This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

This week we moved into the new hall, it’s very nice. In particular it has mirrors covering half the wall on one side which is very useful. Shame there aren’t mirrors across the entire wall. The room is nice and bright which I also like.

Jodo

There was only 5 of us there this morning so I got to work on some of the techniques that I could barely remember from last week when they were introduced. It’s funny how if you get interrupted in the middle of a technique and lose your place how hard it is to get back in the rhythm. Proves I need to think more in my opinion.

I was working on a few techniques where the jo is held directly over the head (in a straight line). It took a lot of monitoring myself in the mirror to begin to curve the habit of leaning my body off of the center line. I still haven’t quite figured out the proper way to hold it straight over my head as I get a sore shoulder after awhile. But the techniques are quite fun. Just have to be careful not to get too carried away with trying to do things strong and losing correct form and balance.

Iaido

Lots of people here for this. Funniest thing that happened was when we were all doing our warmup vertical cuts, sensei stopped us and asked us all a question.

‘Does anyone really dislike dwarfs?’

This baffled most of us and had me in stitches laughing (although I was trying to hide it). The point of this was that everyone was doing the actual cut far to low, around waist height. The cut is to start at the head, ie. The height of your own head as if you were cutting someone your own height. This conversation finished with,

‘So this time make sure you are cutting out, imagine someone your own height in front of you. Or a dwarf standing on a chair if you are that way inclined’

I couldn’t hold back on that one, just far too funny.

The last part of training was spent working on the opening ceremony. Unfortunately trying to do this blew my mind apart for days to come. I was trying to imitate the demonstrator in front of me but due to having to mirror which hand does what I was getting confused and so many times ended up with the sword facing the wrong direction. So annoying, must practice this. Atleast for now to get the sword facing the right direction for a start.

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