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Kyudo - Summary through to August 28th

OK. Lots of feedback and lessons in the past several classes and garage sessions.

At least half YUGAERI is like 100% now. Many more cases of full rotation and almost all of them are actually 75% or more. 

I can't stress how much "don't try to get YUGAERI works". Fix the things you're told to fix and it will come. Will your SEMPAI/SENSEIS focus on a lot of other things before you start seeing progress? Probably. Most of us have more important form, posture or movement related issues that need to be fixed first.

I say this because the one thing I did change, I thought would actually lead to me losing my rotation again. I've been dropping the bow a lot lately (sorry bow 😓). So, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't unconsciously allowing my grip to loosen or open at HANARE. Basically, pulling some of my focus on KAI from focusing on the progression into ZANSHIN and putting a little bit into making sure my grip remains unchanged. Did absolutely nothing to my YUGAERI. No better, no worse. 

Which means that when I'm dropping the bow, the fault is probably a momentary and infrequent failure as opposed to a subconscious attempt at improving YUGAERI. The plus side of learning this is that my subconscious has no need to make such an attempt any more either.

Other notes, the bow still causes me to bring my whole right arm toward the left at DAISAN some times. I need to put a bit more conscious thought into holding that.

Additionally, I need to continue the rotation in the right arm.

A point that was brought up from the Vancouver seminar by one of the attendees was also to keep my YUNDE "flat" when raising the bow and through to release.

And lastly, my ENSOU isn't round enough according to one SEMPAI. This may be an over correction. One of the instructors in the past had told me to extend my ENSOU out more. Which means my arms straighten a bit. One problem with memory is accuracy though. I remember the advice, but I don't remember the exact shape of my arms before and after the advice. So I can only assume that I have over assimilated that advice as time has gone on. 

I also recorded myself with the GOMUYUMI in the basement and my shinsa timing is going to need some of work. I'm at or just above 3 minutes with the GOMUYUMI. And, with the GOMUYUMI I'm not actually doing TORIKAKE with a bow or working on a proper release/etc... so I have to assume actual times would be worse.

Lastly, from my garage session videos, I can see a lot of things improving. But I'm developing a tendency to not raise the bow straight up in UCHIOKOSHI.

We're coming down to the wire on shinsa prep. I've got 2 more Saturday classes before video recording.

I'll probably focus on TAIHAI practice + shinsa timing practice tonight. I like to relax my arms before dojo days and the timing is of critical importance right now. I'm going to go check my prior shinsa footage to get some rough timing markers as well. 

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