I Like To Move It, Move It! (Should I hear a grinding sound when I do that...?)
A few weeks ago, as I said in a FB post, I started at the Academy of Martial Arts in Brampton. It's a school that does a variation on Goju-Ryu style karate, where Goju does not mean "fifty" but, rather, "hard/soft". It's a significant departure from the styles that I've been training in for the past number of years.
We started with Can-po when we were in Strathroy, which is a North American adaptation that used all English terms, so "forward stance" instead of zenkutsu-dachi, things like that. Can-po was also a "checklist" style, in that when you learned a particular element (a kata, a strike, something like that), you got a coloured strip of tape wound around the tip of your belt, and when you had all the correct strips, you graded to the next belt.
We left that school after a couple of years and then found ourselves studying Shogen-ryu, a distinctly Okinawan style, whose grand master was also the general manager of the Naha City bus company. This school started us with the Fukyugata forms, and then the Pinan series; we were told that the Pinan and Heian series of forms were related, like cousins - various similiarities, but certain distinct differences. This was one of the first schools where I distinctly remember learning the term bunkai, which is how a move is actually applied in a real-world situation. I mean, a kick is generally a kick, but a block that turns into a trap that then exerts pressure on a nerve or a joint, well, that takes practice! And while you can start learning the move in a formal setting such as a kata, the application in the real world would be a lot faster and a lot more, well, real!
After we moved up here, I waited for a couple of years but wanted to get back on a dojo floor, and I ended up at another small school, also with Okinawan roots, but the grand master (Hanshi) was an American who lived full-time in Australia and he only visited his schools every year or two. I think I met him once in the four-plus years I was at that school, because the one weekend that he was up for a seminar was full of church or family events and I just didn't have it free! They used the Pinan series of kata forms, and when you got to the end of those, a number of others were used. In the "nightmare summer" I was having earlier this year, I was finding myself leaving the sleeping area (the bedroom or the trailer when we were camping) and going and doing the first four Pinan forms at Tai chi speed, just to move my body and exhaust myself a little more. I had started just doing them in my mind as a form of meditation, but it turned into more than that - I needed the motion!
I left that school about a year before COVID hit - as I advanced up to a brown belt, my classes were later and later in the evenings, and I was finding a lot of conflict with church work, to the point where I wasn't getting value for my money (in my estimation). I certainly wasn't going to be getting my black belt at that school, as I couldn't put in the hours that would be required to teach as well as learn. Then COVID hit, and that little school took it like a bullet in the head, as did dozens and hundreds of other after-school event places! They've started teaching again in a local community centre, having lost the dojo itself, but I couldn't see myself going back to them again.
But my buddy was at a school in Brampton, usually at the branch that's only about a twenty-plus minute drive from our house. He's been there four years, has just received his brown belt, and has noticed that not only has he dropped forty pounds and two gi sizes, his knees don't necessarily bother him as much as they did! I hemmed, I hawed, I considered, I prevaricated, and finally The Kat demanded that I go and ask questions, and if I like the answers, then just PAY and GO!
So I went, and I liked the answers, and I paid, and now I go!
I've only gotten to one evening class so far, much to my dismay, but on Mondays and Wednesdays, at noon, I'm on the floor with three or four others. The instructors are excellent, but I am in the true "white belt phase" of having to unlearn so much of what I have known and what my body is holding in muscle memory! Goju-ryu does things a bit differently, with some different philosophies than the other Okinawan styles I've been studying for so long.
For one thing, the main stance seems to be the sanchin-dachi, where you stand with your toes pointed inwards, one foot slightly in front of the other, and knees bent. You're actually quite solid if you do it right, and being "solid" is huge in this style. The other big stance is shiko-dachi, the "sumo stance", with feet wide, knees bent, balance point down, anchored to the ground. From this position, lots of things can be done and if you're anchored properly, your opponent can't move you and yet you are able to move your off-balance opponent!
For another, the noon class jumps around a lot - we have me (white), a red belt, an advanced brown belt, and a black belt who is dealing with an injury. The basic kata for a white belt is a slightly abbreviated "I" shape that uses high blocks (jodan-uke) and lunge punches. Then, for the next belt, you do one with geidan-barai (a low sweeping block), and following that is the kake-uke (open-handed circular block/trap/grab). Or is it for belts? Is this just the order of the kata forms, and when they're satisfied I'm actually there to train, and learn, and be open to the goju-ryu way of things, then I start moving up the belts?
Well, see, it's not actually about the belts.
Belts are markers and milestones, much the way the strips of tape were in the Can-po style (though they had coloured belts as well!). But more important is, am I losing weight / gaining mobility and flexibility again? Am I becoming more in-tune with my body and realizing where I am at this point in my life?
Goju-ryu is about being anchored, in body and in breath. Some movements are soft - a deflection doesn't need to be hard, just hard enough. Others are hard - the breath out on a mawashi-uke (circular block) is hard and from the gut. We trap. We hit. We break things (this school does board-breaking presentations, despite Bruce Lee's famous line, "Boards don't hit back...!"; we just imagine that we are breaking ribs, arms, etc.).
My white belt time is going to be spent adapting to the new ways - some of what I know is pretty good; some is pretty rusty and needs to have the dust kicked out of it; and some of it will be getting my body into new positions and shapes, with new understandings.
So, yeah, grinding. I was stretching my neck in class, rolling it around on the top of my spine, and in my ears I could hear the grinding of my vertebrae as they were moving in ways that have become unfamiliar to them. A couple weeks ago I was doing a leg stretch and the tendon behind one knee popped so loud my buddy heard it five feet away - nothing harmful, just popping into a better position! Part of me wants to find a chiropractor and get my sternum and spine realigned with all of the crunches that they show with guys like Alex Tubio (the Filipino with Johnny Bravo hair). And I'm finding soda too sweet to drink any more. "Regular" soda, too sweet... what the heck is wrong with me?!?!
Life is about change, right? And if we consciously seek to change for the better, that's the way things *should* trend! So onward and upward - osss!!