Dancing With The Sword

Last night I did iaijutsu for fun.

I realized yesterday morning as I was trying to get in some practice before I had to go run to do something else that my entire iaijutsu life for the past year plus period has been completely consumed by my in dojo certification preparation.  For that period of time I have been focusing on a very specific group of kata, both sword and open hand.  It is important work of course - achieving my  certification is something which I need to do at this point - but the I realized something as I practiced in the morning:  all the fun had gone out of it.

That is a problem, of course.  If we are not doing something we supposedly enjoy for the fun at some level, it simply becomes another chore that we have to accomplish - in other words, the job that we do not really like but know that we need to do.  Our hobbies become our work, and then our life becomes all work with scarcely a moment of joy in it.

So in the evening I went out for fun.

I bought myself Pompeii by Bastille, geared up, took my shinken,  and went outside to practice.  We had some kind of front blowing through so the wind was whistling around my hakama.  Drums and chorale arrangements around head, the sky completely dark without a hint of the moon, I danced with the sword.

I made certain that I did not of the kata which I am currently learning.  Instead I practiced other kata I had learned or made up my own, practicing cuts and putting them together in ways that are probably as impractical as they are fun.  Back and forth, blocks and cuts and footwork, music soaring me away with the wind.

I probably did not accomplish anything formally wonderful last night.  My certificate is probably no closer than it was before I started.  But for a time I practiced the sword for the joy of practicing the sword, at least in my imagination letting the music chords lift me in the cutting and thrusting to the swordsman I always see in my dreams.

It was wonderful.

Test Preparation

We are so very close to the certification test for Iaijutsu.

This is the certificate presented by a sensei which says that a student has a certain level of knowledge and could (potentially) teach.   There are three levels, each of advancing difficulty.

The test is in April.  It includes a paper, terminology, basic memorized knowledge, tameshigiri (test cutting), open hand, and sword.

I was reflecting last night as I drove home from class that this is something that has been as long and intense as any college degree.  A B.A. is 120 hours of education; an M.A. is 30-40 hours beyond that.  By the time I test, I will have well over 200 hours into this (over four years).

I am still worried, of course:  my open hand is still not what it needs to be and my I have the tendency to freeze up when I forget things.  But of all the things I have worked on, this is one of the longest sustained efforts I have made.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a picture of finishing the test and holding the certificate.  It is visualization of course, something I am not always convinced works, but it helps to see that picture and feel myself holding it in my hand.

It is the almost completion of any objective that can be the most difficult period of all.

1000 Cut Drill

Last night we did the Thousand Cut Drill.

The Thousand Cut Drill, for those who have never been exposed, is simply that:  1,000 cuts.  The cuts can be of any variety - we tended to do overhand  and one handed kiroroshi but anything can be done. 

Not so bad, you might think.  After all, the bokuto weighs what - 3 lbs?  5 lbs?  You might find yourself a little sore but that is probably it.  And then you start.

If you are on the middle it is the most intense:  one kirioroshi, 180 degree turn, one kirioroshi.  This is one cut of 50 (i.e. 100 cuts).  If you are on the outer edge, you cut kirioroshi each time the center person turns to you.  This is 50 cuts.  If you rotate through the cycle you will have done 100 cuts.

The first end is not too bad:  you cut and raise overhead back to jodon.  Watch the person in the middle, try to time your cut to theirs.  Remember to breath out when you cut.  You find yourself anticipating their cut.  Slow down, match their speed.

Then you move to the middle.  Starting out is okay; we have done this before.  As you go you notice that your foot is as straight as it should be; try to correct that.  Your cuts are not as straight up and down either.  Work on that.  And then you notice that intersection of your arms and shoulders is beginning tighten up, even to hurt.  Your pace is slowly down while the count still goes on:  "Forty one, Forty two".  By the time you reach 50 your arms are shouting that you should be done.

And then you go to the other side.  Fifty cuts again.  Your right hand is starting to hurt from holding the tsuba in nigiri no kata - as if your were twisting a towel.  As a result your cuts are not s straight as they should be.  Sensei calls out to work on the grip.  You try to comply but know you do not have it right.

Finally you finish.  Move off to the side to rest while others go.  Make the count for them.  And then enter the cycle again.  Your muscles are more sore this time, the foot even a little more off, the cuts not nearly as straight.  You are a little slower.  But you get through.

