Ichimonji No Kata – Raiko No Kata – Kukishin Dakentaijutsu

On Sunday it was nice to see one of Marcus Dwyers Dan grade students, Philip, down for an extra classes and he had some nice movement and is a definite credit to Marcus. My uncle Daivid, who was over from Washington DC, came to have a look and seemed intrigued having only really done taekwondo before.

We did some basic forward backward rolling and added no-hands and then the wearing of a sword. After that we had a look at Ichimonji no kata and went into henka from there involving shuriken, leaping and throwing.

Before break we spent some time doing the 6 solo cuts from Raiko No Kata with iaito emphasing the grip and kamae between cuts. This kata – the “Sanshin” of sword – is turning out to be something I’m going through every week and will continue to do so. I went through on the 2 occasions I trained with Someya Sensei in Japan and so I’m using the classes to consolidate it in my own movement. Like taijutsu and shuriken solo basics, the benefits of this solo form really do come out in other ways the more you train in them.

After break we played with some of the Kukishin feeling Alex has been doing the past month, introducing the bo for in-close stuff and wrapping uke up in it and the very clothes he’s wearing. Philip had some lovely movement here as we got into a sort of free-flowing feeeling with multiple punches coming at us.

My class cancelled next week due to Alex’s “Back from Japan” Seminar

 - by Ali Martinez