Davis

This is why I never talk to karate folks about this. We are on different planets. I think my time on this forum has seen itself through. Too much talk of fighting. Not the right karate way. I have nothing more to contribute.

Good luck. Tell us how it went.

She is inventing and making her own versions of the kata? Pass... Go find a real teacher.

Impossible to do it justice here. Its not that random, not as individual as folks here have suggested. There is a formal religious history to martial arts in China and Japan. Specific historical steps, definitive treatises on the subject. Taoism and Buddhism are central to its development. The West has obliterated martial arts and turned them into a parlor game. There are very few dojos where the spiritual history of the arts is discussed or elaborated on. Sensei Richard Kim, RIP, was one proponent of this kind of history. Nowawdays its more of a contest to see who can beat who. It took what was sacred in MA and made it profane. If you want to study this aspect of martial arts D. Suzuki's work on Zen and Japanese culture is a definitive text. Its very difficult to find much work on this subject. Most of the folks who study it don't participate in forums and social media.

The majority of assaults against women are from their drunk/angry marital partners or date rape. Awareness is key. Rarely do we see a woman grabbed like this scenario depicts. Its more often being drugged over assaulted when she is drunk.

Hard groin kick with the shin instead of foot. Should finish it. The more he attacks, the more wide open he is, no blocking possible for him.

Not as interested in the historical info, though it is appreciated. More the nature of karate as a meditative practice. And how bunkai, competition and other things could actually be counterproductive to its true purpose, that of self development. You focus on fighting, you lose the focus on internal harmony. You focus on competition, you lose this as well. In fact, I would go as far to say that most karate has lost its way, and is profane in use. Its either sporty spice, or bunkai spice. You cannot do all 3 well, fighting, sporting and meditative practice in kata. One will come to dominate the others.

I would also ask, do you know what Kyokushin karate is? I would review some Kyokushin videos on youtube first to make sure this is what you are up for.

I thought about posting this in the karate forum, but this seems like the right place. Shoto Kai was a style started by Funakoshi. His successors brought it forward as Shotokan, but one of his students, Shigeru Egami, preserved the name Shoto Kai. Shoto Kai is about relaxation of the body and spiritual development through karate. They do not believe in kumite or competition of any sort. They are remarkably similar to what I have discovered in my journey. My home style is Shito Ryu but Egami's teachings are too good to pass over. So I remain with Shito Ryu (there are no Shoto Kai dojos anywhere close to me, I think there is only one in Canada, period). I am an outlier and my enrollment has dwindled over the years of course, since people expect something from karate and don't get quite that thing from my teaching. Anyone else here know of Egami's work, writings or the art and wish to discuss? The main concept is that applying karate to fighting destroys its purpose. They quote Funakoshi himself, who did not believe in competition. The idea was to train technique for self development, then if a fight happens, one is as prepared as one must be. Egami takes it further, into the domain of spiritual practice. In this he appears to differ from Funakoshi, who saw karate as art and as a practical defense system.

75 a month is the norm for Toronto. I imagine karate alone would be about that cost.

Why transition to shiko dachi before sprawling? I have no trouble sprawling from a medium height stance, and there usually isn't much time to lose. The shiko dachi I was taught wasn't a particularly nimble position for sprawling. My wrestling is pretty awful though, so I may be missing something here. The main idea is that by lowering your center of gravity you are harder to knock down, but if they do persist in grappling, you can put your hands behind their neck, drive their head down and gain the upper position. Yes, I mean a Sumo position,,,,shiko dachi means Sumo stance . Another great defense against a double is cat stance, Nekoashi Dach. In both cases, as they rush in, step back, move your chest forward, put one hand on the back of their head or neck and drive their head down (their neck muscles are no match for your full body weight). This stuffs the takedown. IF they are a good MMA fighter, they will set up the double with a head attack and then go low, but in self defense, you are usually dealing with a untrained dork. Folks who really know grappling are not likely to be fighting with you in the first place.