Next rotation:  right hand only, 25 cuts.  Part of the difficulty is finding where to hold the bokuto so you can cut - you have to move your grip up.  The count goes as your blade seems to make wider and wider circles.

Then the left hand.  This was the worst of all as you very seldom use your left arm for cuts.  you should practice more often, apparently - they are wild, your pace is slow, the bokuto seems completely unbalanced in your hand, to the point you are worried it will slip out.

Next rotation:  the subarito, the heavier practice blade.  Only 10 round (20 cuts) this time:  the weight seems heavier because it is, but after the debacle of the left hand it seems better if for no other reason than you have your form back.

Finally to triangle drill, a six cut drill in which you make a triangle:  suheigiri cut right, flip the blade over into wakinokimae, cut up on a diagonal right to left shoulder in yokokesa-giri then rotate the blade around your head to cut back right to left in kesa giri.  Flip the blade behind you right in wakinokimae, suhei giri cut left, cut up on a diagonal left to right should in reverse yokokesa giri, then rotate the blade around your head to cut back left to right in kesa giri.  Flip the blade back into wakinokimae.  This is one set. 

You start off well but find that your timing is slightly off from your counter.  You try to match up with him but then find you are cheating your cuts.  All the time as you go your muscles are getting more tired, your cuts a little less precise, your timing a little more off.

And then it happens.

Tired and behind and perhaps in desperation you start making your cuts bigger, more flowing.  Your hips are moving more as you reach into the cuts and then fall back into them.  Your timing seems to have suddenly taken care of itself as you move with your counter almost in unison  In the midst of screaming muscles and imprecise cuts you find the unity of motion the true practitioner always seeks:  your body is moving with blade but you are not thinking about the body or the blade.  You are merely thinking about the next cut. 

For one brief instant four hundred years of swordsmen cut with you in unison.

Sensei calls for a stop.  Final count:  1050 cuts.  More than last year and now we have a target for the following year.

You are exhausted.  Your biceps and shoulders are notifying you that they may consider taking the day off.  Your sweat is mingled with the smell of everyone else as they fold up their hakama until next week.

But in your mind as you fumble with your keys in the car door, you do not remember the pain of the preceding 900 cuts.  You remember the last 100, when your body flowed.

A Hesitation Considered

I am continuing to work towards my in-dojo certification in Iaijutsu.  The testing ultimately involves a rather diverse set of knowledge - not only kata but terminology and history as well.  It is a rather extensive set of knowledge, much of it behind the scenes for anyone who is a casual observer.

The one part that I have struggled with the most is that open hand kata - in other words, the part where one is use just one's hands to defend one's self (the world pictures this more as "karate" or some other martial art).  Some of this is knowledge, of course - I am a slow kinetic learner and so I have to repeat things a multiplicity of times -  but some of it seems to be a true mental block on my part to be able to learn things. 

This is bothersome to me.

Is it a lack of confidence?  Perhaps.  I have never really done anything like I am doing now and so (in my heart of hearts) I doubt that I can do it.  Is it a feeling that I will never be able to do it correctly (different from self confidence in that it is not my ability to do it but my ability to do it well that is in question)?  Again, perhaps - although the great secret of iaijutsu is that in fact we are on all on a journey of constant self improvement, getting incrementally better over the course of our lives.  Or could simply be a simple fear that I will accidentally hurt someone in my practicing?  Again perhaps - I have accidentally done so before in my life, although in this I can my certain:  my jousting partners are far stronger and more experienced than I.

So what is it? 

I wish I knew.  The nagging doubts constantly assail me, that I will get to the point testing and choke.  Visions of a failed test assail me, even more so than the vision of holding the certificate in my hand.

So what to do?

Practice.  That is all I can do.  Practice and practice again.  Move my body in the ways it should until it does what it should be doing, even if my mind continues to suffer from a lack of confidence.  Practice until my body is simply able to put my mind aside and carry on.

The reality - something I happily quote to everyone else around me - is that all experts started out as amateurs with no better knowledge base than I have.  They just got better.

Time to practice what I preach.

An Unsettling Feeling

Last night we had our first reaction drill at Iaijutsu. In this drill, you are attacked by an opponent - perhaps knowing the strike, perhaps not.  It is your job to block the attack and then counterattack. 

