Kancho Raffi Liven is the founder of the World Academy of Martial Arts. He created karate style Sho Shin Do and developed self-defense system Krav Maga LI - one of the only developments accepted by the late Master Imi Lichtenfeld.

Kancho Liven was born in Tel Aviv on the 3rd of march, 1949 and has lived in Denmark since 1981.

Kancho Liven started training karate when he was 9 and got graduated with the first Dan at the age of 15. From then on he decided to dedicate his life to the Way (jap. Do) of martial arts.

Over the last 45 years he has trained many different systems including Shotokan, Kyokushinkai-Karate, Thai-boxing, Kendo, Judo, Aikido, Kobudo, Kick-boxing original Okinawa-te and Full-contact Karate. His philosophy is that a person should never stop to learn and to keep an open mind to everything. Nowadays he is one of the highest ranking Karate masters in Europe.

In 1967 Kancho Liven fought the 6-Days-War and in 1973 in the Yom-Kippur-War and worked after as an instructor for the special forces in Israel.

After his time in the military he traveled a lot and went for a longer time to Japan to train under the masters of the originally Okinawa-te and to take part in many competitions. At all the places he came to he was invited to teach Karate and self defense.