Kosho Reflections Issue #2: There Is No Body Contact
Feb 02, 2026
Connect
To the Reader
Most of you reading this have spent years learning how to hit. You have practiced strikes, blocks, throws. You have conditioned your body. You have trained your reflexes.
I am going to tell you that the highest level of what you do requires none of it.
Sit with that before you continue.
The Teaching
In true self-defense, the high art of Kosho Ryu, there is no body contact.
This is not poetry. This is not philosophy dressed as combat. As Mitose taught, there is no higher form of true self-defense than that of no body contact. The objective in conflict is having no conflict. You escape. You control. You do not destroy.
Destruction is easy. Preservation is difficult.
If you get to the point of destruction, you have already failed. Everything after that is damage control. The fight you win without touching is the only fight you truly win.
To the Reader
Speed is a lie. Everything you think you know about being fast is wrong. If you cannot let go of your obsession with speed, stop reading now. You are not ready.
The Teaching
One visit, Mitose asked me to hit him. Real hard.
At the prison, there was a guard there who knew who I was. He said, "Go ahead." We were outdoors. And I am big, tough Bruce, thinking, "You want me to hit thi...
Throw Yourself
To the Reader
Have you ever tried to explain something you understood perfectly, only to realize you had no words for it? That the moment you opened your mouth, the truth of it slipped away?
This is the challenge I faced every time I walked out of Folsom Prison and back into my dojo. Mitose would show me something profound, something that worked instantly when he demonstrated it...
To the Reader
What I am about to share may disturb you.It may challenge everything you think you know about mastery, perfection, and what it means to be a martial artist.
Good.
If you are not disturbed, you are not paying attention.
The Teaching
There is a saying in Zen Buddhism:
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
Most people hear this and think it is nonsense. Or blasphemy. Or so...
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