NOVEMBER 200832 33PRIMETIMECAPE COD

BY BARBARA RAVAGE

“Have you always wanted to study karate but just never got around to it? Do you feel

like you’re too ‘old’ or ‘out of shape’ to start now?” Those questions will be familiar to anyone who has perused the Nauset Community Education catalogue. The person asking them holds a fi fth-degree black belt in seido karate, a Zen-based style that empha-sizes “the training of body, mind, and spirit together in order to realize the fullness of human potential.” She also happens to be a cancer survivor just

months away from her 65th birthday.Paula Feinstein has been studying

martial arts for about 40 years, and seido karate since 1974. Although she took up karate as a way of defending herself, it has become a way of life. “When I fi rst started thinking about karate it was because I worked in the really bad neighborhoods of New York,” she recalls of her years as a caseworker for the city’s welfare agen-cy. “This white face went into a sea of blackness, and I really felt afraid.”

Seido karate is a traditional Japanese style founded by Kaicho [Master] Tadashi Nakamura. A central tenet is what he calls a “non-quitting”

spirit. “No matter what the obstacle or diffi culty – emotional, physical, fi nancial – we want students to feel that, though they may be set back, they will never be overcome by any of these problems… This is the modern interpretation of the bushido spirit of the samurai.”

That spirit has helped Paula face signifi cant challenges in her life – from raising a troubled little boy who is now the father of two and recently retired from the U.S. Navy as a Chief Warrant Offi cer to making a real difference within the New York

HEALTH & WELL-BEING

SEIDO KARATEThe spirit of not quitting

PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 33

City social services bureaucracy, and battling her own cancer.

After graduating from Long Island University, Paula worked as a produc-tion manager for McGraw-Hill Pub-lishers and a statistician for American Can Company. But the Bridgeport, Connecticut native decided she wanted more human contact. She found it during a career that began in 1968 as a caseworker in what was then the city welfare system. By the time she retired in 2002, she was associate commissioner for childcare in the New York City Administra-tion for Children’s Services. In the years between, she used her master’s degree in resources management to help establish 100 child care centers, run a district offi ce, and her proud-est achievement, direct an eight-year project to implement the fi rst elec-tronic imaging project to reconcile the accounts for the entire social service delivery system in NYC.

But the work took its toll, especially after September 11, 2001. Her offi ce was near Ground Zero, and she knew

a number of people who died in the World Trade Center. “I think Septem-ber 11 made a lot of people rethink what the heck they were doing. It changed my perception in every way,” she says. Despite the insistence of environmental protection authorities that air quality was acceptable, many of her colleagues suffered breath-ing problems and pneumonia. “They kept saying, ‘No no, the air is fi ne.’ But you’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know the air was not fi ne,” she says, adding that the city car she drove from her home in Queens would be covered with dust so thick she couldn’t see the windshield by day’s end.

In the midst of all that, Paula learned she had endometrial cancer. “The doctor said, ‘I have good news and I have bad news. Which one do you want fi rst,’” she recalls. She opted for the bad news, but when the doc-tor told her she had cancer, that’s all Paula heard. “Her mouth kept moving, but I thought, ‘I have to get out of here,’ so I never heard that my cancer had a very high rate of recovery. I was incredibly lucky. If you have to have cancer, that’s the one to have.”

After the initial shock, Paula swung into action, proactively exploring treatment options and making in-formed choices. “That’s something karate has done for me. Every time I face a crisis I get very, very deliberate, very intensely focused. I go right into the problem. I don’t see anything else. I just get from point A to point B. It works for me,” she says. When she was younger, she describes herself as an amoeba, shaped by whatever came at her. Now she calls on her karate train-ing for a different kind of self-defense. “It’s much more self and much less defense.”

Seido karate challenges the self both mentally and physically. “As you get older, your attention level goes, your ability to concentrate goes, your bal-ance goes,” says Kyoshi Paula, as her students call her, using the Japanese honorifi c for “teacher.” Stamina and strength begin to wane as well. Seido karate keeps you moving both physi-cally and mentally, so you are able to retain or even regain those abilities. Much is made in fi tness circles about developing “core” strength. Seido

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 34

QuickhitsWebLinks!"#$%&'()*+)',-&.$/-&.0-&1#'!)2)/-'#3'4)5-'4#162+-).$7'89':;<=>http://capecodseido.com-?@)&+A'B"#$%&5)*+)CD)5-D#1$-&1#ED#@

F#'2-G&$/-2'3#2'D+)$$-$H)*$-/'4#@@*.&/"'I1*D)/&#.JK'I+12-1G-'()2BL)"62+-).$7'89':;<=>=:K?;==?M>::'http://nausetcommunityed.org

F#'+-)2.'@#2-')N#*/'0-&1#'B)2)/-O#2+1'0-&1#'!)2)/-'62G).&P)/&#.web.seido.com

Paula Feinstein

(left) teach-es seido karate at

Orleans Elementary

School. Seido

karate is the ideal

martial art for those 50-plus. It

involves a mind-

body-spirit emphasis and slow

progression through the levels. What it will bring to your life, as it did for

Paula, (in addition to

fitness) is a focused

determina-tion to face challenges when they

arise.

