To be honest, I wasn’t yet a real person myself—just a teenager excited about the world he had walked into. I often trained with a lawyer who had kids my age and drove a high-end sports car. One woman, whose son was taller than me, was a Ph.D. and did research that totally went over my head. Another gentleman I worked out with ran a huge electronics distributor. They were all real people. They had jobs and lives, and families and priorities. The only thing we had in common was that Kempo was one of our priorities.

At the time, I didn’t appreciate what I had found. Years later, as I began to teach, meet other instructors, and visit other studios, I realized how rare Sensei Alen’s haven of ‘real’ really was.

That was long ago and on the other side of the ocean. Now I’m a real person too, with a wife and children and my own competing priorities. But Kempo is still one of those priorities—to train, teach, and share what I started learning from Sensei Alen a quarter century ago. The vision I still hold of that haven for real people continues to be our inspiration and motivates us to create that same sort of space where real people can gather to learn and grow.

I am so grateful to Sensei Alen for being who he is and for creating that space for so many of us to learn and grow. And I’m grateful to all of the real people who choose to train with us now. I’m grateful that amidst their jobs, lives, and families, they choose to be part of our haven of real people.

~Chris Santillo, Sensei

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