You're on the dojo floor. You feel the floor, the slight give to the mat under your feet, or maybe you're on a wooden floor, it feels warm and bright under your toes.
Your partner moves into your space, brings an attack. You exhale, but naturally, dropping your wind and your body. Your knees flex, you turn your hips slightly in on the line the attack forms.
Your hands are up, but open, as you accept the energy coming in, let it load the spring, you turn and drop a bit more, exhale a bit more. You are breathing through your hands, through your feet, you feel the air cool and crisp moving through your pores, fairly dripping energy.
Your feet and toes dig in, the knees take the strain of gripping and holding through the feet. The spring loads, and loads, and you absorb, and then...it stops.
Fully compressed but not moving off your stance, you begin to give the energy back. Only it's not going to go slowly, it's going to unwind all at once, like a broken watch mainspring, all furious motion but still under control, contained and encapsulated. Your open hand makes contact with the partner's chest, palm against ribcage and you return all that energy and then some, right up from your palm to the elbow, connected to the hip, and unloading all that springy power.
Time begins to regain normal speed as you recognize that your partner is back ten feet or more from where you stand, and your feet have not moved even slightly, all you have done is uncoil and return energy, but focused and directed. Your partner is not injured, but relocated with a quickness. Had you intended to do damage, well, then.
This is why posture matters. Why balance matters. Why stance training...matters. Why core strength is the best kind of strength if you're going to work on strength, why people talk about chinkuchi, and argue about what it means. All that kind of stuff. Because without drawing back the bow, the arrow still flew. The energy came from the windlass of the foot, the body, the hip, the solidity of posture and correctness of body mechanics which allowed the partner or opponent to load the bow for you. "Be like water?" With all due respect, be like a wave. It's not the water, it's how the water moves. Strike like a wave, which moves out when pulled and moves back with a crash. Accept, accept, accept, then crash upon the shore.
Your partner moves into your space, brings an attack. You exhale, but naturally, dropping your wind and your body. Your knees flex, you turn your hips slightly in on the line the attack forms.
Your hands are up, but open, as you accept the energy coming in, let it load the spring, you turn and drop a bit more, exhale a bit more. You are breathing through your hands, through your feet, you feel the air cool and crisp moving through your pores, fairly dripping energy.
Your feet and toes dig in, the knees take the strain of gripping and holding through the feet. The spring loads, and loads, and you absorb, and then...it stops.
Fully compressed but not moving off your stance, you begin to give the energy back. Only it's not going to go slowly, it's going to unwind all at once, like a broken watch mainspring, all furious motion but still under control, contained and encapsulated. Your open hand makes contact with the partner's chest, palm against ribcage and you return all that energy and then some, right up from your palm to the elbow, connected to the hip, and unloading all that springy power.
Time begins to regain normal speed as you recognize that your partner is back ten feet or more from where you stand, and your feet have not moved even slightly, all you have done is uncoil and return energy, but focused and directed. Your partner is not injured, but relocated with a quickness. Had you intended to do damage, well, then.
This is why posture matters. Why balance matters. Why stance training...matters. Why core strength is the best kind of strength if you're going to work on strength, why people talk about chinkuchi, and argue about what it means. All that kind of stuff. Because without drawing back the bow, the arrow still flew. The energy came from the windlass of the foot, the body, the hip, the solidity of posture and correctness of body mechanics which allowed the partner or opponent to load the bow for you. "Be like water?" With all due respect, be like a wave. It's not the water, it's how the water moves. Strike like a wave, which moves out when pulled and moves back with a crash. Accept, accept, accept, then crash upon the shore.
