Cayuga Lake Seido Karate: training mind, body, spirit

At Lansing’s dojo, students ages 4 to 79 practice their punches and kicks, honing their skills while training their body, mind and spirit.

Jun Shihan Robin McColley and Jun Shihan Gail Lajoie, co-owners of Cayuga Lake Seido Karate (CLSK) and sixth-degree black belts, started hosting programs back in 2006 and opened the dojo at its current location at 17 Ridge Rd. nine years ago.

“We became students of Seido Karate back in the ’90s and after studying for a long time,” Lajoie explained. “We’re both teachers by profession, and we were teaching for our old instructor and we just wanted to teach more. And we decided that we would house our program in Lansing — we had some connections through the Lansing recreation department ­— which is how we got started.”

Since then, CLSK has seen a lot of growth over its 15 years and recognizes the Lansing community’s welcoming support as a strong foundation.

“When we were a program through the recreation department, we used to offer six-week sessions, and people would enroll and maybe they would continue, maybe they wouldn’t,” Lajoie said. “I believe when we moved here, we had about 40 students, and we have almost 125 now. And we have some people who have been training with us almost that entire time, plus a lot of new people. So, it’s been really great for us to have our own location and to have people really invest in us as part of the community.”

Lajoie spoke to the pandemic’s impacts on the business.

“We closed on the fateful March 13,” she said. “[That] was our last day of class, and we were 100% on Zoom and Facebook Live for … a year and change. We finally were allowed to come in person, when was it, July I guess, we reopened, so we’re still kind of doing the hybrid thing. … We do have some people who actually joined us from kind of a distance or moved from the area who’ve been able to stay connected with Zoom, so it’s been great for that. And it was really fantastic because we’re really fortunate that first, we had a lot of dedicated students who stayed with us, and second, ours is something that we can actually do on Zoom. So, to be able to continue to offer classes was very fortunate for us.”

As for the history of karate, Jun Shihan Lajoie described how the practice evolved over time.

“Most martial arts kind of come from the same place,” she said. “Everything came through China at one point in time or another, and some of the arts stayed in China, some of them progressed to Japan, Okinawa, other places. So, almost every martial art has a combination of hand techniques and foot techniques. Kicks, blocks, punches, they may look stylistically a little bit different, but they’ve all kind of come from the same place.”

Seido, the style taught at CLSK, is a traditional Japanese karate, but it differs from other martial arts as it welcomes everyone, regardless of physical ability.

“Seido is maybe a little bit different in that one of the main founding principles of Seido, that our grandmaster developed, is that Seido is a karate for everybody,” Lajoie explained. “A lot of times when people think of martial arts, you think of young, strong fighters, and people might think these days of MMA or UFC or something like that, and we couldn’t be further from that really. We have people of all physical abilities; we have people of all ages. … One of the important things about Seido is that anybody can try; anybody can kind of be part of this.”

CLSK’s mission is to “train body, mind and spirit.” Lajoie explained how “body” involves strength, flexibility and balance; “mind” requires focusing on the task at hand, being present and practicing mindfulness; and “spirit,” especially during the pandemic, has entailed working on resilience, weathering disruptions and supporting one another.

“What we really try to tell people is when you’re in class, be in class and focus on your training,” Lajoie said. “And that’s your one hour where you get to just do something for you and really focus on, ‘gee let me make my punch better or let me make my kick better.’ And being able to let other things go really allows people to be calm in that sense.”

In continuing to share the mindfulness and skills that Seido provides, CLSK has teamed up with the Lansing PTSO, offering its two-week introductory package, with all proceeds benefiting the PTSO now through Nov. 15.

“So, a few years ago, we got the idea that we would do a fundraiser with them, and typically, when somebody comes in [and] they’re thinking of joining us, they start with a two-week trial period,” Lajoie said. “And what we’re doing for the fundraiser is, you still get the two-week trial, but if you happen to be a student or a sibling of or a parent of a Lansing school student, instead of paying us for the two-week trial, you pay the PTSO.”

Lajoie described the open process of joining the dojo.

“Getting started, we offer everybody a free trial class, so there’s no obligation to come in and try, and that goes for all age groups,” she said. “And then, a two-week trial would follow that. … And you try it out for as many classes as you want to fit in in those two weeks, make sure that we’re a good fit for you and your family, and then you would start up on a regular program after that. We try to make it as simple as possible to get started and really give people a chance to check us out before committing to anything.”

The team at CLSK spoke to how grateful they are to be in the Finger Lakes and to call Lansing home.

“We really feel very lucky to be in Lansing in general,” Lajoie said. “From the very beginning, the community of Lansing has been really welcoming of us and really supportive of us, and that’s been fantastic. We do have a lot of students who come from outside of Lansing, so it’s not only Lansing who feeds our student population, but really just being supportive of our events. A lot of people have been part of our school over the last 15 years that we’ve been in business, and it’s kind of like, once they’re our students, they’re always our students, whether they still train or not. So, it’s nice to have a community full of people who have been part of us and have helped us grow.”

CLSK hosts classes every day but Friday and Sunday, and most classes are evenings and Saturday mornings, with occasional special events. For more information, visit cayugaseido.com or call (607) 533-6049.