Solo training should take up 70 per cent of your karate. Instruction is the other bit! You take lessons then practice what you have learned. My advice is to approach your instructor and ask them what to do. Tell them you wish to practice between classes to improve and what things you should concentrate on. This is what I do now, my teacher gives me a quick lesson and then sends me out on my own for a few months to train what he showed me. I have been training for 30 years with him and he knows how to "read me", to identify the area that is holding me back. Your instructor will do the same, he can see your movements and advise you on the right focus. When I was first learning I did everything of course, and didn't follow this advice. I read books, I learned ideas, I did weightlifting, I tried to figure out how to fight 2 on 1, 2 on 3, 3 vs 2. I ran around like crazy experimenting to motivate myself. We all need to go through that stage too, open learning. Its unavoidable. Whatever you do, stick with it. Things don't start to come around for the first 2 years, in the 3rd year it starts to look decent. After that its wood shedding the basics. Don't quit after a year, like most do. Just making it past green belt is huge. Green belt is a decisive time, usually 1 year. Green belts in karate tournaments are easy to spot. They are the one's holding ice packs over a black eye! The power is developing, but there is no control. Its the worst tournament bracket for injuries I swear!

I think there is much in bassai dai other than the opening movement to comment on. The general bunkai flow, as taught is a. break through the circle by attacking with the first move, strike b. block a series of incoming punches from attackers who now are attacking from behind c. catch a kick and throw the person off balance d. get low and strike with lateral body shifting to avoid being knocked to the ground (with multiple attackers the ground is typically where it goes and where you don't want it to be!) People often ask about shiko dachi, or in some styles, horse riding stance, this is the perfect counter to a double leg takedown, for one, going low to stuff a takedown is how I view it) From shiko dachi you are set for the sprawl. e. deflect attacks by attacking the limb with shuto (funakoshi recounts using shuto to injure an attackers thigh in Karate Do: My Way of Life f. grab a strike and trap, then palm strike to the chest or neck g. break attackers knee h. grabbed and counter the grab with a double kidney punch The next part of the movement has some fantastic choreography and uses a thrust punch followed by and entry (irimi) to deflect a powerful attack The last section, the double punches are shown in a great movie, available on youtube called Obi. Probably the best karate movie I have seen. Punching to both the face and midsection at the same time, impossible to defend against (the risk is counter, which leaves you with no defense, so its a rather bold move)...however, in the movie you see its application. Finally, we trap incoming attacks (Shito Ryu kaga te) and resolve the kata by throwing the opponent and using a backfist to the downed opponent's face, these alternate, showing how to trap, unbalance and finish on the ground without being pulled down and ground fighting. I believe the throw is similar to "To Topple a Folding Screen", shown in Karate Do kyohan. I see bassai dai as a lower level kata which bridges the gap between the pinans , much like Kushanku Dai. It bridges to Matsumura Ro Hai, Seunchin and other nidan/sandan transitional kata. These in turn, open up higher kata. At the same time, even Mabuni said, 3 or 4 kata are all you need. If you know a half dozen well that is sufficient. I think bassai dai prepares you for higher kata, but does not expore the subtlety of Seunchin or Saipai. Cheers

Its nice to use a bokken as well.

This is a tough topic, but in my instruction, it was seen as an attack, striking. If you train this movement against the Muay Tai bag or another heavy bag, you will really drive the bag back and cause it to swing. It hits hard! The image I always had was being surrounded at the outset of Bassai Dai, by 8 opponents. The aim of the first move was to break out of the circle. As far as the comment on wrist throws, etc...we always need to remember that the setup for a wrist throw or something similar is always a strike. We hit hard, to the nose or throat, something stunning and disabling, then we use the wrist lock and attack. I would never coach a student to do a pure ju jutsu move without first hitting the opponent.

niseishi. This is the only kata I know which shares some pronunciation with what you describe. I practice Shito Ryu and this is all I can think of.

