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Warrior Wednesday - Mind vs Body



[caption id="attachment_11040" align="alignright" width="300"]sword Image created using Bitmoji[/caption]

There are many times I know exactly what to do in martial arts, but my body loses part of the instructions along the way.


Sometimes it's a matter of my muscle strength not being fully developed yet. For a long time, I'd fall over. I've been working on my core and it's helping when my problem ankle isn't the cause. My right Achilles tendon regularly gets inflamed and is a jerk.


Sometimes the brain just gets in the way entirely and tries to micromanage things. This usually results in a meltdown as my body tries to figure out what my brain wants when my brain isn't entirely sure because it doesn't understand what Sensei is saying or doing things on the opposite side of the body just feels wrong.


And sometimes I know exactly what to do and have done it successfully many times before, but for some unknown reason I can't currently do it correctly. This is the case with Morote Tsuki, kata #6 in the Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei set of the Muso Jikiden Eishen Ryu style of Iaido. I'm both dropping my tip and instead of getting under my sword properly while keeping it on the line, I'm waving the thing about like a fool. It's possible that in trying to put higher level flow, timing, etc into my kata, I have taken steps backward. At any rate, I hope to get back to doing it properly.


I'm at this level where I'm not supposed to be pausing as much now but things shouldn't fall apart completely when going slightly faster. Growth often looks like this though. Your toddler, who is normally happy, goes through periods where he or she just can't behave and has meltdowns over ridiculous things like that there's cheese in their mac and cheese.


So hopefully things will come together for me soon. All I can do is keep trying to do it correctly. Maybe I'll just practice those particular pieces like fixing a difficult part in a song.


Is there anything you're fighting with right now that you know you can do but it just isn't working for some reason?


Salut,

R~
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