Expertise and Practice Groups

For the electronic record, let this act as witness to our club's official status in the arts we mention on our website, just in case (and these cases too often arise) someone thinks we're making claims to expertise we shouldn't be:

I have expertise in Iaido. I have no qualms calling myself an instructor in iaido and taking the lead on instruction in our club.

As for the other arts in our club, they are practice groups, which is to say, although there is/are people in the club who are more experienced than others and thus teach the arts, they are not instructors in these arts, at least not in the sense of having aged over time and training with the arts. Their apprenticeships in the arts have been brief. We work hard to sustain what we have learned and to continue to expose ourselves to the leaders in these arts BUT we are not sensei in these arts like I 'might' be considered a sensei in Iaido. I lived and trained in Japan for 4 years with one sensei and I've been at it consistently for 15 years now. The other arts of our club have seen us exposed once or twice a year for a few years now, for several days at a time, to top leaders in the arts. One of us recently lived for one month with one of the sensei: a definitely intense training period if one were to spread his training time out over our regular training calender. And yet, we are all still just students in practice groups in these arts.

Jodo is mainly taught by myself but several of us are similarly ranked and experienced.
Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu is led by Alex Cook.
Kage Ryu is led by Nathan Morrison.
If Kyudo comes back (we have the equipment!) that woud be led by Sohail Thaker (because David is off to Japan)

There you have it. Iaido is our claim to expertise in our club. The other arts are practice groupings.