Q6H'04RS6IQTU49(I'46V'FW8I0

NOVEMBER 200832 33PRIMETIMECAPE COD

BY BARBARA RAVAGE

“Have you always wanted to study karate but just never got around to it? Do you feel

like you’re too ‘old’ or ‘out of shape’ to start now?” Those questions will be familiar to anyone who has perused the Nauset Community Education catalogue. The person asking them holds a fi fth-degree black belt in seido karate, a Zen-based style that empha-sizes “the training of body, mind, and spirit together in order to realize the fullness of human potential.” She also happens to be a cancer survivor just

months away from her 65th birthday.Paula Feinstein has been studying

martial arts for about 40 years, and seido karate since 1974. Although she took up karate as a way of defending herself, it has become a way of life. “When I fi rst started thinking about karate it was because I worked in the really bad neighborhoods of New York,” she recalls of her years as a caseworker for the city’s welfare agen-cy. “This white face went into a sea of blackness, and I really felt afraid.”

Seido karate is a traditional Japanese style founded by Kaicho [Master] Tadashi Nakamura. A central tenet is what he calls a “non-quitting”

spirit. “No matter what the obstacle or diffi culty – emotional, physical, fi nancial – we want students to feel that, though they may be set back, they will never be overcome by any of these problems… This is the modern interpretation of the bushido spirit of the samurai.”

That spirit has helped Paula face signifi cant challenges in her life – from raising a troubled little boy who is now the father of two and recently retired from the U.S. Navy as a Chief Warrant Offi cer to making a real difference within the New York

HEALTH & WELL-BEING

SEIDO KARATEThe spirit of not quitting

PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 33

City social services bureaucracy, and battling her own cancer.

After graduating from Long Island University, Paula worked as a produc-tion manager for McGraw-Hill Pub-lishers and a statistician for American Can Company. But the Bridgeport, Connecticut native decided she wanted more human contact. She found it during a career that began in 1968 as a caseworker in what was then the city welfare system. By the time she retired in 2002, she was associate commissioner for childcare in the New York City Administra-tion for Children’s Services. In the years between, she used her master’s degree in resources management to help establish 100 child care centers, run a district offi ce, and her proud-est achievement, direct an eight-year project to implement the fi rst elec-tronic imaging project to reconcile the accounts for the entire social service delivery system in NYC.

But the work took its toll, especially after September 11, 2001. Her offi ce was near Ground Zero, and she knew

a number of people who died in the World Trade Center. “I think Septem-ber 11 made a lot of people rethink what the heck they were doing. It changed my perception in every way,” she says. Despite the insistence of environmental protection authorities that air quality was acceptable, many of her colleagues suffered breath-ing problems and pneumonia. “They kept saying, ‘No no, the air is fi ne.’ But you’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know the air was not fi ne,” she says, adding that the city car she drove from her home in Queens would be covered with dust so thick she couldn’t see the windshield by day’s end.

In the midst of all that, Paula learned she had endometrial cancer. “The doctor said, ‘I have good news and I have bad news. Which one do you want fi rst,’” she recalls. She opted for the bad news, but when the doc-tor told her she had cancer, that’s all Paula heard. “Her mouth kept moving, but I thought, ‘I have to get out of here,’ so I never heard that my cancer had a very high rate of recovery. I was incredibly lucky. If you have to have cancer, that’s the one to have.”

After the initial shock, Paula swung into action, proactively exploring treatment options and making in-formed choices. “That’s something karate has done for me. Every time I face a crisis I get very, very deliberate, very intensely focused. I go right into the problem. I don’t see anything else. I just get from point A to point B. It works for me,” she says. When she was younger, she describes herself as an amoeba, shaped by whatever came at her. Now she calls on her karate train-ing for a different kind of self-defense. “It’s much more self and much less defense.”

