Northern Wind

When Muso Gonnosuke retreated to the mountain shrine to meditate on his defeat to Miyamoto Musashi, his subsequent revelation led to the development of a new art based on a short staff called a jo.  The heart of that inspiration has become the motto of Shinto Muso Ryu: 丸木を以って水月を知れ maruki o motte suigetsu o shire Using a round stick, know the solar plexus   And if you practice the art today—whether the full, traditional Shindo Muso Ryu jodo or Seitei Jodo—you will no doubt notice that many of jodo's techniques and movements within the kata are based on that very idea: control the solar plexus. For me, fully grasping this one single precept was one the first important step in learning the art. As a new white belt, it all looked to like a bunch of individual techniques, where you swing the stick about in all kinds of ways, you do this if the sword guy does that, and so on. Jodo took on a whole new clarity when I realized that so many of those mo...

I'm a graphic designer by trade, so occasionally I get the uncontrollable urge to redesign various bits of info pertinent to budo when I get a spare moment. Here's a reference chart of "kyusho" or vital points taken from Pascel Krieger's seminal book on Shindo Muso Ryu Jodo, "The Way of the Stick."  Feel free to use this JPEG however you like. If you prefer a scaleable PDF, you can download it here .

The YouTube channel JuYokuGoOSeisu has a number of sequences from an old judo film that have served as a pretty nice reference for me (although you'll have to wade through a bunch of other stuff to find them). They start with the basic application of a classic technique and then show a few forms of it. They were originally narrated in English, but there's a Spanish voice over covering up what the original is saying. Still, you can get a pretty good idea of what's going on just by watching. This one, on sankaku jime, is one example (since we'll be looking at sankaku issues this week in morning class).

Nice video demonstration of the 12 seitei no kata. Unfortunately, it starts at hissage (#3, skipping 1 and 2) and the embedding for this video was disabled, but you can view it at YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biSJdRuR6i0 And as there are precious few videos available on jo, I was disappointed that the old Japanese seitei jo instructional movie that someone had converted and uploaded was "removed" (no doubt due to copywrite issues). Alas...

There isn't a whole lot of videos out there, this channel has a few old movies that are kind of nice, such as this version of tachi otoshi from omote.

It seems like just about every issue we look at in aikido, judo or jodo ultimately gets measured by many of the budoka I know against the ruler of "practicality." Of course, the word "practical" can really mean a lot of things. But for the most part, they seem to be thinking about what is commonly referred to "the street." Essentially, everyone wants to know how the things, or a specific thing, will help them "on the street," meaning in a physical confrontation with another human being bent on doing us bodily harm. Occasionally, that definition is expanded to include non-physical confrontations (such as a pushy, argumentative or angry person). The art that seems hardest for many students (typically the younger ones, kyu ranks to early dan grades) is definitely jodo. And I've heard a number of explanations over the years about the various subtle, amorphous ways it can be "practical," even though we don't walk around with 4 foot s...

When I say "difficult", at least in this post, I'm not referring to those people who are by nature obnoxious or stubborn, unwilling to listen, etc. That would make for an interesting post, for certain, but it's not what's on my mind today, anyway. No, by "difficult" I mean partners who are, as far as their personality goes, perfectly reasonable and amiable. They can often be wonderful people, in fact. But something about the way they move and operate physically may be, well, less then ideal. They're not the young, spry type of brown belt who loves to fly and take ukemi all day (we all love to throw those guys). Maybe they're older, maybe a lot older, they move slower, their steps are smaller, they take more compensatory steps due to old injuries or just the general physical limitations that come with getting on in years. When working with someone like this, suddenly, the spry young green or brown belt finds that none of his throws will work. H...

Man, Jack Bieler Sensei really rocked my world during shochugeiko. I don't think he intended to, but he did nonetheless! At Windsong, we practice the Seitei no Kata from Shindo Muso Ryu Jodo, but Jack was kind enough to travel up from Denton, Texas to show us how the traditional Koryu no Kata. His demonstrations included some wonderful insight into the kihon, as well. I feel like a white belt again! I love Jodo, but I can't help but feel a little sad that I can't devote more time to the traditional kata. Maybe I'm nuts to try and pursue more than on art, much less three. At any rate, it's given me a lot to think about.

It's done. This was the last day of a week-long shochugeiko, and it's been quite a week. If you happen to have the time to attend every single class plus the special sessions, you would have spent around 45 hours or so doing budo in one week. I had the chance to do about 20, and that certainly felt like a lot. The odd thing is, there are people who work in physically demanding fields (even a pharmacist who stands on his feet all day is demanding to me ) and do it for 40 or more hours a week, so why would 20 hours feel so overwhelming, mentally and physically? Perhaps because I/we did it in addition to our normal jobs (and I sit at a desk all day and don't exercise like I should, which doesn't help, either). Today, though, was the toughest for me. I did the 6:30 am Aikido class, the 7:30 to 9:00 judo class, then the 9 to 11 jodo class, took a half hour break and then did the 11:30 to 1pm Aikido class. Phew! I need a shower. And I think it's time to wash the gi! Unfor...

During day 5 at noon Aikido, we spent the majority of class doing randori and switching partners on the bell. It was mostly good, but randori is a tough subject in Aikido for many reasons. More reasons, in fact, than I want to go into at the moment. This morning and at noon, Jack Bieler Sensei from Denton, Texas, went over many of the subtle but differences between Seitei Jodo and the traditional Shindo Muso Ryu. In both classes, we covered the kihon (as performed solo, or tandoku dosa ) and a little bit of the first kata in the Omote series (which the 8th kata in the Seitei no Kata), tachi otoshi. Those who had taken time off from work stuck around after the hour to look at the second kata, tsuba wari, but some of us had to get back to work. We'll be doing more with Bieler Sensei during tomorrow's jodo class (which is two hours, so we should be able to go over more material). It will be interesting to see what everyone thinks after the fact. There are some differences, no do...