Miyamoto Musashi famously showed up tardy to matches so that he could exploit his enemy’s anger about being disrespected. This gambit was used on more than one occasion, most notably against Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryu Island. Musashi unbalanced his opponents, as surely as does the opening movement of a throw in which the opponent’s center of gravity is pulled or pushed ahead or behind their body.  Of course, it’s impossible to isolate the effect of anger in Musashi’s victories. He did, after all, have other advantages including range and athleticism. But, clearly, he thought these were beneficial gambit.

Humans are defined by our emotional lives. We are the only species that can achieve the same physiological state from thinking about an emotional event as from directly experiencing it. Emotions are both necessary and, potentially, deleterious. Here are a couple approaches to emotion that one shouldn’t take:

1.) The Mr. Spock: This is the Vulcan approach of purging all emotion. It turns out that emotions are essential for human decision-making. Individuals who, due to damage to a portion of their pre-frontal lobes, are emotionless usually can’t function in society. Such individuals are known to be paralyzed by indecision because emotion is what tips the scales for us when he have to decide. Furthermore, they may fail to comply with social mores such as the need to wear pants because… well, why the hell not?

2.) The Ned Flanders: Named for the quirky hyper-nice character in The Simpsons, this involves suppression of negative emotion and expression of joy. I was recently reading about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and was surprised to see mention of the damaging health effects of “excessive joy” described just as were those for depression and excessive anger. However, lack of balance is lack of balance.

If those are the approaches one shouldn’t take, what approach should one take?

First, one should recognize that the danger lies at the extremes of emotion. Therefore, one should train oneself to check emotional extremes in one’s daily life. This requires self-awareness to catch the outburst (or otherwise) sooner. The key lies in injecting perspective into the heart of the matter. Ultimately, there’s no reason to get too distraught about anything because in the scheme of life and death, it doesn’t matter.

Second, one should strive to cultivate mu, or nothingness, which is not about suppressing mental states as about letting them evaporate. “Suppressing” is an action, and, as such, is inherently at odds with mu, and can no more work than thinking about not thinking.

Third, one must recognize that perfecting emotional experience is a lifelong challenge, and cannot be achieved rapidly or without a certain degree of agony along the way.

Someone I train with in kobudō recently mentioned that they’re going to be teaching a self-defense class, and this made me think about the subject. Years ago I did occasionally teach self-defense classes, but it’s neither something I’ve done in a while nor have I given it much thought lately. However, it’s an important topic and deserves consideration.

As I train daily in a martial art, it might be a confusing when I say I hadn’t thought about self-defense lessons lately. “Martial arts” and “self-defense” are concepts tightly bound together in the minds of most. I’m not saying that I don’t think about the protection of myself and those around me- I do that all the time. What I am saying is that, while there are some shared features, practicing martial arts is a much different beast than learning self-defense for reasons I’ll elaborate below.

Before getting into the differences, let me talk about one critical similarity between martial arts and self-defense. In both, the most important and effective weapon, far and away, hands down, nolo contendere, is the brain and affiliated sensory organs. The further out you can recognize a threat, the more likely you are to survive, and the more numerous your options are for dealing with it. Most of us pack so much into our lives that it’s easy to move through life in a mental haze, thinking about the afternoon or tomorrow or what happens in three years when a child has to go off to college.  If you go about your life in such a haze, you’re sacrificing several perimeters of protection.

Awareness not only allows you to see what’s coming, it also makes you a less appealing target. Criminals will always go for someone with his or her head down in a reverie over someone appearing alert. Note: I’m not saying you should become borderline paranoid. (That will actually make you tenser, and, thus, work at cross purposes – not to mention adversely impacting your quality of life.) Make a game of it. There’re many benefits of being aware beyond self-defense; you might just see an old college friend you haven’t talked to in years.

Let me say, despite having done it, I don’t believe I’m an ideal person to teach self-defense lessons because, as a 230+ pound 5’11″ man (not to mention a former cop with 20 years martial arts experience), I won’t necessarily inspire confidence in a 120 lb 5’4″ woman that she can make the techniques I am demonstrating work for her. That confidence is crucially important in teaching self-defense. 