When sensei announced it I felt a sense of discomfort.  I suddenly realized that I had not done a reaction drill since July. 

I felt a little discomfort.

I did not really know why.  It is not as if I do not train with these people week after week.  It is not as what happened was anything other than a true accident.  Still, I had a sense of something I had not had in some time.  I realized that it was fear.

Fear of what?  Fear of being struck?  Not really - everyone is very careful, especially now.  Fear of not performing well?  Possibly - I worry that I am not the best of students and compared to many, I am slow.  Fear of looking foolish?  See above - I am not a graceful dancer with the bokuto but more of a farmer flailing out his grain.  I am not totally sure - all I know is that I self conscious on a level I have not been for been for some time.

I went through the exercise of course.  My first round was rough.  My cuts were bad, my hands misplaced.  My blocks were not the best and I hardly tried to to do anything original or different like I should have.  I made the attempt and was not totally disgraced in it, though it was hardly my best effort.

In retrospect driving home I wondered what went wrong.  I am in situations which could create this sort of reaction all the time.  Why now? The fear of injury?  Or the fear that performance will reveal what I fear to be true, that my skill level is not what I want to believe it is.

I am not completely sure.  All I can do is practice harder and overcome the fear with competence.

Kata in the Wind

One of the firsts I did this time on my vacation was bring my bokuto. I am in the process of training for my training certificate and did not want to lose the opportunity to continue to train.

Practicing here versus practicing at home has been somewhat of a wash. On the down side, I brought my second-best bokuto and so perhaps have not totally trained as hard as I could have. On the bright side, I had the opportunity to practice with the wind.

I have commented before on my love of this place because the wind, the silence so deep that the wind blowing through the trees is audible and sensible. It is my place in which God walks through the trees.

And, apparently, practices iaido.

In practicing my kata, my cuts and blocks and footwork, I found myself starting to dance in time with the wind and the trees. A sense of being at one with nature came over my soul as I rose and fell with the blade, the "whoosh" of the trees accompanying my blade's quiet descent. As I continued to move, crunching the brown pine needles beneath my trees, one began to get a sense of how the great swordmasters of the past practiced and trained as well, how they valued so much the time spent training alone with only nature as training partner and watching eye. The most successful of movements are those which are the most natural and mimic real life; dancing with the bokuto among the trees imbued a sense of flow and etheralness to the practical combination of wood and muscle.

I will return to Old Home this week; my studies will submerge themselves back into the routine of dojo and home. But remain hopeful that, even in the returning deluge of urban sound, the sounds of the wind will haunt my blade as it moves through the forms.

Heavier and Lighter

This Monday I finally finished re-wrapping my tsuka-ito..

This has been a long process - longer than I had initially intended.  My last wrap of my hilt was not as tight as I needed it to be because it kept slipping over the folds. I kept meaning to get to it but kept finding reasons not to - it takes an afternoon to do it and I have always felt that my skills in this area are lacking.

As a result, I have found myself without my shinken for the better part of two months. In lieu of the shinken for practice I have been using my new bokuto - the longer version more reflective of the swords used in our style.  I have been somewhat grumpy about this process:  the bokuto is 3 inches longer and some pounds heavier than my previous version so my technique seems to have all come undone:  my nukituske (draw) is much harder, with the sword not coming out like it is supposed to much of the time.  My draw time is slower, my blocks less firm.  It has put a certain amount of "unfun" in my daily practice.

But over the weekend I finally found the time I needed to finish my rewrap.  I got it on the tsuka, let the knot dry, and then yesterday prepared to practice.

And was totally surprised.

The shinken was like a feather in my hand.  My cuts flowed, my blocks were effortlessly.  The drawing and sheathing of my shinken was like I have often tried to visualize it in my mind:  smooth, quiet, almost reverent.

Suddenly the months of struggling through practice with the blade that was a little beyond me appeared as it really was:  not just an exercise in learning to do the same activity better in a different way, but training the muscles in the use of something heavier and more bulky such that when the actual item is present, it was remarkably easy.

Will my bokuto practice immediately become easier?  Of course not.  I need to train to the heavier and longer blade - and besides, now I will have to consider a longer shinken (of 33 inches) to match my style.  But now as I continue to try to cut and thrust, to block and sheathe, to see the blade dip low or move more slowly I can take comfort in the fact that it is not an exercise in futility.  It is merely another exercise in training.

