Quote:
Janet Rosen wrote:
Peter, a couple of comments....
what I've learned is that to work on the stuff you reference in your essay you have to have a dojo culture, or at least one good training partner, willing to stay with you as you both move slowly, neither tanking nor resisting but giving very concise feedback.
It also helps if the instructor gives concise instruction. "Taking balance," as an example of something I've heard a lot over the years, is a very broad concept and therefore difficult to put one's head around learning to feel the moment. If instead, for a given exercise the instruction is to do a slight movement -say, in order to put your partner's weight onto one foot or the other before moving to the next step, this is a specific phenomenon you can learn to look for and feel.
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Janet, having a people who are willing to be patient in training with you while you work on these things is critical. Many places don't have an atmosphere that encourages that sort of patience. I'm lucky enough to have reached a stage where people will generally humor me as I work on things that bore them to tears.
I'm afraid I may be guilty of overuse of the term "kuzushi" without sufficient explanation of how to do it in each particular instance. I'm trying to teach myself to say things that are more concrete and descriptive of what that means in each instance. Thanks for the reminder.