A step at a time...maybe that's the problem

It rained all day. And then it stopped. The sun came out and the clouds drifted off to the southeast. The water just sits there, collecting in pools. I suppose the ground is still mostly frozen. Everywhere you look there are puddles reflecting the skeletal images of winter trees and bare bushes drooping by the side of the trail. Off in the woods, it's damp and the swamp has overflowed the old gravel and dirt road that cuts through the conservation area on its way to the lake. But last year they put some stumps along the side and nailed down some planks so you can make it around the flooded part if you're careful and take your time--the planks are narrow and a little twisted, and the stumps shift a bit in the ground.

How the last mawashi technique in
Saifa often begins.

On the north trail, you have to step carefully from rock to rock to avoid the mud and standing water. In the spring this stretch of the trail is swampy, with skunk cabbage and small wild flowers that cover the rocks and provide a home to a host of little insects, but in the summer it all dries up again, and then the hikers chart a "social path" around the rocks, reconnecting with the trail as it begins to climb up the nearest hill. With the damp and the cold temperatures, however, the rocks are slippery. You have to pick your way cautiously across this little boggy area, scouting out your route, balancing on each slick stone, looking for flat surfaces or somewhere you can get a purchase, as they say, carefully placing one foot in front of the other.

One step and then pause, and then the hands come up, almost like a counter-weight. For some reason it made me think of open training time in Okinawa, when you watched senior students toiling with the nigiri-game (gripping jars) across the dojo floor. At least that's what it reminded me of with the slow and careful placement of each step, keeping balanced and steady. Beginners were over to the side, carefully trying to match their steps with the footprints outlined in white on the floor, shifting their weight from one foot to the other as they practiced walking in sanchin dachi.

I wondered how this sort of care--focusing on one step at a time, one thing at a time--informed our practice of kata and, ultimately, our understanding of the techniques of kata, bunkai. I understand the need to break complex movements down into smaller, more manageable bits, sometimes separating the steps and movements of the feet from whatever the hands and arms seem to be doing, particularly when we're learning something, but I wonder whether this piecemeal approach to the teaching of kata has a detrimental effect on someone's ability to understand the applications of the techniques themselves?

I have often watched senior students, and even teachers, do kata in this sort of fragmented, staccato manner: First they step, then pivot, then the left hand moves, then the right hand moves, then the right hand moves again, turning over as it drops to the knee, then the right hand is brought up to the hip, then the left hand rotates as the body turns squarely to the front, and finally they both push forward. This is how you might describe the last technique in Saifa kata, the step into cat stance (neko ashi dachi) with the mawashi-like arm movements, as it is often demonstrated. The problem is that in attempting to analyze kata movement when it is performed in this fashion--the way we learn kata as a beginner--we often assume that there should be an explanation or bunkai for each separate movement. And this is a problem.

When we do kata this way--breaking each technique into smaller and smaller pieces--and then attempt to assign meaning to each of these pieces, we fail to see the technique as a whole. We fail to see how the arms and legs--indeed the whole body--functions as a whole. We have, in fact, put breaks or gaps into what should be a single, fluid movement. What should be seen as a final, head-twisting technique attached to the previous series of moves (beginning with the sweep and over-hand hammer fist) is instead seen as a series of individual blocks against multiple attacks, culminating in a final push.

It's fine to take the movements and techniques of kata apart in order to teach them. This is the way we learn most things. But you have to put them back together at some point. There really should be no gaps. Someone who has just learned a kata looks as if they are picking their way across a boggy meadow, stepping carefully from rock to rock. Someone who has been practicing the same kata for years, however, should be fluid, without any discontinuity in their movements--you see the connection between the arms and the legs. When they step into the last technique of Saifa kata, for
example, turning to the front in cat stance, there are really only two movements: one to gather the opponent's head, one hand on the chin and the other on the back of the head; and the second to twist the head and attack it with a knee kick. Two techniques. If you were beating time on a drum, you would hear two thumps, and that's it--one, two. Of course, the way most people perform kata they look as though their feet had sunk in the mud and their hands were carefully parting the reeds to get a better view. If we're aware of this, however, if we keep this in mind, maybe it will help when we go back to look at kata applications, and, in fact, maybe it will help us avoid looking as though we're picking our way over half-submerged rocks in a marsh.