About Sensei Hanke
Sensei Jeremy Hanke is a black belt in the Okinawan form of Karate known as Shudokan. He received his black belt under Hanshi Morris Mack in 1999 in Yakima, WA.
Shortly after being promoted to 10th degree black belt in 2017, Hanshi Morris Mack issued and signed the Sensei certification by which Sensei Hanke could officially run a Shudokan Dojo, in addition to Karate Clubs. (It was one of the last certifications he issued before his tragic and untimely death just a few weeks later.)
When not teaching self-defense techniques, he works at Kentucky’s Whitaker Bank. He has three children, is married to his best friend, and has a Siamese fighting fish and a bearded dragon.
Sensei Hanke (Right) Receiving 1st Degree Certification From Hanshi Mack (Left).
About Holistic Okinawan Shudokan
The core style of what we teach is Shudokan Karate-Do, one of the direct descendants of the original “karate” forms that were developed in Okinawa to teach unarmed farmers how to repel armed and armored Japanese occupying forces.
While extremely useful for men to learn, Shudokan has always had special advantages for women because it utilizes the power generated by natural hip movements and, because it is a form of original Karate (which essentially translates to “unarmed”), requires no external objects to be effective. Unlike martial arts like Tae Kwan Do or even some other more well known forms of Japanese Karate, Shudokan’s basics can be learned by anyone, regardless of age, stature, weight, or disability.
Developed by Kanken Toyama in the early 20th Century, Shudokan was designed to be a form of karate that did not stagnate, but evolved naturally. (It’s name even refers to a place of learning, like a university of martial training.) Unlike MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), which often adds unique and specific moves because it either has proven successful or it blocks something which has proven successful in sport competition, often for the sole value of the individual fighter, Shudokan was designed to bring in expansions in cohesive units that had holistic value to the art itself and made it more robust for all of its members. (It has also attempted to hold on to more elements of its past than most martial arts do, giving it a greater depth of history.)
Hanshi Morris Mack ( a spiritual “descendent” of Toyama via Shihan Walter Todd) would take this evolving concept to the next level in the late 20th Century in his dojo in Yakima, WA, when he spliced in a large branch of Jiu-Jitsu principles, allowing Shudokan to have solutions for ground-based attacks and to provide non-impact/non-crippling stopping solutions. (These principles are especially effective for people who need to restrain without injuring, like nurses, school teachers, guards, and many others.) In addition to this, he spent years devoted to studying psychology, adding psychosocial components about confrontation, dispute negotiation, de-escalation, brain processing differences, sensory overload, and other powerful concepts to Shudokan that most other martial arts hadn’t fully considered.
In the wake of Hanshi Mack’s death in 2017, his student, Jeremy Hanke, read a heartfelt letter from a female black belt in another martial art who yearned for women to have a martial art that could protect them from mental manipulation and abuse (which had led to her own rape, despite having the physical “skills” to protect herself). The concept of taking Shudokan to the next logical step–to a place where it could help defend people’s minds, as well as their bodies–inspired him to investigate even more deeply the components of psychological defense and, in turn, social protection, discovering that these things could be taught in tandem with physical self defense in a way that was far more powerful and unified. Due to the fact that this approach was designed to unify the three components of life (Mind, Body, and Soul), it seemed appropriate to refer to this evolving form of Shudokan as Holistic.
In this process of research and discovery, it also became clear that while Japanese additions to Shudokan had become popular in many areas–as these were seen as more dominant in sport karate tournaments (especially amongst men)–it was the Okinawan roots that held the greatest connection to community, interdependency, and life-and-death survival that is at the true heart of karate-do (the way of karate). As such, our art is most correctly known as Holistic Okinawan Shudokan Karate-Do, but most refer to it simply as Holistic Shudokan or Holistic Karate. Either is fine.
