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Breathing kata

August 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

For a long time, I have been trying to tie kata with breathing and meditation techniques. A few weeks ago, I was doing kata at home and stumbled upon something that I don’t remember doing. Before each move of the kata, I took a very deep breath and then, like always, exhaled when I completed the move.

For example, in Heian Shodan, when in the ready stance, take a deep breath, then downward block, exhale and hold the movement. From there, take in a another deep breath, step forward, punch and exhale. Before each move of the kata, you take in a deep breath and then exhale as you complete the movement.

I did 10 katas this way and noticed that my moves were more relaxed, I was more mindful of each move, the moves felt as powerful as always and the pace of the kata was slowed down a great amount.

Now, I wouldn’t suggest doing this at your next tournament but training this way brings another way to add some variety to your kata training and allows you to get some deep breathing in at the same time.

Please leave me a comment and let me know if you have done this before and what your results were.

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How to bow.

June 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

In the advanced Karate class that I take with Sensei Cieplik, we always begin in seiza, after that, everyone stands up and we do a quick, two second or so, bow to Sensei Cieplik. We have been doing this for some time now but in a recent class, he mentioned that if we are going to bow, he was going to show us the correct way to do it.

  • The back of your neck needs to touch the collar of your gi throughout the bow.
  • Both heels are touching and the toes are pointed out about 45 degrees.
  • Bend slowly at the waist and exhale until all the air is expelled from your lungs.
  • When you bend at the waist, make sure to expel all of the air from your lungs for as long as it takes.
  • While bent over, keep your eyes on whoever you are bowing to with an alert gaze.
  • If you are bowing to someone who is a higher rank than yourself, bend over lower than them.
  • After all the air is expelled from your lungs, straighten up while inhaling until you are upright again.

I had always thought that a quick upper body tilt at any level was a bow but instead, it was showing disrespect to those who I was bowing to. Doing a quick little bow is the same as pulling your hand away when you reach out to shake another persons hand.

I know that many Martial Artists and Karate-Ka have different opinions on bowing and some even suggest that bowing in the dojo outside of Japan is silly but for those of you who have never had it explained, I hope this gives you a little clearer picture.

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