Hello Earthling!

“Pain is color-blind.” We happened upon this expression during training last night… – Color as measured by experience? – Color as a function of complexion? – Color as a function of nuanced style? It is also a great teacher.

Grappling! Not to be confused with grappa or gravity, the duration of this evening (at least while I was there) was spent grappling. A: Opponent tries to throw you D: You counter-throw A: Opponent counters back and brings you to the ground D: Then what? You could counter-roll or do any number of things. As….

We worked on simple basics (basically, simple techniques) this evening. Much attention was paid to angles and symmetry of limbs in relation to technique (e.g. the magic triangle of musha-dori). Moving onto sword work, we used a combination of soft daisho and steel swords. The general technique/idea explored was the idea of ‘dancing’ in front….

Knife Rotating of the spine to generate defense and power as a slash comes to your throat. Once you have stayed clear of the first strike, your footwork should enable you to have complete control of what happens next. Sword Get behind the blade! An opponent with a short sword has an advantage over you….

Hidden Technique Part of the ‘secret’ of Budo is the generation of internal power without it being outwardly obvious, and storing that internal energy just prior to a strike. For the latter half of class (I only made it in for about 40 minutes this evening), we simply worked from ichimongi no kamai…precision strikes, opening….

Good day. We worked with swords this evening. The specific techinique involves an attacker drawing a sword; the defense is as follows: 1) If you have the stones, come in to stop the sword from being drawn. 2) If you step in, but your opponent can pull the sword out into seigan, obviously you don’t….

Tonight’s class was uncommonly acrobatic (the warmer it gets, the easier the limbs move). Lots of rolling in the beginning: – rolling over metal sword – rolling over three people crouched – flipping over two stationary people (think of diving through) – handstand flip (aided by extra belts!)

Very small class this evening; some teaching, some training. Had the junior folks work on rolling, in particular, backwards rolls and overcoming fear of broken necks from rolling on either side. As an exercise, if someone is having a hard time rolling backwards on one side, apply omoto gyaku and help them pull through the….