 That brings us to:

Difference #1: The first difference between teaching self-defense and martial arts is that the techniques of self-defense must be so simple and easily learned that anyone can go home from the class confident that they can do it.

One might ask, “If you can devise such simple techniques, why would you teach more complex / challenging techniques that have to be practiced hundreds of times intensely (sometimes of the course of years) to be mastered.”  Speaking with respect to combative martial arts that historically developed to win in battles, the reason for more complex or physically challenging techniques is that they’re valuable for developing the skills of defeating increasingly skilled opponents. (Outside the purview of this discussion, there are also martial arts that exist primarily for the purpose of either entertainment or sport that might have techniques that are either complex or require high levels of fitness because those techniques get more points in a tournament or a higher likelihood of a part in a kung fu flick.)

 With respect to self-defense and dealing with skilled attackers there is bad and good news. The bad news is that the technique you learn in a self-defense class is probably not going to work against a highly skilled opponent. Take the self-defense mainstay (and for good reason), knee to testicles. A skilled attacker may blade himself (turn his hips so the groin is not exposed) to negate this, he will control the distancing so as to not loiter in a position where the technique can work, and, even if you manage to apply the knee strike, he’s probably been hit in the junk before and will keep fighting through it. If your objective is to be able to cope with highly skilled individuals, you must take a martial art and you must practice regularly. Periodic self-defense lessons will not do the trick.

Before you say, woe-is-me – self-defense lessons are a waste, here is the good news. Highly skilled attackers are: a.) rare, b.) don’t tend to go around attacking people at random. They’re often martial artists and / or soldiers. Martial artists tend to be polite and respectful because that is part of the training. Also, it’s because they know the secret of the circle of ass-kickery. The secret is that no matter who you are, no matter how tough you are, no matter how often you train, there is someone who – on any given Sunday – can kick your ass. If you are 200 pounds of lean muscle and you train for four hours every day, that person may just be a little 120 pound Asian dude who’s been training four hours a day for the last 50 years. (And the little Asian dude probably has a wife, so that’s where it becomes a circle of ass-kickery and not a pyramid.)  Chances are good that the person who attacks you will be unskilled and not too bright.

A random attacker is also likely to be unsure of himself and to test the waters. That can work as an advantage. Testing of the waters can take many forms.

 “didn’t we go to school together?”

“do you have a light?”

“can you spare some change?”

“do you see any jumper cables in my trunk?”

This is the time to be confident and shut things down before they become an attack. As with dogs, the louder the bark, the less likely they have bite. The stone cold killer is not going to give warning, and so you can rest assured that anyone who bothers to test the waters can be shut down if you are just willing to demonstrate your willingness to make a scene. Don’t be meek. Talk clearly and louder than he, and don’t be afraid to rapidly escalate into a real scene if they persist.

This may seem a little hostile or paranoid. After all, the guy asking for a light or change probably just wants a light or change? Probably so. But there’s a possibility, and there’re lots of examples of this in the police blotters, that while you’re rooting around in that purse, he’s going to clobber you, and drag you off for rape or murder. If you are so inclined: give at the office, give at the charity drive, give at the cash register at the supermarket, give to your heart’s content, but don’t hand a stranger money. If you can hand them money, they are way too close.

Difference #2:  As a practitioner of a combative martial art, I train to end threats decisively. The techniques I practice are designed to completely and utterly incapacitate a person who presents a threat to life and limb. If I kick an opponent in the leg and he falls down, my training impels me to get on top of him: pinning him to the ground, choking him unconscious, or punching him in the base of the skull until he stops moving. If I can still move, I’m taught to keep trying to make sure that the attacker can’t.

In teaching self-defense, the objective of the techniques should be to allow the victim to flee. In a martial arts class, my advice to someone who knocked their training partner to the ground might be to straddle them and apply a choke. To a self-defense class audience, I would say, run like the wind. There is a risk involved, the attacker may come after you and be enraged when he does, or he may hurt someone else. However, given the lack of training, your chances are better if you try to get away and call the cops. If your objective is to be able to protect others, self-defense classes won’t do. You must take a martial art and train constantly.  

