Year: 2014

From Shiro Kuma's Blog by kumafr

The “Spirit of movement” is a mix of live experiences with sensei, my personal path in budô, and general thoughts on the martial arts.
It is easy to read and will please both the beginner and the advanced practitioner.

Below is an excerpt of this book:

“When you see the shihan move naturally and always being well positioned, you get the impression that they definitely knew where the attacker would head for and what he intended to do. But once you accept that intuition is fuelling our actions and unifies our two hemispheres, their reactions seem normal. In combat and in life, the exterior conditions are imposed on us, and if we are able to observe a situation and adjust our actions rapidly, only the intuitive adaptation which will only come after years of polishing will allow us to achieve mastership.

This simplified efficiency is the result of the “cleaning” of the movements through repetition. The more we do these basic forms, the more they are concise and precise. This is exactly what Musashi means when he writes: “don’t do anything useless”. Because at the same time your expertise is developing, you create parasitic movements. And you have to get rid of them in order to reach the true essence. In 1997, during a seminar in New Jersey, we were, a friend and I, in sensei’s room after a day of training. What he told us that night is still present in my mind. “I gave you everything you need. Now your training will consist in getting rid of all your parasitic movements and speeding everything that is useless”. With the many years of training every practitioner develops a series of bad habits inbreeding with the researched purity of the movements. Becoming concise therefore depends on this cleaning process. This phase of practice is the one requiring the most as it demands order and a deep consciousness of what is correct. Again, this bio mechanical consciousness in the movements has a deep impact on our daily lives and influence all our actions outside of the dôjô. With this physical work, the Budō practitioner becomes more efficient and direct in whatever he is doing but also in his relations with others.

Thus, budô is not limited to a system of fighting techniques, but offers us a means to approach the truth by putting us in a war-like situation. The technique is only valuable if it teaches to recognize a situation, and to respond to it most effectively. My master likes repeating that if you apply a technique of a given ryûha, of a fighting style, you are dead. Even if it is perfect, the technique activates the left part of the brain whereas intuition is located in the right part of the brain. This intuition of things always allows you to know what to do, and the benefits of martial arts begin to lap over our daily lives.”

Get the book and read the rest, here

From Shiro Kuma's Blog by kumafr

My first eBook is now available at amazon.
Written in French in 2009, it is now available in English.
Completely rewritten, this revised edition details my life in the martial arts from 1969 to 2014. Obviously the biggest part of the book is dedicated to the Bujinkan and the 25 years of exchanges with Hatsumi sensei in Japan and during the Taikai all over the world.
Full of anecdotes and stories, this small book introduces the reader to the 6 elements, the strategy, and other concepts.

Amazon.com

Amazon.fr

http://www.amazon.fr/Spirit-Movement-Become-Student-English-ebook/dp/B00PUKZY9C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1416564516&sr=1-1&keywords=spirit+of+movement

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.es

http://www.amazon.es/Spirit-Movement-Become-Student-English-ebook/dp/B00PUKZY9C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1416564672&sr=1-1&keywords=spirit+of+movement

Amazon.de

From Shiro Kuma's Blog by kumafr

In my dôjô we me have a new member watching every class, it is a human size skeleton*.

I decided to add this as part of our understanding of body movement. Each class is the occasion to show the students how a technique should be done. When they see the bone alignment, the joint logic, the technique begins to make sense.

骨 (Kotsu) regroups the secret principles introducing any of the ryûha but it also reads as bone. Maybe because these principles are the “skeleton”,  the foundation of the system.

Because we all have, at first, a sport educated vision of the martial arts, we miss the key point: which is to break the balance of the opponent. Thanks to the skeleton in the dôjô, the students are now able to visualize, in real size, the possible angles and the amount of leverage that can be applied to the joints at the skeleton level, therefore it is easier for them to get the technique correctly.

The typical fight in feudal Japan between two samurai implied the use of the Yoroi. The Yoroi protecting the body from the ferocious blows of the enemy **, it is obvious that hitting the flesh of breaking the bones was not feasable. But if hitting the body was hardly possible, taking the balance by using the bone structure was easy. By locking the body inside the Yoroi and by manipulating the joints, it is easy to get the opponent off balance. A fight in feudal Japan was mainly about bringing the opponent to the ground in order to finish him before he could stand up.

Trying to hit the muscles or to break the bones is sport.
Understanding the laws of balance by integrating the knowledge of bone positioning and angles is budô.

So don’t fight the flesh, but fight the bone structure. We are learning Budô not sport.

_________________
*you can get one on amazon for about a 100€
** the Yoroi was primarily designed to fight the yari
Basics:  http://budomart.eu/index.php?id_category=24&controller=category&id_lang=1&p=2