First practice of the year, and my first practice in what must be over a month. My left ankle still feels a bit wonky since I did something to it a couple of days ago (not sure what) but other than that it was nice to get back swinging.
Took plenty of time today to warm up and work on basics slowly. Focused on, as always, keeping some semblance of balance and coordination between the upper and lower halves of the body. Always tough, because it's so easy to step quickly with the feet, but the arms can't move the sword as quickly, and it ends up being a whip-like motion with the feet and legs planting and then the upper body swinging forward and the arms snapping. Strong, but no good against someone who's also trying to kill you. As has been stressed from day one: if you step you are in range to hit and therefore in range to be hit. If you step into range, your sword best be buried in the other guy's head. If it's not, and it's still somewhere above your head, then his sword will surely be buried in your head.
So we worked on basics 1 and 2, then did the first kata
shin for the rest of the time. Gotta love the word
kata. It means shape or form, referring to the pattern of movements, but not the same as
odori, a set pattern of movements i.e. a dance. Kata is concerned with transmitting some essence of the art through the repetition of certain physical strategies. The desired end result is some level of proficiency in using the techniques to achieve given goals: kill him before he kills you, evade and counter before he has time to mount a second attack, etc. Interestingly, the end result can be achieved, superficially (and wrongly) by ignoring the exactness of the kata itself.
For example it's easy to cut a straw target: any adult can swing a sword like a bat and chop straw in two. But to do so without using unnecessary arm strength, driving from the hips effortlessly requires serious practice.
Before the end can be achieved, the kata must be obeyed. Since it is impossible for a beginner to understand a kata, he must first take it on faith that the kata is correct, even though he is unable to do it correctly. So the beginner makes every effort to simply copy what he sees, to make his kata look correct. First get the moves in their proper order; left foot, right hand, etc. Then attempt to make them look right; lean this far, sword angled just so, hand and foot timed like this. Ironically, it is only by first striving to make the kata look good that one can begin to understand the essence of the kata; correct action forces the desired result -- it is not possible to do the wrong thing when the kata is done correctly, and it is not possible to make the kata look correct without doing it correctly.
Superficially at first, it is easy to mimic the various poses of the kata, to copy frame by frame. The key is the movement between frames, the timing and balance, the poise and speed moving from one frame to the next. Ultimately the body learns how to move in ways originally thought not possible or at the least impractical. Then begins an understanding of the strategy, the actual art. At this point one can start ignoring the kata in and of itself and focus on the underlying goal and the principals to achievement. Interestingly, this is why many senior practitioners are not too concerned with getting a kata "wrong"; they are perfectly capable of going left instead of right, slow instead of fast, because they understand the essence, the strategy of the art. Gosoke sometimes demonstrates this by starting one kata and then finishing as another. For him, as he says, all the kata are merely one kata, there is only one Mugairyu. As the first line of the poem from which Mugairyu got its name says: "
ippo jitsu mugai" -- "There is nothing but the one truth."
