Here I sit wish my stage 4 cancer and now a broken neck that I did not know that I had. I suspect that I broke the neck about 7 weeks ago when I slipped and wrenched my back. This was followed by a splinting of my neck my muscles froze so that I was in incredible pain if I moved my head in any way whatsoever. I suspect my muscles were acting as a splint as a neck brace. Regardless, I seem to have recovered to the point where I have as much movement in my neck as I ever had with my muscles being the way that they are for my age in other words not very mobile but enough to look down far enough so that I can see where I’m walking. Southern Ontario is not old person friendly with all the ice and snow that we get. Clean your sidewalks young people.
Most of the advice that people have given me on Facebook is to take it easy and do things in my own way and as I can. I have funny enough followed this advice for quite some time. At the moment working with her my own body means that I am using speech to text. This means, that commas, are going to be somewhat, lacking, in my sentences until, I figure out or rather I remember, to use commas. This stuff is pretty good, So eventually I will figure it out. Some of the mistakes are actually adorable so I may leave some of them in.
It’s interesting that I was just giving the class in jodo this same advice, not that long ago, that they should be swinging and thrusting and hitting within their own body, in other words should be using their body. Their own body not the body of someone who is teaching or the body of somebody who is writing a book, to gauge how they move.
You cannot work with somebody else’s body, must work with your own. That’s just polite.
Now when you begin, you do require instruction which is precise as to where you move you are foot, where you move your hand, where you swing a sword, what angles you use. These are all things that you need of course. But as you move through the years you come to realize that you need your own understanding of how your body moves and your own understanding of how to apply power in your own budo.
This is one of the hardest things that you must do. It is very easy to continue throughout your career, trying to fix things. You move from teacher to teacher, from book to book, from seminar to seminar trying to fix whatever it is that you think is broken, nothing is broken. What you really need to do is work from function instead of form, to understand how your body moves through its various injuries and weaknesses which you have developed over the years, as well as your strengths. Function means to understand that you must Hit the Target in such a way in such a time, in such a place, from such an angle, how you get there depends in great part in what you can do. How your body moves will determine your jodo or your iaido.
As I sit here in my new recliner chair which seems to have been taken over by Brenda oh, I feel like the cat sneaking into the chair, I find my neck starting to seize up a little. I will listen to my body and finish this essay now.
For those planning to come to the May seminar, please remember that the price goes up at the end of the month.
Kim Taylor
Mar 15, 2019
https://sdksupplies.com/
2019
April 6, Seito Bugei Juku seminar in Peterborough. mjer jujutsu and jodo.
May 17-20 Annual CKF International Jodo and Iaido seminar and grading, (Kurogo sensei and Mansfield sensei) Guelph.
https://seidokai.ca/iai.seminar.html
August TBD. Montreal Jodo seminar and grading with Eric Tribe, Ed Chart and Japanese instructor (TBA)
November 8-10 Annual CKF International Jodo seminar and grading (Kurogo sensei), Mississauga (Port Credit).
Seito Bugei Juku 