After practice tonight I was polishing my sword (no, that's not a euphemism (and yes, I can hear you snickering back there, Joshua)) and D mentioned that while she feels like she's able to do the stances when we're just practicing the stances, she has a hard time recognizing them in the katas. And I missed out on the classic "Horrible Things Great Teachers Say" moment -- I totally FAILED to say, "Don't worry, you aren't doing them right in practice, either." Damn. That would have been pretty funny.
What I DID say was something or other about how they're supposed to be different, because the kata aren't just there to link together each stance in a particular order so that you can pretend you're swordfighting. The kata are living, breathing intellectual artifacts that only exist because people embrace them, possess them and then pass them on to others.
I said, "It's a practice, not a formula."
So I was riding the Ossington bus back down to King Street and listening to the Propellerheads' version of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (which if you don't know is MIND-BLOWING) and thinking about D's question and how that principle of practice over formula really applied at every level of Katori practice.
When I am going through the kata with my partner, I cannot just "do the moves". The "right" stance will be fatally wrong if my partner is doing something other than what I expect. Katori asks you to pay attention with your WHOLE self to your partner, and to adapt your body, your posture, your soul, to what they bring.
To respond with attention and focus and vitality. With life. Respond with life.
And I thought, as John Barry's fantastic horns rose up around me, as the bus turned onto Strachan Avenue, that "Respond With Life" was just a great... I don't know. Thing. Saying. Stance.
Hey, yeah. Stance. The "right" stance in Katori, always, is to Respond With Life. SEE what's really there, shed your expectations and see through to the heart of things, and then see into yourself and find exactly the position, the posture, the STANCE that will make the most of it. That will be alive and vital and strong and courageous.
Respond With Life. It's a stance.
Photo by Arty Smokes