About Me

I've been practicing Ninjutsu for 12 years and I've reached the 6th Dan so far. I trained with Cristian Petrocello in Argentina during my younger years and resumed training in Switzerland in 2009 with Martin Spring. Then I trained at Bujinkan Buyu Zurich under the direction of Phil Bradshaw. My philosophy in martial arts is guided by the phrase "Si vis pacem para bellum", i.e. If you want peace, prepare for war. Working in the security sector, I've found this phrase to be true over and over again. Normally, aggressors do not look for opponents, but for victims. Not being a victim, i.e. preparing for battle, acts as a threshold that prevents an escalating situation from spilling into violence. But you have to be able to radiate it. The only way to radiate this, is by having a confident appearance, which is based on your skills and knowledge.

The ability to use violence and yet not be violent shows what kind of heart a person has. The Bujinkan puts a lot of emphasis on Taijutsu, i.e. body control. But in my opinion there is much more to Bujinkan training than taijutsu: you learn to deal with your feelings when you are in excruciating pain, when your pride is hurt because you were hit but yet you don't freak out,  when as a student you do not understand why you have to perform the same technique 20 times, when a student feels a technique is stupid but does it anyway, when one is insulted in the worst way on the street, but one does not resort to violence, when you are angry because a fellow student can do the techniques better than yourself... That's why I think that the Bujinkan is much more a school of the heart. For this, the dojo is not built democratically, but it requires the ability to submit to the teacher.

Thanks to my training in didactics as part of my studies in agricultural sciences at ETH Zurich, I will share my expertise with you, in order to gradually lead you to mastering both your body and your heart, in battle and in life.

Since I am a devout Catholic, there is no connection to the religious facets within the Bujinkan in my dojo. I still keep though the Japanese cultural forms.