One of the important aspects of karate which I've neglected are kata. There are a few which I remember and practice quite often, such as Sanchin and Tensho. Those, with their diminutive space requirements are quite easy to practice in the limited space of an apartment living room. While relatively short, they still have enough application fodder and exercise to them that they’re effective in keeping my skills, if not sharp, at least from growing too dull.
However, those which require more space are memories of thought that have eroded with time.
Okay, perhaps it's not as dramatic as that, but while I remember short phrases of the kata themselves, I could most likely only string the whole thing together if I were under hypnosis. I remember stances, movements, application, but the whole shape of the kata is fuzzy at best.
How, then, should I go about memorizing the form, committing it not just to the memory of thought, but also that of motion?
Find Space
Any space will do as long as you’re not trespassing. It should be large enough to move around freely without running into furniture or passers by and relatively flat, too. A bit of variation in the terrain is just fine; got to work on that balance sometime.
Find Someone Who Knows It
This is most certainly the best way to go about it, though it can also be costly, or it may take time to find a teacher. If you've no experience with a kata, it's probably best to find a teacher willing to share their knowledge.
Since we live in the future, there's also the possibility of using video chat to actually converse with a sensei or fellow student . While it won't replace them actually correcting your posture with touch, they may help to remind you of what's next.
On that vein, there's always YouTube, which is a fantastic tool to find all the karate kata videos you want. But at one point you'll probably notice that there are various versions and myriad variations on the same kata. A quick search for Sanseru gave me 206 results, and the first three are all basically the same, but quite different in their execution.
None of these will necessarily be wrong, -- unless there's something obviously boneheaded going on mid-kata -- but instead reflect differences in the schools from various locales. Watching how others perform it may even open your eyes to an application you'd never considered.
Kata change all the time. Consider Sanchin kata, which has been around in various forms from its roots in Fujien, China, where it was practiced with open hands. It has variously been changed to include closed hands (though many Okinawan styles outside Goju have conserved the open hand movements,) and there are versions with turns...
However, those which require more space are memories of thought that have eroded with time.
Okay, perhaps it's not as dramatic as that, but while I remember short phrases of the kata themselves, I could most likely only string the whole thing together if I were under hypnosis. I remember stances, movements, application, but the whole shape of the kata is fuzzy at best.
How, then, should I go about memorizing the form, committing it not just to the memory of thought, but also that of motion?
Find Space
Any space will do as long as you’re not trespassing. It should be large enough to move around freely without running into furniture or passers by and relatively flat, too. A bit of variation in the terrain is just fine; got to work on that balance sometime.
Find Someone Who Knows It
This is most certainly the best way to go about it, though it can also be costly, or it may take time to find a teacher. If you've no experience with a kata, it's probably best to find a teacher willing to share their knowledge.
Since we live in the future, there's also the possibility of using video chat to actually converse with a sensei or fellow student . While it won't replace them actually correcting your posture with touch, they may help to remind you of what's next.
On that vein, there's always YouTube, which is a fantastic tool to find all the karate kata videos you want. But at one point you'll probably notice that there are various versions and myriad variations on the same kata. A quick search for Sanseru gave me 206 results, and the first three are all basically the same, but quite different in their execution.
None of these will necessarily be wrong, -- unless there's something obviously boneheaded going on mid-kata -- but instead reflect differences in the schools from various locales. Watching how others perform it may even open your eyes to an application you'd never considered.
Kata change all the time. Consider Sanchin kata, which has been around in various forms from its roots in Fujien, China, where it was practiced with open hands. It has variously been changed to include closed hands (though many Okinawan styles outside Goju have conserved the open hand movements,) and there are versions with turns...
....and without:
For an extreme example of how katas can differ between styles, we can look toward Ishimine Ryu’s Kuma-Te Sanchin. As Mark Bishop describes in the book “Okinawan Karate:”
The videos you find are only guidelines, and each practitioner will have a slightly different interpretation of the form. Some will look picture-perfect, others may look a little sloppy, but what you have to focus upon is not getting hung up on the technique and how it’s executed by them, but by your own execution of the technique. Like a cover of a rock tune, or the taste of soylent green, each kata subtly will vary from person to person.
Write it Down
First you need to keep in mind that the written version is not the true version, since it can never quite capture the subtleties of a movement that are so much more easily explained by a teacher. But as you write it down you give yourself yet another reference to the movement, and the thought behind it; it’ll help you build a larger set of pointers to the knowledge and make it harder to lose in the future.
Try to commit to memory the movement itself, even as you try to capture these in prose while keeping in mind that your words cannot carry with them the actual movement or a demonstration of it. It’s a hard juggling act to keep these nearly contradictory ideas balanced. Try to describe movements as simply as possible without falling prey to lyrical obfuscation. While ‘swoop like a swallow to the left’ may be quite lovely to read, you may find yourself wondering just what you were trying to say when you come back to read your notes later on in life.
Since the knowledge is heavily internalized, why go out of our way to write things down and to express in our words the forms which you’re learning? You’re teaching yourself, in your own words by writing it down. Not only that, but you are contributing to the body of knowledge of your art! You make sure that there’s a record that is, in a small way, part of your legacy as a martial artist.
