THE DACAYANA FAMILY SYSTEM OF ESKRIMA


Jun with some of the Wales and Malvern Dacayana Family - June 2009

An overview of the Dacayana Eskrima System and it's introduction to the UK by Official Dacayana UK Representatives:

John 'Jo Biggs; Bedford Eskrima, Bedford Jujutsu and Sacred Spring
&
Marcie Harding; Malvern Eskrima Group

John 'Jo' Biggs:


The Philosophy behind Jo's Sacred Spring School of Martial Arts is to provide the very best Teachers for his students to learn from. He has done this successfully and consistently over many years. The list of Sacred Spring teachers and guest teachers are some of the very best and include some of the highest ranking Jujutsuka in Europe and a Gracie BJJ teacher from Brazil!

However Jo's background also included Eskrima, in which he trained to Instructor level and fought competitively the UK in the 1980's. As part of the natural development of the Sacred Spring School Jo was keen to reintroduce Eskrima as part of the school`s teaching. Jo asked me to help him in with this project. I had been successfully running my own Eskrima group for several years (since 2003) and between us we felt we could find the right person and the right system to bring into Sacred Spring. Such a person would need an ethos and philosophy that would match ours and our students.

The Search:

Over a period of several months we emailed and enquired far and wide and began dialogue with many different Eskrima teachers and organisations

We began speaking to Jun Dacayana in the Autumn of 2006 and started learning his system (it was distance learning of course) but proved very useful for his visits as we were able to prepare for the intense training Jun was to give us.
Prior to Jun's first visit we had the chance opportunity in the summer of 2007 to meet Sifu Yves Dantec who was on a visit from France. Yves kindly arranged to meet Jo and I for talks (and meals and drinks as it turned out!!) to discuss martial arts and he then also recommended us to Jun wich nicely reinforced everything. Yves felt that this was a system that would be recieved very well over here and our students and teachers would enjoy Jun`s Style of teaching.

We continued our talks at length with both Yves and then Jun who began to understand that we wanted a long term relationship that was in tune with the ethos of Sacred Spring and someone who would accept Experienced martial artist`s who still wished to teach and practise other arts, hence their development within F.M.A could be slower and patience would be needed.

Jun had already taken the decision to propagate his system (MigSuneDo) which is his own development, with the blessing of his father Grandmaster Alberto Dacayana snr. Since this decision Jo and I have helped to persuade Jun to rename his Eskrima style 'Dacayana' in recognition of himself and his father's family name for the UK and Europe.
The Visit:

Jun was pursuaded to visit the UK for the first time in November 2007. The visit was amazingly successful (please see full report) and resulted in Jun agreeing to return to us in March 2008 - which was also incredible succesful.
Jo and I are both honoured and proud to be Jun's UK representatives and as I write Jun is just coming to the end of his third and longest stay with us (june 2009) in which we now have an understanding of the whole Dacayana system and have dotted the i's and crossed the t's!!
Jun and Marcie - Malvern 2009