Martial Arts as an Icebreaker

Gustavo Guliano
October 2008

In addition to his work in martial arts, Mr. Giuliano is Argentina's FFWPU national leader.

I started my journey in the martial arts when I was eleven years old, receiving my black belt in Taekwondo in 1982, at the age of nineteen. After completing national military service, I began teaching at two gyms, which I found enjoyable.

I competed in many tournaments, winning some metropolitan championships, one national and a bronze medal at the Pan-American Championships in Honduras in 1989. During a tournament in 1981, just before the final fight with a recent national champion, I went outside the stadium to meditate and speak to God, though I hadn't met True Parents yet. I told Him, "God, if I win this tournament, I want You to guide me to the world-level, so I can do whatever You want." I won, and today I see He is guiding me through Tongil Moodo to accomplish the goal of establishing world peace, one family under God. We just need to have the desire and keep it. God will do the rest.

Since I joined the Unification Movement in 1982, and while working as a missionary, I often had dreams about the need to continue practicing and teaching. Once, through a spiritual experience, I met my ancestors, who told me clearly I shouldn't stop practicing and teaching martial arts.

During the 1988 Seoul Olympics, I met True Parents personally for the first time. I had prepared myself internally. I had wept, just thinking about them; and the first thing Father asked that day was, "Who practices martial arts?" My heart stirred. From an audience of five hundred people, around twenty members stood up and answered Father personally. Father then introduced the Tongil Moodo and Wonhwado fighting styles, and I thought that someday I would practice them. Two years later, in 1990, Kensaku Takahashi came to Argentina to teach Tongil Moodo to my Taekwondo school of more than two hundred students.

Later I honed my Wonhwado circular movements to perfection in Korea. These circular movements have been added to Tongil Moodo, because one of its goals is to integrate the essences of all the traditional martial arts-such as Judo, Taekwondo, Karate, Aikido, Jujitsu and Kung Fu.

Since 2001, we have been continuously expanding a renewed Tongil Moodo. I am responsible for South America and the Caribbean. Our international instructors have been training people from all over South and Central America.

Tongil Moodo encourages the practitioners' internal development; it motives its adherents to build healthy families and contribute to the moral and spiritual health of their societies and nations-all requisite steps toward world peace. As the martial arts embody religious concepts such as order and self-sacrifice, I feel we can and should continue to introduce the Principle to people through Tongil Moodo. It is therefore my aim to establish a Tongil Moodo headquarters in each of the thirty-three Latin American nations.

The 4th World Martial Arts Peace Cup, held at the Youth Center in Chung Pyung, Korea (October 7-17) was unforgettable. Representatives from all regions of the world participated. We had a workshop before the tournament, in which we practiced the Tongil Moodo techniques. Masters of various styles, such as Wu Shu, Shaolin (Kung Fu), Karate, Jujitsu and Tai Chi Chuan were invited to share their different techniques with all the participants. Mr. Han Bon-hi, grand master of Wonhwado, lent his full support to the tournament.

We also studied and were tested on the New Philosophy for the Martial Arts, which integrates all the spiritual and material, oriental and western, traditional and contemporary values, through universally shared principles. This is based on material created by the International Education Foundation, which was founded by Dr. Seuk and inspired by True Parents.

As a perfect finale, we attended Hoon Dok Hae with True Parents on October 17 and put on a great demonstration, which appeared to inspire them and impress the hundreds of other spectators.

Dr. Seuk invested all his heart, soul and financial resources into this project. I hope that from now on, the doors of all nations open to a consistent teaching of Tongil Moodo in order to connect all the martial arts together and offer them to God.

May God give us the clarity to advance in this last stretch of His providence, and may we embrace all people, and guide them toward our Heavenly Father through the King and Queen of Peace and the True Children.