Archive for the ‘Kendo’ Category

Kendo: Goals

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

It is a tad complex trying to figure out how one paces out goals on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It’s a bit easy to work out my practice as just a drop in the bucket of doing Kendo for the rest of my life. However, as with other things I’m involved in, I feel a need to pace myself and at least set small achievable goals. It’s proving a bit difficult to find advice on what is possible within a measure of time, so that one can figure out how effective one’s training is. The advice almost always seems to boil down to “keep trying, it will come”. My issues are not about hurrying or a complete lack of patience (I’m aware that even 8th Dans still learn new things), it’s a question of trying to work out what’s effective in my training… or perhaps this is something one has to work out for himself.

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Kendo – Zanshin

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

I’ve found myself relating more of my kendo practice to the rest of my day to day life lately. Concepts such as Zanshin (loosely translated to focus) are important even outside the dojo. My dojo’s sensei, Victor Harris, explained a breakdown of Zanshin into 3 aspects: the initial Zanshin of preparation, that of execution (of the cut in the the Kendo context) and the Zanshin of finishing up, for the next task. This applied correctly could lead to a perpetual cycle of focused activity. Taken into my every day life as a software developer and student of life, I find a lot of time is spent without much focus. Applying this concept to simple day to day activities helps one trim the fluff, so to speak, and promote consciousness of one’s environment and the tasks at hand. Focus and analyse the problem at hand, approach the task heartily and survey your work on completion.

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