Noto

Last night at Iaido class we practiced toho waza, a very simple (and very old) kata that was subsumed from another discipline.  It is a series of five simple kata involving the basic cuts.  Five kata, one hour - we got a lot of practice.  But for the first time I paid real attention to the noto.

Noto, in case you do not remember, is the simply act of sheathing the sword.  In motion, it simply consists of  wrapping the thumb and forefinger around the koiguchi (mouth of the scabbard), flipping the mune (back of the blade) over the koiguchi and the arm, pulling the ha (blade) back to the right until the kisaki (tip) drops into the koiguchi, and then inserting the blade to the tsuba (hilt).  The speed of the insertion can vary - last night, we practiced putting 2/3 of the ha in quickly and the last 1/3 in slowly.

As we practicing the kata - nukitsuke, kata, noto - I came to realize that there was something almost mystical about the noto -  a good one, anyway.

The noto in and of itself is not the main part of the attack and defense, nor is it the critical part of removing the blood from the ha (chibori); it is the final step of the kata, the end of the process.  It can be the most overlooked part of the exercise - after all, it is not a block or a cut.

But it is critical.  The angle the elbow, the hold of the hand on the tsuba (hilt), the plane of the blade and the scabbard (they should be perpendicular to the body, making a "T"), all are a part of the larger whole of the kata.  Without a good noto, the work of the rest is essentially undone.

The mystical comes from a noto well done.  There is a way the blade slides into the scabbard when the angle is just right - where it does not catch slightly on the inside of the scabbard due to a misalignment - that makes the entire move feel right.  The movement feels not so much as a separate motion as it does the completion of the entire action of the kata.  I cannot fully explain the feeling in a meaningful way - but it is something that if it is done right gives a sense like nothing else I have ever felt.

I have commented before that iaido is really just a preparation for life in a different fashion.  The same is true of noto - a reminder that every part of our lives - the ending of actions as well as the beginning - deserves our utmost attention and that an ending well done is no less important - perhaps even more so - than beginning well.

Reaction Drills

Last night in class we participated in reaction drills.

The concept is simple enough:  You are in the middle of a circle of your fellow students.  Everyone draws to chudon.  Then, randomly one by one, each student kiais (shouts) and makes an attack.  Attacks can be as simple or as complicated as the sensei calls for; in our case it was a single type of cut.

The great difference - and the great problem - of reaction drills is simply that things becme much less of an exercise in the art of iaido and much more of an exercise in simple survival. A constant series of attacks - even slower ones performed by fellow students - too often seems to drive every technique I've learned out of my mind.  As they say, we study for the dojo, but we practice for life.

But the one thing that was embedded last night in my mind - let us say re-embedded, as the thoughts were already there - was the art of letting the mind go.

When one faces a series of attacks, one's mind will tend to become rushed and confused.  To dwell on the attack that just happened - to try and consider a different way to do things, or reflect on how badly one did - is to invite being struck.  The mind cannot dwell on that which just happened; instead it must move on to the next attack that is coming.

Takuan Soho in The Unfettered Mind  discusses the same idea.  He makes the point that the mind must be free and stop on any one point.  If the mind stops at blocking the attack, it will not continue through to complete the cut and certainly not be ready for the next attack.  The mind instead must simply move through blocking the attack to responding and then moving to the next attack.

As in all things, of course, iaido mirrors life.  Too often we tend to cling to what just happened, the mistakes we just made, rather than simply move through the situation to the next incident.  Is this saying that there is no place for meditation and reflection upon our lives and how we act?  Not at all.  Consideration of and reflection on our actions is an important part of our growth.  It is simply a question of choosing when to consider such things.

Ultimately the point of iaido is to have the mind and body flowing as one, to spontaneously move the mind and body in responding to or executing to an attack.  I sure did not flow last night (though several of my fellow students did), but I saw the first great mental step:  we cannot flow forward in the stream if we cling to the rock that just went under water.

Forest

Last night at Iaido we practiced a new drill. It was called the Forest Drill.

A series of stands (5-8) were set up with various items (hoops, balls, an exercise "thing") on them. The intent is that you move through the obstacles, striking each and insuring that you never leave your back to a "live" opponent.

