The journey continues

18 months on from my last blog post. In a nut shell:

• We moved from Wrentham, MA to Mountain View CA in March 2007
• I started work as a senior designer in Google in April 2007
• I am training in Ninjutsu again - more specifically Bujinkan Budō Taijutsu which is a form of Ninjutsu.

School: http://www.warriorfriend.com/

TaeKwon-Do
When I first moved to California I was delighted to find that there was an excellent ITF TaeKwon-Do school on my doorstep run by Mr Morris who I have enormous respect for. I trained with Mr Morris for about 9 months, but during this time I spent more time recovering from injuries than training and my training ended with a tear of the meniscus of my left knee. Scans showed that the cartilage in my knees had worn down prematurely and that this level of strain is no longer an appropriate activity for me to do.

Injury and acceptance
The problem was that my body knew the techniques after many years of training in the art but it was no longer able to perform them. I was throwing techniques with the passion and force of a 20 year old and tearing my hips and knees in the process. After getting to the point of having martial arts, and specifically TaeKwon-Do, as part of my identity it was shocking to feel that this may no longer be the case and my relationship to this part of my life may have to change.

Bujinkan
While recovering I started to research other martial arts available in the area which may take less of a toll on my hips and knees. I was very fortunate to discover the Bujinkan school that I currently train at just 10 minutes away from me. I started there in February 2008 and I am very lucky to train not just with the instructor, Dave, but with all the very experienced guys there who are patient enough to help me get my head around this very cerebral art.

Kamae
There has been some pleasure in learning some fundamentals again, thinking about the groundwork. In this case it is all about focusing on your kamae. At its most basic level it is a stance, but where as in other martial arts there are fixed stances, eg. sitting stance, parallel stance, walking stance etc. , there is no such rigidity in bujinkan which acknowledges that you may not be in a familiar stance during combat and you need to be able to cope with techniques in unusual positions. Kamae encompasses your posture, ability to move freely and your relaxed state of mind. The movements in bujinkan are based around keeping good kamae as you move and making sure your opponent is in bad kamae.

Remember when you walked along a wall and a friend came along and pushed you? You try to stay on and at a certain point you just have to jump off. Think about that feeling at this point just before you accept your fate that you are going to have to fall off. The feeling of helplessness, verging on inevitability that you are going to have to succumb to your fate. This is the position you aim to have your opponent in.

It is when we are in good kamae that the technique just seems to take care of itself and feels effortless. It is easier said than done.

Much of the training is focused on impacting the tactile, visual and proprioceptive inputs to the opponents brain. As our sense of reality is determined by our sensory inputs, we are aiming to alter the sense of reality during combat. By confusing the opponent in this way they can quickly lose their aggression and feel fear and helplessness. This is one of the reasons why the ninja were attributed with other-wordly powers and of course they quite happily encouraged this thinking.

I have only just scratched the surface of this art and I am looking forward to seeing where this new path I have begun on my journey takes me.

Nick
White belt