditional Kempo has highly-effective strikes, joint-locks, pins, throws, and weapons techniques, including swordsmanship, staff- and short stick arts. It applies very effectively to modern self-defense armed with handguns, shotguns, and all edged weapons, and against attackers with these weapons as well. Law-enforcement officers in particular find traditional kempo’s natural, easy-to-retain training highly effective for self-defense and arresting techniques. For personal self-defense and CQC military application, it offers much, especially versus multiple opponents.
Sensei David LoPriore, Headmaster of Kosho Shorei Shin Kai, is the protector of this twenty three-generation-old lineage of authentic traditional teachings. He is the only physician-level practitioner of the healing arts of this lineage, and is a Licensed Acupuncturist in Connecticut. Accordingly, one of his specialties is Kyusho-Jutsu, the highly-effective art of pressure-point fighting which can knock out or subdue an attacker in seconds with seemingly effortless internal Ki power. Another is the self-cultivation that is a product of the meditation, philosophy, and internal energy-empowering exercises of Kosho Shorei Ryu. This produces the calm, single-minded focus, vitality, and warrior-spirit that the Sohei -Japanese warrior monks- have been known for over the centuries. Kosho Shorei Ryu students focus on the traditional kempo martial arts, but are also encouraged to have a wider, more holistic view of what 21st generation Headmaster James Mitose called True Self Defense: embodied Wisdom and Skillful Means.
Daito Ryu Aiki-jujutsu Kodo Kai
Daito Ryu is believed to have originated within the family of Japanese Emperor Seiwa (who reigned A.D. 858-876) and to have been greatly developed by one of the emperor’s Samurai warrior descendants, Shinra Saburo Minamoto no Yoshimitsu, in the eleventh century. Yoshimitsu Sensei used battlefields and execution grounds to examine the bodies of the dead and executed criminals to determine which were the most effective strikes, throws, holds, joint locks, and pins. To appreciate the mysteries of high-level Aiki, harmonized energy, Yoshimitsu spent hours observing a spider trapping prey in her web. The Daito Ryu Aiki-Jujutsu tradition of Yoshimitsu was subsequently handed down in complete secrecy to successive generations of the highest-caliber samurai warriors of the Minamoto/Takeda clan, until the fall of the Shogunate in 1868.
It was not until the nineteenth century when old-school samurai and martial art genius Sokaku Takeda Sensei began to teach the Daito Ryu to the public that the art became widely known. Through Takeda Sensei’s teachings, this 1200-year-old art has become the father of many martial arts in existence today, including Aikido, which was founded by his student Morihei Ueshiba O-sensei. Sokaku’s most skilled student was Horikawa Kodo, who was made a Meijin, “Living National Treasure” for his skillful abilities and teachings of Aiki techniques.
At Bushidokai Traditional Martial Arts in East Lyme, David LoPriore Sensei heads up a study group, formally recognized by the Kodo Kai Headquarters Dojo in Japan, under the direction of his teacher, Roy Goldberg Shingen (a name given to him by Inoue Sensei, the Daito Ryu Menkyo Kaiden when he was given his Hiden Mokuroku teaching license scroll), and his teacher, Hawayo Kiyama Shihan, the most senior Daito Ryu teacher outside of Japan. Daito Ryu training consists of joint locks, throws, pins and the highest-level Aiki techniques, which are the emphasis of Kodo Kai.
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The Arts of War 