The drill started slowly at first - after all, we've never done this before. The cuts and thrusts are choppy and the movements slow. Then, as we began to get better, our sensei moved the arrangement around and threw in a new twist: a live body at the end ready to cut. Now the objective was to hit each obstacle and then block and attack at the end.

After adjusting, two attackers were added. Then three. All while continuing to move through the obstacles, never leaving a back to an unhit opponent. Then the final opponent would attack twice. Then thrice.

It was the most fun I've had in a long time.

Fun? Actual "combat" is something we seldom practice (for obvious reasons), so the practice of doing what we train to do is novel. But beyond that, it's the actual practice of our practice: not just practicing cuts and kata, but having to use them quickly. Defending from a real attacker, rather than defending from a reflection in the mirror. Having to strike multiple opponents quickly and without hesitation yet thinking all the time about leaving no threats behind one as you move into the fray. Mentally preparing after all the obstacles for the live opponent - and then, during the obstacles, the live opponents - who will attack in ways you cannot defend against until the attack comes.

It was glorious.

By the time I was done I was sweating profusely, my throat rubbed raw by kiai-ing (shouting) after every cut.

It was hard - but at the same time easy. It was putting into practice what we train to do.

Would that all we trained for was put into practice regularly. What we not be capable of?

Rust

Yesterday I undertook a task that I was putting off all week. Sword cleaning.

Not just the typical cleaning and oiling of the blade - no this was a full cleaning: removing the mekugi (bamboo pins that hold in the sword), pulling off the tsuka (hilt), removing the fittings - seppa, tsuba, seppa, and hibaki - and cleaning the nakago (tang) of the blade.

I always freak out about this a bit, mostly because of the fact that I tend to have the ability to not reassemble things in their original order. Still, the potential of rust overcame my fear of having to drag an unfinished blade to class for assembly, so off we did.

Upon pulling everything apart (which went better than expected), I found that I did in fact have a problem: a patch of rust on both sides of the nakago where the hibaki (a brass fitting which covers the transition of the tang to the full blade. There was some rust on the fittings as well, but it was the worst under the hibaki.

I sat for almost an hour trying to work things off: applying metal polish, letting it dry, working on the smaller pieces, rubbing it down, reapplying, all the time wondering "how could it have gotten so far?" My guess, after looking at everything, is that the last time that I cleaned the whole blade - when I rewrapped my tsuka - is that I failed to completely oil the inside of the hibaki, which when in contact with the blade, created the rust. I don't clean the entire sword as often - I'd like to say it's because I'm too busy (it really takes about an hour), but more likely it's due to the fact that I'm more lazy that busy. It appears that this failure to regularly maintain all aspects of the sword is what contributed to the rust.

I finally finished removing most of what I could get at then oiled everything heavily and reassembled the entire sword. Looking at it from the outside, you cannot tell anything was really wrong - there was one faint dark line under the hibaki that gave rise to the whole incident.

True, it is just about my sword. But like everything else, Iaido is really life, and the lessons of iaido are transferable to more than just the dojo.

Even like the nakago of the sword, we are both outer and inner. To let one go - to be so concerned about polishing the outer side and preventing rust - while forgetting about the other is to eventually invite disaster. With enough rust, a nakago will be rendered useless, and so too the sword. Thus we must pay attentiong to maintaining both the outer and inner person, even as we maintain the outer and inner blade. Rust on either will destroy its usefulness.

Rusty nakagos may be easily repaired. Rust on the soul is far more difficult to efface.

Iaido in the Mist

One aspect of New Home that continues to surprise me is the temperature fluctuations. In a one week period, we have probed the depths of the high 20's as well as getting up to later to the low 70's. It is a novelty to me that such swings can occur when one is used to a "fixed" season of the year.

This morning was one of those mornings. I peered out the window and discovered a fog, a mist which had covered the world in damp yet was surprisingly warm. Warmer than it's been in a while in the morning, I grabbed my bokken and headed outside.

I love the world in a fog - more so in a warm fog, as it turns out. The light from streetlights and outdoor lights is diffused, pouring through the gaps in the fence on visible chains of photons. The sound seems muffled as well - not just the quiet of morning, but the deadening of all sound.

The treat for me was the moisture- so much that it dripped as a slow rainfall from the oaks hidden in the foggy half-light.

It was, I decided, perfect Iaido weather.

