Cosine Thoughts

Odd discovery today. Having a stiff neck provides excellent incentive for good posture during Kyudo. Woke up with a neck so stiff that virtually any movement caused pain. It was amazing how good this made at maintaining my posture through a practice of the Taihai movements in my basement. Can't say I recommend getting a stiff neck on purpose. But if you happen to wake up with one anyway, I can recommend practicing Kyudo while it still hurts.

So, I just took my car in for my first EV maintenance. We're at the 1 year mark and almost 12k km.When we bought the car we got more or less scammed into a package of 10 "battery checks". And, it seems like this is the bulk of the maintenance #1. So, our final cost was $0. That being said, my dealership tried to talk me into a brake maintenance for $270CAD and an air filter changed for $70CAD. The air filter change I can do myself for a fraction of the price. And so I will. The brake service... now here is the fun bit. It includes working the pads and rotors which, because I have an EV and only about 12k KMs on it, are in perfect condition. And the tech says that the caliper pins are bone dry. Honestly, I doubt that they even inspected the pins. But, regardless... they basically tried to charge me $260 before tax to lube up some pins which would take less than 15 minutes. In all honesty... I probably would have paid for both services if they had charged reasonably for the...

Right now my biggest (though certainly not only) issues are the fundamentals. The basics. Posture, speed and form. I know form is a very broad term, but I'm talking about specific forms like my ENSOU, or even TENOUCHI. On the posture front, I'm a software guy. I sit at a desk all day and have developed a bad posture for years. This isn't impossible to overcome. But it is far from trivial. And breaking out of a good posture mid performance can make an otherwise acceptable showing into a bad one. Correcting my posture, similarly, draws attention to its absence prior. On the speed front, this isn't technically a fundamental, but it is an area of focus at the moment. I'm doing video shinsa this year. And apparently I need from my YU at HONZA until my HANARE on my OTOYA to be about 3 minutes. Right now... closer to 4. My pauses between movements tend to be too long. I like to make my pauses pronounced to punctuate the division between one movement and the next. And this ...

So, we're well past my first year. I decided to take the video shinsa for shodan at the end of the year. We also, have a new cohort joining the dojo. Things are getting interesting. This journey has not been at all what I expected. First, I had expected Kyudo to be both more and less introspective. Our dojo focuses more on Taihai, or the ceremonial/performance aspect of the art. And that comes with a lot of concern for harmony and beauty as a group. Making movements up to shai (firing line) in unison as much as possible.  At the same time the focus on the self is infinitely more than I could have anticipated as well. Posture, breathing, form and movements. Everything seems to have a right way of doing it. And none of those "right ways" come naturally. Beyond that there is also etiquette. Even things you might not associate with the practice itself are a part it. And all of these things then also need to be in harmony with everything else. Needless to say, I have a long wa...