shinbashi

Niina-gosoke's practice at Shinbashi. I've actually been able to do my own practice twice this week. Amazing. Gosoke's new thing for his year is: "Do what you want, figure it out for yourself, I'll give some hints or clues as necessary."
So I started with the basics for the first hour, just trying to really hard to not try too hard, and working on rotating my hands a bit later as Gosoke told me on yesterday.
Then I started running through kata. Just doing each one a few times to see how it feels. Also trying to not do alot of foot-stomping, which actually makes it easier to think about putting energy into the sword tip instead of into the ground, but it also make timing the upper and lower body movements harder.
Felt a bit sore in general but it was a good practice and for the first time in a while it was not cold and I worked up a good sweat.
After practice we hit the local dive and stuffed ourselves as Gosoke told us stories of how he almost went to Germany and Lebanon, ended up getting sent to South America, etc.
Also talked about the deeper Zen issues we have to start getting our head around: "Swinging a sword is only part of it. You have to use your head. You have to use your heart. Think of how small and insignificant the Earth in when seen from the farthest reaches of the universe."
Big, deep, and too much for me to wrap my head around, but I'm working on it.