This brings up two important lessons to be conveyed to the self-defense student about flight and/or fight. We all know you don’t fight over a wallet or a car. Even if you’re a skilled combatant, it’s not worth the risk.

However, there are a couple of redlines beyond which, if you can’t flee you, you have to fight at least until you are freed up to flee.  a.) Never, ever – I’m serious about this - never go with an attacker. He wants to take you someplace because he doesn’t feel confident doing whatever he wants to do on the spot. Use that fact. Run, yell, run while yelling, fight, yell, fight while yelling, but don’t get in a car or be led away from the scene. b.) Never, ever – I’m serious about this - never let an attacker put you in a position that constrains your mobility.

“Get on your knees!”

“No.”

“Drop your pants around your ankles so you can’t run for help.”

“Hell No!”

“I’m just going to tie you up so I can make a getaway.”

“Absolutely, positively, NO!”

Same drill: They are doing this because they aren’t comfortable with your ability to flee or fight. Use that to bolster your confidence to do exactly one or both of those things.

Those are the lines in the sand. They want your car? Sure. They want your purse? Enjoy.

A note on weapons: Weapons (pepper spray, stun guns, guns, etc.) offer a great potential value for equalizing the tactical balance between attacker and defender. However, no weapon is a magic wand. You cannot drop a weapon in your purse, forget about it, and think it will have any – but a detrimental – effect on your health and safety. You must be able to place a hand on it in an instant. You must practice getting to it. If you carry a firearm, you must train with it. This does not just mean going to the range every year or so and shooting paper targets from a Weaver stance. It also means practicing weapon retention, drawing the firearm, and being able to shoot from close confines where a traditional stance (with arms extended) is vulnerable to being disarmed.    

Some Additional Considerations For Self-Defense:

1.)    If you’re robbed, toss and run. If you keep your bills together with a money clip, all the better (i.e. it’ll have weight and will carry further.) Do the same with car keys.

2.)    Your attacker need not look like a scruffy Billy Bob Thornton, he may look like Brad Pitt.

3.)    Know that you will get exhausted much more quickly in a fight or struggle than you might expect. While a higher fitness level can’t hurt, you might be the type to do Ironman Triathlons in your spare time and still find that 30 seconds into a fight you’re completely exhausted and ready to puke. This is because people tense up and breathe too shallowly when they’re in fear for their lives. Habitual practice of deep breathing under stressful conditions may be of some service (though not as good as sparring.)

There is a spot about three inches below the navel that all martial artists learn to concentrate upon. As the title implies, there are many different romanized spellings and pronunciations for it, but it’s the same location. Throughout this post I will call it the tanden (the Japanese romanization/pronunciation).

The tanden is significant for several reasons. We’ll start with the ethereal and work toward the  concrete. In Chinese medicine, it is considered the primary source of the internal life force (i.e. chi or ki). Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) tells us that if we want to build a fire in our tanden, we need to foster strong and stable kidney-chi. For one thing, this means we need to control fear and its influence in our lives, as fear is associated with the kidney-bladder network. I won’t get into what else it means because it gets into how often we should flog proverbial dolphins and how we should go about hanky-panky. Suffice it to say, a vibrant kidney channel is said to facilitate strength in the tanden.

Practitioners of Zen Buddhism will note that the tanden is a familiar concept in their domain as well. This brings one to a second point, and that is the importance of pulling one’s breath down toward one’s tanden. Anyone who has engaged in sparring knows the dangers of shallow breathing that extends one’s chest only. This can happen when one’s body tenses up. Therefore, one must train to habitually bring one’s breath deep into the abdomen in order to prevent embarrassing situations like passing out without one’s opponent actually physically touching one.

