Tsuki Gata

Everything in budo has a meaning.

Everything in the dojo has a reason.

Even the appearance of just standing around has nuanced layers behind it.

This immersion in the training created a very unique experience in that it bypasses the thinking mind and directly encodes the body how to move, how to act.

Don;t worry about the why; that;’s not what’s important in budo.

Every class always started with a series of fundamental drills, not only as a warm-up also an encoding of the building blocks of the movement found in the dojo.

A combination of learning and polishing a way of doing things.

In the punching drills, how one held the punching mitt was important, not only so the person throwing the punch at it could do it correctly, but also so the person holding the mitt could feel the kinetic movement of it.

One student would hold the punching mitt, and the other students would line up and move through punching the target. When the last student punched, they would take it from the student holding the mitt, in this way everybody got to experience both sides of the drill.

When one was throwing the punch, the experience was doing that as flawlessly as possible

Correct posture, correct distance, correct way of making a fist, alignment and force striking through the target.

When holding the mitt, receiving the punch, one could observe the form of the person throwing the punch, observe the distance and the timing, but the real training, the real reason was found in closing one’s eyes.

With the eyes closed one could not see or know when the strike was going to hit. No anticipation means only feeling, how does the strike move the arm, how does the strike move the body.

Can one be relaxed when being hit?

There are always two sides to the training.

Always a reason.