Seido karate challenges the self both mentally and physically. “As you get older, your attention level goes, your ability to concentrate goes, your bal-ance goes,” says Kyoshi Paula, as her students call her, using the Japanese honorifi c for “teacher.” Stamina and strength begin to wane as well. Seido karate keeps you moving both physi-cally and mentally, so you are able to retain or even regain those abilities. Much is made in fi tness circles about developing “core” strength. Seido

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

PLEASE SEE KARATE, PAGE 34

QuickhitsWebLinks!"#$%&'()*+)',-&.$/-&.0-&1#'!)2)/-'#3'4)5-'4#162+-).$7'89':;<=>http://capecodseido.com-?@)&+A'B"#$%&5)*+)CD)5-D#1$-&1#ED#@

F#'2-G&$/-2'3#2'D+)$$-$H)*$-/'4#@@*.&/"'I1*D)/&#.JK'I+12-1G-'()2BL)"62+-).$7'89':;<=>=:K?;==?M>::'http://nausetcommunityed.org

F#'+-)2.'@#2-')N#*/'0-&1#'B)2)/-O#2+1'0-&1#'!)2)/-'62G).&P)/&#.web.seido.com

Paula Feinstein

(left) teach-es seido karate at

Orleans Elementary

School. Seido

karate is the ideal

martial art for those 50-plus. It

involves a mind-

body-spirit emphasis and slow

progression through the levels. What it will bring to your life, as it did for

Paula, (in addition to

fitness) is a focused

determina-tion to face challenges when they

arise.

Q6H'04RS6IQTU49(I'46V'FW8I0

NOVEMBER 200834 35PRIMETIMECAPE COD

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karate is all about “core,” but it goes far beyond the anatomical sense of the word.

At the center of the practice are the katas, formal sets of movement com-bining blocks, strikes, and kicks in a symbolic combat with an invisible op-ponent. Mastering the katas requires concentration and coordination. Because they involve both mental and muscle memory, the body and mind support each other.

As Paula explains it, kinesthetic memory plays a part, but because seido karate is Zen based, “There a consciousness that permeates every element of the study. You begin to get a sense of self because you’re watching yourself and you have to block everything else out. It’s a very meditative kind of thing. That’s why it’s called Moving Zen. Seido karate pushes you to take that moment, to be aware of every element of your being, and if your mind goes off somewhere, you call it back.” Every class includes meditation, which is equally impor-tant as the physical aspect.

Despite the challenges, seido karate is very safe. “You don’t start off beat-ing each other up. That’s why I think an older person can do seido. It’s all incremental, so by the time you have some direct contact, you know your body, you know your moves, you know who you are,” Paula says.

Paula’s classes, which meet at Or-leans Elementary and Nauset Middle schools, depending on the season, are made up of 6 to 12 people, from rank beginners (white belts) through blue, yellow, and green belts. Those who stick with it are promoted over time. All students are adults, in a range of ages, shapes, and sizes. What they have in common are the non-quitting spirit and a commitment to challeng-ing themselves while supporting each other. Paradoxically, for a traditional martial art that involves combat and competition, seido karate puts great emphasis on trust and respect, for self and others. That is a gift that comes

directly from Paula, though she at-tributes it to the blessing of studying with Kaicho Nakamura.

“I feel like I found a treasure. There are two things you can do with a treasure: You can lock it up or you can open it up and show it to everyone. I choose to open it up. Everyone who wants it can get this treasure.”

Paula and her partner Marilyn Greenberg have lived in Orleans full-time since 2003, but they had been vacationing on the Cape for years. When they decided to make it their permanent home, they asked a friend which town she’d recommend. The answer was Orleans because, their friend said, it has the best library on the Cape. They can walk to the library from their home. In fact, they can walk or bike just about anywhere they

want. “It’s an ador-able town,” the ex-New Yorker says. “It’s really perfect for us.”

After years as a project manager for clinical trials, Mari-lyn is now studying clinical pastoral counseling. Both women are active in Am HaYam, the Cape Cod Ha-vurah, or Jewish fellowship. They love the year-round life here, welcom-

ing friends in the summer, partaking of all the natural wonders the Cape has to offer. “But when everybody goes home it becomes our Cape again. We have to pinch ourselves some-times,” Paula says. “This is our home. We live here.”

KarateCONTINUED FROM PAGE 33

!That’s something karate has done for me. Every time I face a crisis I get

very, very deliberate, very intensely focused.

I go right into the problem.

PAULA FEINSTEIN,SEIDO KARATE INSTRUCTOR

About the authorBarbara Ravage moved to Cape Cod from her native New York City in 2000, after the youngest of her children went off to college. She considers heavy doses of ocean air and Cape light the best cure for empty-nest syndrome. A graduate of Barnard College, she is the author of nine books, including a biogra-phy of Rachel Carson for middle-school students and “Burn Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames,” which explores the history and science of burn treatment. She balances her writing life with yoga, karate, and pottery. After years of mak-ing do with two summer weeks on the Cape, her favorite part about living here is that she’s already home.