Karate master leaving
Feilding’s own karate master is heading across the ditch.
Davis Karate Academy owner and instructor Miho Davis is the head of the New Zealand branch of the Japan Shito-ryu Karate Association. And with five black belts, she is widely recognised as one of the country’s top practitioners of the martial art.
For the past decade she has shared her skills in her Feilding dojo, mentoring dozens of champions and inspiring many others to apply the mental discipline and focus at the core of her teachings.
At the same time, she has been teaching science and art at Taihape Area School, which her daughter, Erika Elers, 17, attends.
As Elers heads to Victoria University in Wellington next year, Davis too is ready to strike out into something new. She is passing the academy on to her assistant instructor, Kirk Alexander, and moving to Australia, where she will take up a new school teaching position in October.
The academy has been a huge part of her and her daughter’s lives, and leaving it behind would be hard, she said.
Davis started the academy 20 years ago in Palmerston North and moved to Feilding in 2008, so it has always been a part of Elers’ life.
She followed in her mother’s footsteps. Elers is the current Shito-ryu champion for her age group, having first taken part in karate competitions aged 4, and by age 11, was an instructor at the academy.
Davis herself came to karate relatively late in life. Despite growing up in Japan, it wasn’t until a friend invited her to a training session while she studying in New Zealand that she discovered her love for it.
Davis said people do martial arts for a variety of reasons, but for her it was about the disciplined, calm and peaceful mentality it can instil.
‘‘Sometimes I’d think about work and study so much I couldn’t sleep ... but when I started training I found it really helped my mental status.’’
Davis said the focus on perfecting her technique was a form of meditation, letting her mind rest and refresh while her body worked.
Karate centred her, and as she reached the pinnacles of achievement in competition, she discovered the satisfaction of helping others find their own centre.
Davis said Alexander shared a similar approach and she trusted he would continue helping the academy’s students, old and new, work towards that.