renshi Velissariou

Shihan Velissariou Panagiotis is a personal student of kyoshi Polychronopoulos and he has been participating in all the seminars of Hanshi Yamashita since the year 1990. He holds a 5th Dan in Kobayashi Shorin Ryu Karate do and a 3rd Dan in Matayoshi Kobudo. He has a 20 year long experience in martial arts and he is in charge of the dojos in Thessaloniki and the chief trainer in the dojo of Toumba.

His main trend is that he believes that still, he is only at the beginning of his course, so he has not stopped training and is in the quest for knowledge. Everyday teaching experience forms him as a man and a budoka.

He was born at the village Pili of Triakala in 1966. In 1972 his family moved to Larissa where he completed school.

He began practicing in Martial Arts in 1989 during his college studies at the National Technical Univercity of Athens. He then participated to the suibukan martial arts club founded by kyoshi Polychronopoulos, and he soon realized that the combination of accurate body motion, mind and will was something extremely interesting. A new whole world was revealed to him because he realized that he had discovered a passion that since then drives him towards self improvement.

His basic training in martial arts, continued in the hombu dojo, which was then located at Galatsi. His first teaching experience was in the years 1993-1997 as an assistant instructor to the club of Panteion Univercity in Athens.

In September 1994, sensei Velissariou moved to Thessaloniki. In November 1994 he dared to start a martial arts club in the Aristotle Univercity of Thessaloniki, with the support of kyoshi Polychronopoulos. The success of this club was the main factor that contributed to the formation of Suibukan in Thessaloniki, since its students formed the roots of a new dojo. So in 1998 the dojo was created in Toumba of Thessaloniki.

The years 1998 to 2010 have been an extremely creative period where hundreds of people were introduced to martial arts and many of them reached the level of 1 Dan Black Belts through the teaching of Sensei Velissariou and under the supervision of Kyoshi Polychronopoulos.

Besides martial arts sensei Velissariou has a degree in electrical engineering. He has worked for software companies, and has been for many years a computers science teacher in high schools. Now he works as a free lancer in the fields of computers and web design.

He is married to Elisabet Nikolaou and he is the father of three children, Konstantinos, Irene and Aristotelis. Particing martial Arts is a way of living for the whole family.