As I understand it, Jion, Jitte and Jiin, the temple katas, were used defending against blunt weapons. I am curious to see how this thread develops. I have always found them rather pinan-like and basic. It seems hard to find subtlety in them, they seem like a combination of basic movements. They are required for Shito Ryu Shodan, alongside Bassai Dai and pinan Godan. As such, I always had the impression, like Wanshu, that they were for training basics.

I agree, this discussion has been interesting. Yes, I can see that where things diverge is this idea of internals. And I do not know enough karate history to comment on whether the internals were part of the original kata. What I am saying is that I believe that I stumbled upon them, training alone and then being strongly influenced by my teacher's transition to aikido. Even within aikido, he is an outlier, although he is now a 6th Dan, the approach to aikido in Canada can be somewhat "mechanical" and sometimes "bunkai", yeh, there are a lot of "practical fighting" aikidoka about. My thoughts are that freedom of movement makes self defense effective because we are never static, that we genuinely respond to the opponent. I pray I will never have to test it in the real world in a life and death situation. But my sense is that free movement would serve me far better than assigned movements. Very different from Krav Maga or fighting karate and a world apart from tournament fighting. Thanks for the lively input, I enjoyed this as well. Onto the next thread! What is the meaning of bassai dai?

Oh and in response to GojuRyu above, yes absolutely, kata do preserve a historical fighting system. I like to think of each kata, such as Matsumura Rohai, as a system. If one masters this kata, then one fights this way. I do believe that the higher kata preserve tradition. Absolutely. I guess I am saying that we can take it further. I know that sounds a bit much, that some nubbin here in Canada can take kata further then the masters who possess far more knowledge than I will ever have. But I do think they are missing the boat.

I agree with the last statement, that there are many applications. It would be interesting to see how the kata were devised. There is not much discussion of this. I do not think that my view of kata is the same as the founders of the styles. I do believe that they intended practical application, no doubt about it. What I am saying is we can take the kata and develop movement. Getting back to bassai dai. The opening move really makes little sense. Its an awkward and bizarre way to fight. We never see this in hand to hand combatives, MMA or any other applied fighting. Its potential lies, for me, in learning unusual ways to move, ways which we would not happen upon simply engaged in boxing. Kata presents an opportunity to increase one's repertoire of movement. Remember, karate is a small piece of kung fu, a derivative. To understand kata, we need to go back to Pa Kua, Lo Cup, Shaolin and many traditions which used movement as a form of meditation and combat. If we really dig, at the heart of Chinese boxing are the internals, such as the Pin Yin, or the internal family. When we make karate a fighting art, purely we lose all of this content, what is also called Neijia. This to me is the most important aspect of kata, the internals. Through the internals, the fighting skills develop, but one is not focusing on self defense, but rather cultivation of the spirit. I don't think many teachers view it this way. There is an antagonism between Chinese origins and karate, nationalism is part of it, I am certain. But when karate developed, as a result of the colloquium of masters such as those discussed above, they abstracted elements of a greater system. They did not do this alone, Okinawan arts had their own history, and not much Neijia was preserved. Although when I see the "cat" beneath the waterfall, I cannot help but contemplate what he was doing there! If we strip kata down to applications only, I think we lose most of their value. If one wants to fight, then one should spend time fighting. I do not think kata is the best way to develop hand to hand skills. Battlefield training is, Krav Maga comes to mind. But how far can this take one? Where will the rewards be when one is 80 years old? It would be sad to see the kata completely lose their connection to Neijia, and this is happening. Notice how many people flock to yoga, Tai Chi and aikido who are interested in this internal aspect of things. I believe karate has this but has lost its way. One does not need a Tai Chi class to learn to move gracefully, slowly. My thoughts were informed by my work with life threatening illness, working with HIV, MS, cancer and other patients. I saw karate change abilities, and make movement possible again in many people. I did neglect to comment on the origins of my movement based approach. It happened over the years I spent teaching adapted karate to people with disabilities. I saw its therapeutic potential, then took the path from there. My own Sensei, who I still train with after 30 years, has now gone on to Aikido and holds a 6th dan. It is sad that so much of this is lost in kata now. Internals does not invoke the idea of ki necessarily. I am not sure I believe in chi, or ki. But I do believe in freedom of movement. Bruce Lee, someone who is quoted far beyond his station in things, even professes this, to let go of fixed form. Kata can provide the foundation to let go of fixed form.

