Kiai is not a sound

One insight I would like to share regarding practicing classical internal martial arts and Japanese swordsmanship is that if I am to fully embody internal martial arts principles, I cannot simply practice the parts of Japanese arts I have learned that are compatible with higher-level Taoist ideas, or improve their content with my understanding of xingyi, bagua, or taiji. I also have to eventually cease practicing the parts that are incompatible.

Portions of my practice of Jikishinkage-ryu, if taken to its logical conclusion, I now feel falls into that category. I have been working for the last several years on strengthening my constitution, and continuing my dedication to internal martial arts, as my own teacher was encouraged to do by his sempai. In later conversations with the inheritor of one line of Jikishinkage-ryū that is close to what I had learned, it was stressed to me that each level of practice in Jikishinkage-ryū requires specific purifications (misogi). Failing to do so, he maintained, can lead to the practice becoming dangerous.

That resonated with my own experience. One of the strongest admonitions from my internal martial arts teacher stands out clearly in my mind. He was speaking in terms of Chinese martial arts (e.g., hard qigong) when he said very clearly:

If your practice makes you sick, you must stop.

In my case, excessive kiai has sometimes led to overexertion, even when I am able to engage in other activities (strength training, endurance training, sparring, etc.) without incident and am in otherwise good health. I think that is a message I need to heed. I have taken time to pause and reflect on where I am and how I got to this place, and realized it might not be enough simply for me to add internal martial arts to this kenjutsu practice to make it whole or perform it as best I am able, without changing it. Instead, I have had to examine my practice more closely, and restrict myself to the practices that are not in opposition to internal martial arts. Doing this makes my practice something different to what I learned.

That is the spirit, of taking stock and looking back at something I used to do, in which I wrote my recent essay. Part one was about archaic practices, and how people might be fooling themselves if they think to recreate the past through a devotion to martial arts. Part two was examining what might be left, taking a realistic view. Its thesis on some level was that we need to take care to keep our practice based in the reality and dangers of edged weapons, if we say we practice methods of using a sword. Part three was a reflection on what practice might then mean, and how it can still have value, if it is not archaic recreation or self-indulgence. Part four concluded on how practice can relate to more important matters, such as developing and maintaining peace of mind amongst chaos, even as one might leave a practice behind.

For now, I have closed my door to accepting new students in Japanese swordsmanship. I hope the few people I have had the chance to work with take their training farther than I was able, and connect with better teachers than I have been. I've been fortunate to work with several talented people since moving to Seattle, and I learned from each of them. For those experiences, I remain grateful. I still mentor the few people I have met and introduced to the way, but in doing so I need take care to ensure they don't follow the exact path I took to get where I am today. Years ago, on this blog, I wrote that a person should take the hardest, most direct route, whenever possible. Maybe that advice was not as well thought out as it felt at the time.

I no longer maintain a full practice of Jikishinkage-ryū, where I seek to maintain an orthodox kata practice (katageiko) of my own. Instead, I now work more slowly and carefully, examining select portions of the art in a smoother and quieter manner, much as I retain certain aspects of some of the Shinto-ryū I first learned. When I do practice with others, it is to explore kuzushi and engage in pressure testing called tameshi ai. As I have written before, I am not the inheritor of this art, and while I do not seek to change it, the primary focus of my practice is self-cultivation, rather than transmission.

As a result of this change in perspective and my own personal limitations, I no longer can say I am a practitioner of a classical kenjutsu tradition. At the same time, in cultivating a more withdrawn approach to my study, I am reminded that the final level of practice of Jikishinkage-ryū, called marobashi, is silent. It is time for me to take that silence as the path.

Looking forward, I remain in a deep lineage of Chinese internal martial arts. I plan to focus my training on improving my understanding and skill in the context of bagua, xingyi, and taiji not as an influence on other martial arts, but as the core of what I do. My kenjutsu still exists, but it is evolving. For a time at least, that process is best done mostly in solitude.