Let the Blade do the Cutting
Douglas Sunnenberg
July 2 2012
It was day two of the 5th Annual
Seminar of the GiYu Honbu Dojo. Having
injured my strong hand earlier in the course of the Seminar, I felt concerned
that my participation in the Tameshi Giri session would be severely hampered,
if not precluded entirely, by my inability to grip the sword tightly enough to
prevent it slipping from my hands and, in general, to control it. The only alternative seemed to be to use less
strength in the cutting motion, to ensure adequate control of the blade. Of course, I fully expected that this would
negatively impact my Tameshi Giri performance.
I just tried to remember that there would be something valuable to be
learned in whatever happened with the Tatami, which I fully expected to be
dismal in view of the reduced power that I would be employing when swinging the
blade. I expressed my concerns to Sensei
who suggested that I try single-handed cutting with my weak hand, since my
strong hand was injured. That indeed
sounded like quite a challenge -- one that I was willing to engage.
Prior to the seminar session, I began to
practice cutting the air using a boken, both single-handed and both hands
cutting, with reduced exertion of arm & shoulder power, concentrating my
efforts, instead, on alignment, timing, & integration of total body
movement in the cutting action. We began
the Tameshi Giri Session with more practice using boken and then adjourned to
the live cutting area outside. Sensei
demonstrated the basic cuts that we were to use to begin our live cutting
practice. He then assigned a Black Belt
to each of the Kyu ranked students to act as both coaches and safety
monitors. To my surprise, when my turn
arrived to practice the first basic cuts, I found that my blade easily cleaved
the Tatami, even with the reduced power that I was exerting. In due time, Sensei demonstrated more
advanced cutting sequences, including single-handed cutting practice for the
Black Belts. Armed with the confidence
inspired by the successful, reduced power, basic cuts, both the cutting
sequence and the single-handed cutting practice went well for me. This experience taught me a valuable lesson
in the value of concentrating on using the entire body, with proper alignment and
timing, and then simply Let the Blade do the Cutting.