GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — With a total of nearly 50 years of combined experience, a Grafenwöhr couple brings the grace and skill of the Japanese martial arts to the community at an unbeatable cost — free.

Chuck Gordon, 7th Army Training Command deputy public affairs officer, and Emily Dolan Gordon, a massage therapist, share their skills with a small group of martial arts enthusiasts from the community.

One student said his studies with the Gordons’ Shobukan Grafenwöhr have helped him understand some of the history behind Japanese martial arts.

“Until now I practiced more modern martial arts,” said Miguel Caban, from the Grafenwöhr Army and Air Force Exchange Service occupational safety office. “With Chuck and Emily, I’m learning more about where it originated from. It gives me a better understanding of what I was doing in the past.”

Caban, who has been practicing martial arts since the 1980s, said the choice of which new group or class to join is not an arbitrary one.

“You really have to look around and try to find what will be best for you,” he said. “I’ve been in groups where the instructor just wants to throw you to demonstrate, but he has too many people in the class to really work with you on the moves.

“This class is smaller, so Chuck and Emily can really work with us and spend some time going over [the moves]. The way Chuck demonstrates things, you can pick it up easily.”

The class meets twice a week, with one class at the post gym and the other at the Gordons’ off-post home, Chuck said.

The Gordons don’t charge money for the lessons, but both are richer from teaching the group, Emily Gordon said.

“We got to the point where we were not practicing, and [Chuck] was moping, so we thought about starting the class,” she said.

“I’ll be on a mat with someone and all of a sudden something I learned 20 years ago will illuminate, and I’ll think: ‘That’s what that means,’” Chuck Gordon said. “You never reach a point where you know it all. You continue to practice and continue to build your own store of knowledge.”

Shobukan Grafenwöhr is guided more by traditional martial arts; the group doesn’t use colored belts or the popular white uniform, which Chuck Gordon says are fairly modern additions to Japanese martial arts.

And, although the Gordons teach with metal swords (dull blades or wooden swords for beginners), you won’t hear a scrape of metal as they draw their swords.

“We really get a laugh out of movies where you can hear this sound when the sword comes out of the scabbard,” Emily Gordon said. “That’s not real.”

In fact, in a practice session between the Gordons on April 25 with both wooden and metal swords, there was very little sound at all.

“If someone is not very interested in martial arts, they’ll probably fall asleep,” Emily said.

“A big portion of the [90-minute] class is demonstration,” Chuck Gordon said. “There is a lot of intensity in the movements, but you have to be aware of it to really see what is going on.”

He began practicing martial arts for the same reason many teenage boys do.

“I was looking for a better way to kick butt,” he said.

Emily Gordon, on the other hand, was drawn to the psychological benefits of aikido, another form of martial arts, when she was in college.

“I wanted to sign up when I was 13, but my parents only laughed,” she said. “The minute I was in college, I signed up for aikido. I find a real experience and discipline in it.”

Chuck Gordon said his first instructor taught him that the martial arts are not only for self-defense, and that’s a lesson he teaches his group now.

“Most people think it’s all about self-defense, being able to throw someone,” he said. “There’s a level where the self-defense benefits are relevant. But there is so much more to it. There is benefit to the mind, body and spirit.”