International Training Conference

 

This year’s conference was held July 26-28 at the Tinley Convention Center in Tinley Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Hundreds of participants from around the country gathered for a weekend of spiritual and physical training.

The Writing is on the Wall: Train to Improve, Empower and Survive

We wanted to provide what we would believe is necessary to give to the believers and those that are outside our community something that’s going to benefit them.

FLUFFY

 

Lessons from nature of how birds, animals and insects, know instinctively to respond and adjust accordingly to impending danger, except for domesticated dogs and cats.

Domesticated creatures have been fed and taken care of, so they have lost much of their natural instincts. I liken this analogy to the Black man and woman of America, who have been stripped of their name, language, culture and natural volition and have been robbed of the ability to provide for themselves.

We’ve been suffering now from arrested development because we are operating outside our nature. We have become domesticated. So, whenever the creature doesn’t have the ability to, instinctively tune in and interpret the writing on the wall and make adjustments when impending doom is coming, it becomes incumbent that someone outside of them is raised so that they can teach them and warn them about what is coming.

The importance of mindset was also emphasized as the first line of defense.

Don’t take this lightly that we’re having discussions, that you’re not learning security. Because if you want to run to the martial arts tomorrow to learn that special technique and your mind is not right, you’re going to get knocked out anyway. So, understand that the basis of all of our security training is getting our understanding right, our mind right, so that we can detect when there’s an enemy—I’m not necessarily just talking on the outside—I’m also talking on the inside. A threat of our own selves that gets us in situations that we don’t need to be in, so understand that all of this in our training is connected.

I keep coming back because I want to grow. When you get older, you still want to grow, you want to become a better helper.

I love "hit the mats” martial arts training where participants receive hands-on experience with marital arts masters.

I feel like I belong

It seemed more like an intimate setting. It felt like a father talking to his children, with everyone sitting down and him talking to everyone. I felt like he would be there, but I didn’t know that he would be there.

You get imbued with the warrior spirit every time you come through and it’s the fact that this is the training seminar that centers on not just physical strength, but mental and spiritual strength as well—the elements of defense—that helps you get through whatever obstacles and difficulties that life presents.

Even though it’s grueling and even though my back hurts in at least two different locations, every time I come, I come away encouraged, inspired and stronger and also [being among] the community, that also helps.

A lot of times we go back to our respective locations and we take on the same attitude before you gained any knowledge and so you go back and still be a ‘little-minded’ place when you can just take on the process and ways that we produced this and do it there so that we can keep building and growing.

I would want them to go back and say these are things that we got, so let’s just put this into practice, let’s test this out and start working that there. And if they do that, I’m sure they are going to see results. It’s going to benefit them.

Stay tuned for additional coverage from the International Training Conference.