It certainly looked like bojutsu- the Japanese art of the six foot stick.
You had body postures, strikes, and alternating methods of using the length of the stick to control distance and timing.
It was just Japanese stick fighting right?
No, there is something more.
But one had to get to this level.
Not in terms of status, or time in grade, but in ability through the kihon of bojutsu.
The basic use of the stick.
When one joins our dojo, while taijutsu is the focus, one also begins to learn bojutsu.
Is this odd or out of place?
Aren’t those things supposed to be black belt only level?
Only if one views the stick as just that- a stick.
At this basic level we are looking at two areas of using the stick.
The first is as a training tool to learn total body coordination and unified movement.
This idea in our movement that the upper and lower half of the body should be moving at the same time, in perfect harmony.
Bojutsu furigata is the ability to spin the stick around to control distance and timing, to create openings, it is part of the bojutsu kihon.
In order to spin the stick you have to be able to do it in timing with the feet and arms, failing this, you hit yourself. Bojutsu is a great tool to teach you that, along with angles, which can sometimes be hard to approach and see early on- the stick is used as a training tool to teach that.
Well, as long as you are learning that, we might as will start learning the other basics of bojutsu. And for many the effective use of the stick is all that is needed, and truly the Japanese methods of using stick are amazing in themselves.
Yet, in this way beyond kihon and kata, the stick is used to transmit an aspect of the martial arts through the *straightness* and *directness* of the stick.
The stick as a tool to create a feeling and understand what is going on, a method of transmission.
Kasumi no bo.
A transmission of jitsu, a transmission of feeling that needs to be felt.
Something of feeling, a way of doing things that can be carried over to taijutsu, or other training tool as in they are all the same- just a way of moving the body naturally. Once you experience it, you have it.
So why not just jump right in, right away?
My turn to get up and work on some bojutsu.
Receiving various attacks- ukemi.
In theory, assuming that I am truthful with myself, and am able to approach this moment with the correct heart of being in the moment, and allowing myself to experience what is being thrown against me, I might be able to have the perception of what is going on.
If I don’t know how to receive ukemi with the bo, how to use it, the kihon, I’ll be busy *thinking* about how to do that, or moving trying to do that, instead of allowing myself to experience what is coming my way in that moment.
Which if done correctly means I will always come up on the short end of the stick.
Maybe not thinking of kasumi no bo, as a set of techniques, but as an art to be grabbed from the heart.
See you on the mat!