Practice and Real

Last night I pulled out my shinken  to practice.

I have been off and on with Iaijutsu class over the last month due to family related activities.  I have also, let us be honest, been in a bit of a slump.  It is a slump which I have dealt with in the past in many of my activities, the slump of having hit a plateau.

It is hard.  I like to learn new things and I grapple with the fact that part of doing is simply getting better at the things one has learned rather than always learning new things.  And this means practicing and re-practicing the things one has learned.

I do not like practice (never really have honestly) so this makes one level of frustration for me (and no-one is more surprised than I that I have stuck with this as long as I have).  The second level that makes it difficult for me is that I am constantly practicing alone.  That may be okay for many activities; it is harder for an activity where the intent (theoretically) is to engage with someone else.

So I have not been as diligent of late as I should have been but I have been trying, practicing with my bokken with cuts in the morning and kata in the evening.  But I was feeling low and tired and rushed last night, so I pulled out my shinken last night.

And fell in love all over again.

My shinken is a standard katana length (29 inches, 10 inch tsuka or hilt) and is very much lighter than my bokken - so much so, in fact, that it almost flipped out of my hand as I practiced.  The lightness of the sword gave me speed, speed I feel I am missing so much in my practice.  It moved and danced in my hand with a feeling of lightness, not the usual slowness I feel when I am practicing.  For a 30 minute period I felt like a swordsman, not just a guy out practicing.

When I went back in - feeling far more energized and rededicated to my art - I realized something I have forgotten:  practice is good, but we do not practice for the sake of practice.  We practice to perform, be it with our skills or our swords.  If we forget this, only living forever in a state of getting ready, we deny ourselves the great joy of occasionally looking up and realizing we are doing this for an actual purpose, not just for the sake of doing.

Feeling down or bored with something you used to love to do?  Do it - not for practice but for real, even if it is only displayed for yourself.  Remind yourself why you started in the first place.