This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

It was a great class(see Iaido for a new practice we did) in the cold conditions today. The key aspect that was brought to my attention by various unrelated people was intent. This past week I’ve been feeling that I have hit a plateau that I won’t be able to pass unless I increase the intensity of my practice. It feels like my brain is full and my knowledge is shallow. Previously I had space to increase the range of my repertoire and the depth (think of it as level of mastery of a technique). But now I feel like I can’t go any wider, if I do things will just spill out and I won’t improve. It’s a shame it is so cold and wet, I can’t generally practice outside in such conditions (atleast the wet ones) and practicing inside is restricted to kneeling techniques due to insufficient head room. Either way it looks like it is time to move on to the next part of my journey.

Jodo

Training started with the regular warmups, which once again I was picked up on a whole new set of flaws in my technique. It takes a lot of patience and persistence on behalf of the student and what must be a huge amount of patience and compassion on behalf of the teachers to deal with dodgy technique week in week out. It is certainly a much harsher atmosphere than any other education system I’ve been through.

After warmup we did paired kuritsuke (block the handle of sword during cut, turn the swordsman and lock sword against opponent). It was mostly practice for the juniors (aka, people like me) in the jo side. Trying to do this technique with an opponent cutting at you makes the whole technique 10 times as difficult. First you no longer have 2 seconds to setup the technique and another 1 or 2 to correct your terrible positioning. Now you have pretty much under a second to setup which means going from a standing position into a block. Next if you positioning is bad you will know because when the block makes contact positioning will be destroyed and you can lose balance a little too. The rest is the same difficulty as last time, trying to finish the technique in line with the opponent to lock them in position.

One of key points made in this was that I needed to execute it with much more intent. Really go all out and lock the opponent in position. It is amazing how different it feels to really do something with strong intent over just concentration.

We finished with kata, which was where once again my intent was requested :). In kata 2, the swordsman goes to execute a overhead cut but he is intercepted by the jo stepping in and thrusting into the sternum. In jodo katas we do make contact (but offcourse try not to injure anyone), my partner wanted me to strike him with much more power. So we repeated the section over and over. Striking someone over and over was quite unnerving for me but my partner was very good about it, pretending to double over in pain occasionally to make us both laugh heartily. And as last week, stronger kiai’s were also requested of me, I don’t know if it is something I will be able to figure out any time soon.

Iaido

Iaido practice today was quite different, but first I’ll back track. I’m a bit stumped on my overhead cutting technique. I can feel when I have done a terrible cut but all the other cuts don’t feel right, it is a bit annoying. All part of the plateau I expect. Moving along we did the warmups and then went on to the new practice.

I had noticed we had a whole lot of newspapers sitting to the side early on, and now I know what they were for. We were cutting them up. In teams of 3 and I tell you now, you may have heard of team exercises for building trust, well this technique must be the extreme super trust builder. What happens is that 2 people hold the top corner of each side of a piece of newspaper at the head height of the 3rd person who is going to cut it(with an Iaito (’blunt’ metal sword)). To make it worse we are using tabloid papers (think Herald Sun, not The Age) and then we don’t always use 2 page wide section to be cut, rather we turn it on it’s side so we cut down the grain, making a smaller target.

So the idea of the technique is to make a cut that causes the paper to be sliced in half, not knocked out of hands or ripped. This requires very light technique (hence the exercises purpose). You want the blade to just enter into the newspaper and then it needs to smoothly drop practically with only the weight of the sword in order to slice. If you muscle the downward motion then the page just rips. I couldn’t get it to slice nicely, but it looked very cool when someone did.

Then we moved on to the next part, drawing cuts from the katas. Not only are these cuts more difficult because you are drawing out the sword in the same motion but they are also not straight cuts. They come through on an angle of probably 20 degrees. Now it is quite scary to be holding a single page of paper on the short corners when someone is coming to draw and cut faster than you can keep a track of with your eyes, on an angle. You have absolutely no choice but to trust them totally. While Iaito are blunt, the points are very pointy and a blow to the hand certainly has potential to do real damage (power in a concentrated area). Now it was scary being on the receiving end, but then offcourse I also have to perform the cuts and I know my draw cuts are not as strong and accurate as I would like them to be. Anyway we all survived and it was a lot of fun :D.

After cleaning up all the paper we finished with free training. I worked on the katas I know and got advice as I went. It is amazing watching some of the senior students who seem to glide so smoothly through some kata, it can leave you in a state of awe sometimes :). I’ve noticed when I practice I tend to go between two different modes. One where I’m trying to correct a aspect of a technique, so I do a technique, analyse, correct and repeat. The second mode is where I try to let it all go and flow. This has a very nice meditative feel to it. I notice that my eyes take on a different focus, they are still focused on an opponent but they are very wide and I can notice things in my peripheral vision (such as a senior analysing my technique) without it affecting my concentration. It is like all my senses feed me information from 360 degrees yet while receiving it I am separated from it and consequently unimpeded by it. It is wonderful really. I wish I had a hardwood floor room with a high roof at home :).