A third important point is that one’s center of gravity (center of mass) is approximately at the tanden when one’s posture is good. For those who’ve forgotten high school physics class, the center of gravity is the point at which a body behaves as if all its mass is concentrated at one spot no matter how unevenly  the mass is distributed. We know that the center of gravity need not be on or inside the body (but when it isn’t one is off-balance and has to maintain a lot of extra energy to remain upright.)  Center of gravity is a fundamental concept in grappling. One must be aware that if one’s torso is not upright one is off-balance, but, by the same token, if one can inflict this condition on the opponent, they will be off-balance.

It is worth putting some effort into developing one’s tanden, and in thinking of it as one’s focal point in the practice of martial arts.

In older martial arts one sees frequent reference to the natural world. This may be most easily recognized in kung fu styles like Eagle Claw, Mantis, or Shaolin’s 5-Animal style, but in Japanese kobudō there are many techniques whose names refer to emulation of animals, plants, and other elements or forces of nature.

There is one reason for this that I will only briefly touch upon, and that is that there was once greater secrecy about technique than there is today. Modern martial arts, such as judō, tend to favor more readily apparent technique names, e.g. “large inner sweep” or “hip throw”, because it aids in communication and being archaic offers no real benefit. In the old days, a name like “inlet waves”  or “rock crush” could serve as a reminder to those initiated into the school without telling an outsider about the technique that they might find used against them.

Perhaps the more important reason for such naming is that nature provides abundant lessons about how to stay safe. Everything that exists in nature is supremely adapted to having the best possible odds of survival. Take, for example, the technique from Kukishinden-ryū bikenjutsu called Kocho-gaeshi. The “kocho” part of this name refers to a butterfly. One may say, wait… a butterfly? Isn’t that one of the most vulnerable creatures existing in nature? It’s fragile and yet brightly colored to attract attention.  Try taking a photo of one in flight (without a tripod, a motion sensor, and 40+ hideous shots to get one that turns out decently.) The butterfly’s enemies face the same problem with its erratic and completely unpredictable flight patterns. 

I picked kocho-gaeshi to write about because it’s one of many techniques that tell us to move lightly and this may be anathema to one’s mindset as a martial artist. A writer fails when writing dialogue if all his or her characters sound the same. A martial artist fails if all of their techniques are delivered with an indistinguishable feel. If one practices Kukishin-ryū Dakentaijutsu, and one’s Yama Arashi (“Mountain Storm”) feels identical to one’s Setto (a technique meant to emulate the feel of a branch being broken by building snow), but is only different in the physical steps, your practice is probably quite rudimentary.

A Westerner studying a Japanese ryū-ha (school) may suffer a huge disadvantage. Often times, a school’s techniques assume a certain skill-set generic to many schools.  In the old days, bugeisha would have likely had such skills before being initiated into the detailed [secret] teachings of a particular school - perhaps at a young age. Even in a modern setting, there are throws that a Japanese person would have been exposed to some variation of in a Judō unit in physical education. 

For example, the school of Kotō-ryū Koppōjutsu has techniques that counter a hip throw and uchi mata  (inner thigh attack), but these basics are not explicitly listed as fundamentals in the denshō. Because of this, a backwards situation can take hold in which the counter is being learned before one is competent in the throw. Of course, if one is not training with people who are highly skilled in performing the throw, one can never master a technique that counters the throw.  

Sadly, I must admit that I began developing competency in many general throws much later than I should have (in some cases quite recently), and thus practicing techniques like  Ō gyaku (referring to the Kotō-ryū Shoden Gata technique that counters a hip throw and not the straight-arm lock and control fundamental pronounced the same way) was of limited value when I initially learned them.

It is not only throws and unarmed fundamentals that can be lacking from a bugeisha‘s arsenal of techniques. In learning a weapon ryū-ha, one may practice basic multi-directional cutting or striking (depending upon the weapon), but this may not be to sum total of the basics assumed to be known by one starting to learn that school’s techniques. The founder likely expected that one would be competent in parrying and properly guarding before one began to learn the school’s first scroll techniques, in addition to being able to attack effectively.

