Chief Instructor and President of the Board of Directors of The Suffolk Institute For Eastern Studies D/B/A Center Island Aikido, a Not For Profit Corporation.

Rich fell head over heels with Aikido in 1994. Prior to that he trained for 20 years in Shorin Ryu Okinawan Karate (hard style). He combined his Aikido training with Rinzai Zen Meditation and has been studying under Edgar Genshin Kann, a student of Joshu Sasaki Roshi.

Rich has developed a present interest in Tai Chi and Qi Gong and has studied and trained daily in the Yang style Short Form under Joe Cavaliere and Bob Klein. Rich was certified as a Tai Chi instructor in February of 2015.

It is the beauty of Aikido and T’ai Chi; the gentleness, the kindness, the peacefulness that continues to attract Rich. “We are capable of inflicting tremendous damage to our attacker but we choose not to,” Rich says. “We join together so completely with the attacker as to eliminate any difference between ourselves. How then can we intentionally do them any harm?”

At the heart of Aikido is the Zen Practice: nothing exists separate from ourselves. Is it self defense? Well, it is and it isn’t. When Rich’s teacher Howard Pashenz was asked, “Is it self defense?” He would answer: “Show me the self that needs to be defended and I will show you self defense.”