Assume the position. Migi, Hidari. Hand to tsuba and tsuka as I turn my body and step migi. Saibiki as I pull the saya down from the blade.

And plop! A large drop of moisture lands squarely on my head (the samurai tales never mention that). Shake my head, continue on.

And so I move through the morning mist, drawing and sheathing, cutting and blocking, moving forward and back as the bokken scatters the diffused light and water into invisible waves which make the plunging drops of collected moisture plunge to the ground.

There are times - all too seldom -when in practicing a martial art one reaches the point where not only is one's movement in synch, but the very atmosphere one practices in is equally balanced, where the movement of one's self and the movement of the world around them come together to create an experience which while being simple practice session shines to the very core of the art itself.

Today was such a day.

Practicing Prayer Cuts

I am not the best person at prayer.

I don't suppose I've ever really been that good at it - regular, I suppose, but never good. I don't know - I'm just never one of those people for who prayer seems to flow, or whom seems to be able to hold conversations with God. If it's not written down, I forget it; if I don't have a model, I seem to drift into the same five or ten items ever time.

But this morning, in the midst of my Iaido, I had an epiphany.

I was practicing chudon waza from seiza. Kneeling, one faces forward (mae), right (migi), left (hidari) and rearwards (ushiro), and either step out or turns and step as you draw into a suhei giri (straight cut; kneeling puts the cut at kubi (neck). I was practicing downstairs, so I was not able to rise for the rest of the kata lest I take out the glass lamp bulb in the fan. Instead, I practiced rising to my knees, turning and drawing (nukitsuke), then sheathing (noto) and doing it again.

As I continued to repeat the pattern - rise, turn, draw, sheathe - I realized that I was really practicing something no different than how I should practice prayer.

The great secret of Iaido - or of any martial art, I suppose - is not that there are always secret techniques (there's always more that you can learn) but the fact that any person can master them, if only they will practice. That's the secret: repetition. The difference between the master and the student is thousands of hours of practicing the techniques over and over (Malcolm Gladwell in his fabulous book Outliers: The Story of Success puts a number on it: 10,000) , slowly become better, making what must often seem like minuscule adjustments, until at last the techniques become as natural as breathing, the weapon an extension of one's body.

Prayer is no different than this. We think prayer is some great thing that we must instantly become great at to be effective. In fact, prayer is just the same: something the Christian is to practice over and over daily. We may perceive the improvement in our prayers, but one day we will find that praying has become as natural as any other conversation we have.

We are at a disadvantage: we read the great prayers of Moses or David or Nehemiah or Daniel and rate ourselves against them. What we do not realize is that these were not prayers pulled out of nowhere; these were the prayers of men who had spent a great deal of time praying, who had practiced prayer until they could pray with great effectiveness and power.

So when I pray today or tonight or tomorrow I have a new perspective: it's not just that I'm praying and talking to God (which is, of course, of supreme importance), it's that I'm training myself in prayer the way a warrior trains in Iaido: regularly, patiently, incrementally.

Iaido by Morning

I have been working my forms in the morning.

One of the things that I realized from the change in my schedule is that my Iaido time was become compressed: I was either too tired to do it, or I always found other things I had to do. My solution became to split my time: some in the morning, some in the evening. And so now, somewhere between 0640 and 0715, you'll find me in the backyard practicing Iaido,

Practicing Iaido outside, in the morning, is an entirely different exercise than practicing in the dojo or even inside. The temperature is the first thing that grabs my attention as I head out - outside is not quite as climate controlled as the circumstances I usually practice in. The next thing I notice is the sounds: at class, the only sounds are the sensei's instructions, the quiet shuffling of feet, the "clack" of bokken as they meet in practice. Outside is a different story: the birds sing in the trees (the chirping of small songbirds, the more mournful cry of doves), perhaps a late lingering bat flutters by seeking one last meal, the local dog population raises the alarm, a squirrel chatters away in a tree nearby.

As I move through the forms, I am confronted by reality: the ground is not level and so I sometimes lurch to one side or the other and I cannot execute turns as smoothly as I would like; a low branch can catch an kesa giri cut as I try to bring it down; an upturned stone can turn an advance into a stumble.

But in all of this difference, I find the reminder that once again, Iaido mirrors life.