Many schools don’t really have a set of basics formally associated with them, and, when that is the case, it may be easy to recognize that one needs to spend time learning fundamental skills generic across many schools. However, if there are formally outlined / described fundamentals, one may be more likely to underestimate the body of assumed capabilities that the techniques require.

One of the worst habits of martial artists, myself included, is the badmouthing of other practitioners, styles, and lineages. Like many bad habits, it results from a combination of virtue and vice. On the one hand, martial artists tend to be passionate about what they do, and they find it disconcerting when schlubs engage in activities that seem to bring disrepute on martial arts in general, such as by having  the following training career.

Day 1: Read a book / watch a video about martial arts

Day 2: Open a dōjō

Day 3: Take an online “Masters” Course in Martial Arts

Day 4: Appear in a viral YouTube video doing something completely idiotic that, because of its comedic value, gets roughly four orders of magnitude more hits than the videos by the legitimate martial artist who wrote the book you read on Day One – and who would have told you not to do what you were doing in the video on Day Two if you’d gone to his or her class.

Day 5: Switch to a new style because the one you “started” Monday is old hat. 

While badmouthing may provide some level of temporary emotional satisfaction, it doesn’t really fix the problem. Instead of having a few dweebs in the martial arts, there will instead be a few dweebs plus a bunch of pissers and moaners. I don’t think anyone should feel the need to make up for the shortcomings of another or feel that the actions of another bring disrepute to their art. However, if one feels that way, the effective counter is to be supremely diligent in one’s training and work to eliminate pettiness from one’s life so as to be a shining counter-example of what a martial artist can be. 

There is another origin of badmouthing that is pure pettiness, and that is a desire to feel better about oneself by diminishing others. One reason this cause is worse is that it is less focused, and is, therefore, more delusional. Instead of pointing to an individual who is engaged in nefarious practices, one may target for derision entire schools, lineages, or arts. One is much more likely to be wrong when one starts generalizing like this, and that is why I say it is delusional. I’m defining “delusional” as either thinking a thing is true that is not or thinking one knows something for certain that one does not. Delusion is anathema to strategic pursuits and, thus, martial artists should seek to eliminate it from their worldview.

It should be noted that this pettiness comes from the same place as a whole lot of ”isms” such as racism, nationalism, and Islamism. It is a means people use to avoid turning the harsh light of self-evaluation upon themselves and taking up the difficult struggle of becoming a better person. Martial arts are about nothing if not sticking a mirror in one’s face and saying, “this is what you are –  good and bad – and if you want to live you’d better humbly recognize the unvarnished limitations of the good and accept the burden of struggling to make the bad better.” Given that, one should not waste time with the crutch of thinking, “I’m a member of X group and at least we’re better than Y group.”  This isn’t easy. I’ve seen erudite people,who pride themselves on being open-minded about issues like race and gender, go on ad hominem rants about people who live in trailers or belong to certain political parties all the while not realizing that they hadn’t become enlightened, they’d just found  a PC group to diminish so they could feel better about themselves. Building such dichotomies not only deludes one, it also creates frictions that just make the world a more violent place.

I encourage everyone to have high standards for themselves, but also to remember what Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my most useful pieces of training equipment is a tire target that I assembled from a 6X6 post, three old tires, and the hardware necessary to attach the latter to the former. In my case, the post was repurposed from an old fence, but they are readily available from the home improvement store. Tires are, sadly, available in roadside ditches everywhere. The necessary hardware consists of heavy duty bolts with two washers per bolt that are as wide as you can get them, as well as the corresponding one or two nuts per bolt. You’ll need two sets of hardware for every tire you have on your target. Three tires worked well for me, but one could probably make two tires work.

The first thing to do, before assembling the target, is to bore large holes in the tread portion of the tire at what will be bottom dead center (the same size hole as is used to accommodated the bolts is fine.) This is important because if the tires hold water they will be perfect breeding spaces for mosquito larvae. One doesn’t want to catch Yellow Fever, Malaria or some other vector-borne disease from you kobudō training.