Try as best as you can to learn applications for the kata—the aforementioned videos often include sections on bunkai (application, analysis, disassembly) of the various parts of the kata. These are extremely interesting to study as well as giving your mind yet another reference to the material you’re trying to learn.
Even if you forget it again, the pieces of it will remain, waiting for you to affix them to the scaffolding that the kata provides and to once again give them a framework wherein they can flow freely into one another.
Try, also, to give further context to the technique. At the top of my notes, I'm writing a short blurb on the history of each kata. So far they've been easy to track down, since they're quite recent; later, older ones will most likely take plenty of hunting around through articles, history books, as well as everyone's favorite go-to, wikipedia.
In Closing
Practice and study.
Practice not in the way that you usually think of it. Practice is a more of a full meditation on the kata—not just each step, but the flow between them, their application, and even how their prose sits upon the page. This is also study, because in this mindset you will want to answer the questions that come up when going through the motions, or pondering them after training. Seek answers and seek further questions for yourself or others to help answer.
It’s not just going through the motions. Go forth and train!
Some Links:
Mark Bishop’s Okinawan Karate book is quite the read. Short, but it gets across the point that one should approach the arts with an understanding that each style is not compartmentalized, but that each is a different interpretation of how to make use of one’s body mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Okinawan-Karate-Teachers-Styles-Techniques/dp/0804832056/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314727413&sr=1-1
The search for Sanseru (it returned even more links than when I wrote this piece just a few days ago!): http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sanseru&aq=f
A fantastic article on bunkai and how to approach it: http://seinenkai.com/art-bunkai.html
Kuma-te Sanchin is unique to this style and is imitative of the bear (kuma). The stance is solid and bigger than in the Sanchin katas of other styles. The movements also resemble those of a bear; for example one of the arm movements is representative of a bear scooping fish from water. The butt of the palm is the primary weapon and, because the finger tips are curled over, the hand resembles a bear’s paw.If you're trying to re-learn the kata, as in my own case, I just find the ones that remind me of what I used to do, or the ones in my own library of videos -- most of which are on YouTube, which makes me wonder why I keep the collection around.
The videos you find are only guidelines, and each practitioner will have a slightly different interpretation of the form. Some will look picture-perfect, others may look a little sloppy, but what you have to focus upon is not getting hung up on the technique and how it’s executed by them, but by your own execution of the technique. Like a cover of a rock tune, or the taste of soylent green, each kata subtly will vary from person to person.
Write it Down
First you need to keep in mind that the written version is not the true version, since it can never quite capture the subtleties of a movement that are so much more easily explained by a teacher. But as you write it down you give yourself yet another reference to the movement, and the thought behind it; it’ll help you build a larger set of pointers to the knowledge and make it harder to lose in the future.
Try to commit to memory the movement itself, even as you try to capture these in prose while keeping in mind that your words cannot carry with them the actual movement or a demonstration of it. It’s a hard juggling act to keep these nearly contradictory ideas balanced. Try to describe movements as simply as possible without falling prey to lyrical obfuscation. While ‘swoop like a swallow to the left’ may be quite lovely to read, you may find yourself wondering just what you were trying to say when you come back to read your notes later on in life.
Since the knowledge is heavily internalized, why go out of our way to write things down and to express in our words the forms which you’re learning? You’re teaching yourself, in your own words by writing it down. Not only that, but you are contributing to the body of knowledge of your art! You make sure that there’s a record that is, in a small way, part of your legacy as a martial artist.
Try as best as you can to learn applications for the kata—the aforementioned videos often include sections on bunkai (application, analysis, disassembly) of the various parts of the kata. These are extremely interesting to study as well as giving your mind yet another reference to the material you’re trying to learn.
Even if you forget it again, the pieces of it will remain, waiting for you to affix them to the scaffolding that the kata provides and to once again give them a framework wherein they can flow freely into one another.
Try, also, to give further context to the technique. At the top of my notes, I'm writing a short blurb on the history of each kata. So far they've been easy to track down, since they're quite recent; later, older ones will most likely take plenty of hunting around through articles, history books, as well as everyone's favorite go-to, wikipedia.
In Closing
Practice and study.
Practice not in the way that you usually think of it. Practice is a more of a full meditation on the kata—not just each step, but the flow between them, their application, and even how their prose sits upon the page. This is also study, because in this mindset you will want to answer the questions that come up when going through the motions, or pondering them after training. Seek answers and seek further questions for yourself or others to help answer.
It’s not just going through the motions. Go forth and train!
Some Links:
Mark Bishop’s Okinawan Karate book is quite the read. Short, but it gets across the point that one should approach the arts with an understanding that each style is not compartmentalized, but that each is a different interpretation of how to make use of one’s body mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Okinawan-Karate-Teachers-Styles-Techniques/dp/0804832056/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314727413&sr=1-1
The search for Sanseru (it returned even more links than when I wrote this piece just a few days ago!): http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sanseru&aq=f
A fantastic article on bunkai and how to approach it: http://seinenkai.com/art-bunkai.html
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