Too often we practice and live in a controlled bubble, a series of events and encounters that we attempt to manipulate such that we are always at an advantage. The reality is that we life in a world over which we can control very little. We cannot control the weather, other people, the actions of things and peoples thousands of miles away.

But what we can do is control ourselves. Iaido mirrors this in the kata: by constantly practicing, we internalize our actions and reactions, thus preparing ourselves for the event that we will have to use them in the series of events we call life. To the extent that our practice mirrors more and more of the real world, so we will be more able to control our actions as we confronted by the events we cannot control.

And so I practice, moving in the morning dawn to the sound of birds, practicing and gaining confidence in that which I can control: myself.

Kiriage

Last night at Iaido we practiced the triangle drill.

A triangle drill is where three (surprise!) individuals perform a series of attacks: one defends, then turns to their right or left and attacks the next person. The concept is that the muscle memory is being tested as you speed up the drill ( I call it panic. When an actual attack occurs, it's amazing how all your intellectual processes desert your mind). An added twist is that attacks are initially limited: kirioroshi (overhead cut) or tsuki (thrust) to warm up and build confidence, then speed is added. The most extreme (and most difficult) is a fast moving drill with any kind of attack possible.

We started with the standard cuts listed overhead: kirioroshi, then kirioroshi or tsuki. Faster and faster you go, bokkudo clicking of each other as you defend, cut, attack, get cut. Step in to attack, move out of way, turn to the attacker, try and think through what the attack is and how you will defend. Defend: block the blade, make the cut or thrust, turn to your right, attack again. It because a faster and faster dance of oak blades and black clad students weaving in and out, testing and probing their skills.

Then came the twist. "Do kiriage" sensei said.

Kiriage is a reverse upper cut, moving the blade up as you cut in a diagonal from the hip to the shoulder. We've not done a great deal of kiriage cuts, so the assumption (mine, probably) is that this is not something that is a typical or favored cut.

Then we all made a discovery: kiriage is one of the hardest cuts to defend against.

Because of the angle, we couldn't use many of the techniques we have typically trained with. They were either too slow or did not block the blade quickly enough. Stepping offline is an option (stepping offline is always an option) but the world doesn't consist of an endless flat plane that allows you to back up. You have to be able to counter and attack.

There are defenses of course - but they are totally different from what at least I typically practice. It was remarkable to see how much we had to slow down from our previous speed to try and try again to practice defense, blocking and either getting hit or completely missing the blade, stopping, and then trying again.

Driving home after class, I realized this was really no different from the life I lead from day to day. We tend to learn our own patterns of attacking and defending against the problems in our lives, and slowly we come to believe that this challenges are the only way in life that they come. Challenges which don't come often we may consider not as significant or important - not because they aren't, but because we don't typically deal with them. Then when they come, we are amazed that something so seemingly small or innocuous can destroy a hitherto strong defense.

The solution? Training -always training. Not just for the attacks that you are comfortable with or typically confront, but for all the permutations you can think of.

Because unlike the triangle drill, life does not conveniently confine its challenges in a linear or limited fashion.

Suburito

My suburito (training bokken) arrived last week.

It weighs approximately 3 lbs and stands approximately 45" high. My practice bokken is approximately half that weight and two-thirds of the length.

The purpose of suburito is strictly practice: no contact or actual engagement is ever expected (although a very famous duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro was fought using one). Its primary purpose is strengthen both the muscles of the swordsman as well as to perfect the angle of the cut and the ability to stop the blade where the swordsman desires, not pulled down by gravity.

In using it over the last week, I've discovered two things:

1) It's heavy, especially used repeatedly for suburi (sword swinging) drills;
2 See #1 above.

However, in the brief time I've used it I've also begun to discover things about my own technique. I've discovered, for example, that cuts from my left to my right tend to get weaker over time, especially compared to cuts from my right to my left. It has revealed that how I move the sword back into position takes more time that it should - valuable time that could be used in preparing to or striking at an opponent.

The most revealing thing, however, has been how much lighter it makes the regular bokudo feel. It flies into my hand and around my cuts. I've not yet used my shinken to see if the effect is the same, but I'm sure just on mass alone it will probably be true.

In life, as in Iaido, sometimes we seem to have to bear and practice with circumstances and items far heavier than what we think we should have to use. However, when we train this way, it is amazing the speed with which we can move and what we can bear under normal circumstances.