One then drills holes in the sidewall of the tire 180-degrees apart as well as correspondingly spaced holes in the post. Then just securely bolt the tires to the post, and sink the post in the ground.

I use this target for bōjutsu (6 foot staff), jōjutsu (4.5 foot staff), hanbōjutsu (3 foot stick), and juttejutsu (pronged truncheon) striking practice. The positioning of the tires, the rounded surfaces, and the open middle of the tires allow one to practice striking at a wide variety of height levels and angles. One can practice strikes like hane age (hem lifting) as well as other upward strikes on the inner surface of the tire as well as using the outer surfaces for dō uchi (torso strikes), men uchi (head strikes), and ashi barai (leg sweeping hits).  I practice tsuki (thrusting) into the post itself or the sidewall of the tire.

I highly recommend this type of target as a cheap durable piece of equipment on which to practice weapon strikes upon at full force.

Stress kills! It’s such a pithy adage that it drips with profundity, but is it true? Like many succinct mottos, it oversimplifies a truth. There is a kind of stress that kills, or, more accurately, a kind of response to stress that does. However, there is also a kind of stress that is as essential to life as is exercise. Stress is, after all, just a physiological state and our response to it.

The difference between the stress that leads to disease and depression and the one that makes one stronger and more vital has to do with whether the stress has control over one or one exercises dominion over it. Controlled stress builds confidence, but controlling stress darkens one’s outlook.

The practice of martial arts is full of a form of stress. People are punching, kicking, and swinging sticks at one’s head, after all. However, as one learns to operate within this environment of controlled stress, one builds, for lack of a better term, stress-antibodies just like vaccines result in the production of antibodies through the injection of weakened antigens into the body. Over time, one learns not only how much control one has over the outcome of an event in which someone is attacking one (which is never absolute but always significant), but, at least equally importantly, how much control one has over how one reacts to the situation – whether it goes well or foul.

The greatest source of stress for people tends to be uncertainty. Uncertainty may not get in your face, but rather linger in the background as a quiet but malicious toxin. It is a toxin poisoning one’s outlook, one’s interactions, and one’s health. The problem is that we live in a world of uncertainty. Uncertainty is an inescapable, inexorable, and ubiquitous force. One can either learn to embrace it, or be run over by it like a freight train. I’ve written before about the oft-misunderstood samurai adage on “the way of death.”  Properly understood, the way of death is the ultimate inoculation against stress. If one can learn to accept that one’s death may come at any instant, all other uncertainty is made cheap.

I read once that, besides opposable thumbs and written langauge, one of the factors thought to separate humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is the fact that a human is the only critter that can achieve the same physiological response from remembering an event as he or she did from the real world experience of said event. That is, remembering hearing the news of the death of someone close may make one as sad as when one actually got that word, or remembering a car crash can make one’s heart beat as fast it did when one was skidding out of control. To have such a detailed memory may be our blessing, but to potentially carry around stress in perpetuity is our corresponding curse. You can bet that the gazelle, having narrowly escaped a cheetah, doesn’t spaz out about it 20 minutes – or 20 years - later.

The secret of defeating stress is recognizing the sneaky little bastard and its effect on one, and also finding some manner of inoculation against it.

The other half of the process is learning to see the effect of stress on others so that one can respond (or not respond) objectively. One might be surprised at how this may result in sympathetic feelings in the face of angry or even arrogant behaviour rather than taking it as an affront. This may sound hippy-dippy, but ultimately it’s about your quality of life (and, besides, if you want to really get an arrogant jack-wagon’s goat, try pitying them – getting angry not only stresses one unnecessarily but may play right into their hands as well).

In essence, one should follow Plato’s advice and, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

I started doing tai chi a couple of years ago in order diminish the effects of premature arthritis (an endeavor in which I believe it succeeded spectacularly.) In doing so, I found that the most challenging part was maintaining a slow and even pace throughout the forms. The Yang style 24 Forms meant to take 6 minutes was hard to do in more than three. My martial arts experience has been in the realm of kobudō in which explosive movements were the norm, and slow even pacing is atypical – instead there is a flow that includes moments of stillness, moments of blitzkrieg, and a range in between. Still, I don’t think it is the kobudō mindset that made this kind of slow flowing movement difficult, but rather the pace of modern life.