I think that my view of kata and bunkai is not a product of my training. Kata are usually performed with attention to mechanics, to solidify basic technique. The bunkai seem like an endless inquiry, with some teachers focusing on certain things, and no one really certain what the original intention was. My concept of bunkai as applied movement is based on this freedom of movement concept which underlies this approach to karate. Free flowing karate movement with application is probably what I am talking about. Lets look at something simple. The first movement of something like Bassai dai. How does one analyze this? Is it a breaking through a circle of attackers? Is it a simple, direct, whole body attack, while lowering one's body to gain stability? What is this movement? For me, the more I worked it, it seemed like a way to drop down, to store energy for recoil into the next 4 movements, which are simple blocks. So I conceive of this as yang, contraction. I conceive of the next movements as yin, expansion. I contract, then I expand. Contraction stores energy, expansion releases it. Storing energy in the joints, a winding feeling with unwinding as the next movement set. There is no application in this per se, it simply shows us how to drop, store energy, then turn to quickly release it. Do I call this pre-WW2 karate? Do I call it my contribution? The latter seems rather ostentatious. The former seems vague. But something, to me, in karate became too rigid. Shigeru Egami (not my style, I practice Shito Ryu) hints at this. Ueshiba emphasizes this. Chinese boxing internals, maybe Tsin Yi or Lo Cup, Pa Kua, maybe they approach it. Something in karate happened along the way. One thing is the start and stop, instead of flowing movement. The other is closing the fist. When we close our fist, we cut off energy, that is my observation. Its like somewhere, as karate was assimilated into university student training to popularize it, it became rigid. Tight. Explosive. I don't feel good when I practice this way. Or to be more accurate, I practice the kata under my teacher's supervision in the classic way. But when I stay with that, I don't like how I feel. I need to relax the joints and flow from movement to movement. How does this relate to bunkai? Am I just dancing? Maybe. But my experiments with it over the years (with endless patience of lower belts being tossed around the dojo), show that the flowing movement in karate, the contraction and expansion, gives almost unlimited bunkai. So the bunkai arises out of the movement, not in a pre determined form, but in spontaneous action. So the bunkai and the movement are the same. What is upper rising block? Jodan uke? Funakoshi remarked that in his 80s, he finally understood the meaning of it. What did he refer to? One poster says that it is a strike, I do see it that way as well. It begins as a block. Then over time, we see that it can be used to trap the attackers arm, by moving downward and clearing the attacking limb. Then, later, I found it was Sen, as they strike, I release the Jodan uke which intercepts their attack, displacing it and striking. It is like hitting. First the hips, like a boxer. Then the figure 8 of the hips, with recoil. Then, abdominal compression. Bunkai, then in this way, is a natural extension of free body movement. I think I make this more complicated than it is. There are only so many ways a body can move. Freedom of movement is having a good repertoire of body motion, which responds to the attack. There is not so much, if he does X, I do Y, more a responsive, spontaneous element. I ignore fighting when I do bunkai, but I am absorbed in it completely. If I contract, expand, circle, compress, etc....then I can be fully in the moment. The problem with bunkai without freedom of movement is that it is static.