In modern life there is a propensity to pack too much into a day, and this results in a compulsion to move too quickly. We eat too fast. We work too fast. We drive too fast. Besides the stress involved, which may or may not be bad for one, I believe one’s awareness and clarity of mind suffer because of this rapid pace of life. With the mind constantly preoccupied, one loses touch with one’s environment. Also, being so busy, fewer people read in favor of entertainment which is more rapid (television, movies, video games, etc.), but these media develop the mind’s capacity for abstraction far less and contribute to reduced mental agility.

Eating too quickly is unhealthy in a number of ways. First, the foods that tend to be available for rapid consumption are calorically dense. Second, when one eats too quickly one over-consumes before feeling full. Finally, when one under-masticates one’s food, one my not get all the nutritional value that one should from it.

What could be less relevent to modern life than fighting in samurai armor (yoroi kumi uchi)? This is a reasonable enough question, and one which I hope to answer in this post. None of us who have a passion for historic martial arts would be accused of being trendy cool-hunters because of it. However, I believe that those who study kobudō see the relevance of these throwbacks to an earlier age – even though such connections are rarely blazingly evident.

One value of all forms of kobudō is the mindset that they convey. If you are not working on developing a clear and composed state of mind, you are missing an important part of the training. This can be a demoralizing struggle. One may train year after year only to find that such a state of mind is elusive and easily blown to the winds. Furthermore, if one doesn’t take this state of mind outside the dōjō, then it really is just an arcane hobby practiced for amusement and entertainment.

I’ve been thinking about state of mind quite a bit lately and have concluded it is crucially important not to fake it. What constitutes a wise person? One factor is that such an individual is not ruled by emotion (have you ever seen Yoda throw a temper tantrum?). However, this is not to advocate the suppression of emotions, which, on the contrary, is unhealthy. Most people are good at suppressing emotions. People play off being angry or sad because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves, but yet they are angry or are sad.  This lacks wisdom because the suppressed emotions still rule the person – if silently - and can have concrete effects (e.g. stress and the diseases of stress.) So how does one achieve a genuine ability to not be ruled by emotion? I know of only one way, and that is to put everything in perspective. Perhaps this is most commonly seen among people who face potentially terminal ailments well. I’ve been reading Dr. Maoshing Ni‘s Secrets of Self-Healing which, despite its banal self-helpy title, offers interesting insight into the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) approaches to fixing one’s ailments. Dr. Ni tells the story of a patient with cancer who he had told would find cancer to be their greatest gift. That person fundamentally changed their lifestyle and ended up living out a much healthier life. How does kobudō make smaller the issues that challenge us? One way it does so is by giving one an opportunity to attain a mindset of life and death. In the Hagakure it says, “The Way of the samurai is found in death.” This is an often misunderstood concept. If one can come to grips with one’s death – and the fact that it can occur like a bolt from the blue – then every mundane trouble is diminished. Also, one must learn to exhale emotion. Even in sparring holding onto anxiety or anger can be devastating.

Getting to the specifics of the value of yoroi kumi uchi, which I’ve been thinking about as I reflect upon Kukishinden-ryū Happō Bikenjutsu, I believe the value is in teaching one not to be sloppy and how to move in a manner that reflects a certain precision in the chaos of a fight. While there is a downside in that one may develop a habit of avoiding perfectly respectable targets (which would be unavailable on an armored opponent but readily available on a contemporary opponent), one is forced to be conscientious in one’s targeting of kyūsho. The difference between an attack that is ineffective and one that is devastating is highly dependent upon accuracy when one has to contend with gaps in the armor. It seems easy enough to attack a specific point, particularly when grappling, until one is faced with an opponent who is moving around and counter-attacking and so forth.

Another value of this training is found in building one’s legs and putting even greater emphasis on movement that maintains the balance.