Hi All Thank you for your kind words and assertions from your own training. When we disagree that is comforting, because if we don't respect someone, we don't even bother to reply! So disagreements show respect and I enjoy hearing your views. I made a rather poorly thought out post on another thread and Patrick was kind enough to orient me on the atmosphere here, one of mutual respect. For that I thank him! I would post a video of this in action from youtube, but somehow that misses the mark, because its a feeling more than something visible that I am after. To summarize, how I stumbled into this, after nidan I headed off on my own to train for many years to find my own karate way. I started relaxing completely and changed some of the kata to emphasize the cutting motion of iado/aikido instead of blocking and began to use my strikes as extensions of energy. Then, after a few years of this, I stumbled upon the work of Shigeru Egami, the founder of Shoto Kai. His work resonated with me profoundly, like someone had read my thoughts and had travelled a similar path. He had an experience similar to Ueshiba, one of "enlightenment", a feeling of unity and connection with nature. This informed his training. His story is fascinating, he began as very hard core, built like Bruce Lee and a master of tsuki. To not get too pedantic (nothing worse than some middle aged white guy waffling on about karate philosophy!), I found that simple relaxed movement made me feel good. I started to do kata to find a peaceful, enjoyable, comforting feeling. I then was asked to teach again to help support the Hombu dojo when I arrived back in Toronto. This time I only focused on the softness of movement and the pleasure of movement. However, on the Muay Tai bag and the "Bob", I was hitting harder then I had before. Part of this is what my sensei had always admonished, relax, but it was a bit more. So when I speak of Bunkai exercises, by all means we do many hours of attacking and defending, extracting movement from the katas! I am a huge fan of Bunkai, but this time, I found that only moving a few inches was sufficient and that I could practice Sen no Sen by making contact with my opponent. So its taking movements from kata and finding the movement vectors and resolutions. So striking is not striking. To clarify, D. Suzuki, in writing on Zen mind, states, in Kyudo, one does not release the arrow, it releases itself. This profound "not doing" but letting movement happen on its own is very difficult to articulate in Western thought. But it lies at the heart of Japanese archery, calligraphy, iado and other practices. So Bunkai is real practice, they may well have a wooden knife in their hand, they may well be grabbing me for a double leg takedown, but how I respond is more soft, and harmonious. I believe this is what Egami was saying. I wish there was a "like" button here, I would have pressed it several times in this thread. I share many of your thoughts. Cheers!

There are many points of view on this subject. First, when I say move the body, I don't mean the torso, I mean the whole body including arms and legs and whatever. Kata teaches us movements. Second, rehearsing for real fighting is to me, the opposite of what karate teaches. Karate, to me, teaches self discipline, mindfulness, respect for others and a way of fitness. It is not for fighting. The more time you spend focusing on self defense, the worse the kata becomes, the worse the karate becomes. Karate is about cultivating love for all living beings. The self defense is icing on the cake. If karate is for self defense, as I thought 35 years ago when I first started training, then most of what it really gives is lost. I spent many years doing bunkai. I eventually outgrew it. Its a necessary step, but only a step along the way. If it becomes the goal, the teacher has made a great error. This is how I see it. But is it a necessary step? And does it help make your karate better in its rightful place? Absolutely. Should it be the goal of most kata? No. But is it a requirement along the way? Yes. I think we need to become comfortable with paradox in karate.

Regarding knowing how to move....there is no time in a real confrontation to think, or practice rehearsed moves. You either react well or react poorly. Real confrontations are messy, attacks come in obtuse angles, one is often off guard or surrounded by objects or people... The idea of Bunkai is inflated, that if dude X does Y, you do Z. Its more like it happens and at the end of it there is an outcome. This is why kata became prevalent. There is no thinking or rehearsal that will help in a real confrontation. It all happens fast! This is different from restraint, where your job is to bounce, or run in store security from shoplifters. That is restraint and follows more of a plan, but that even falls apart in reality. Knowing how to move the body is all you have. Hope this helps clarify.

I read the work of Kenwa Mabuni on this subject and his observations correspond with mine. One only needs to know 2 or 3 kata to understand the art. The rest of the time is spend with partner work and striking practice. That Mabuni, who was a living library of kata, would say we only need 2 or 3 kata to master our art is informative. Now this happened for me because my instructors live thousands of miles away from me and my local instructor forgets the kata, he is now a 6th dan in another art. So he teaches me how to move. My kata are: Seipai, Seunchin, Matsumora Ro Hai, Bassai Dai, Kushanko Sho, Tensho and I do the basic pinans. Its not the number of kata you know, its how deeply you know the one's you have. I also object to the idea of Bunkai. Bunkai is knowing how to move, its not "what to do if the opponent does X".