By Emmet Riley

I have been training in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu for just over three years now. On a good week I'll attend two training sessions at the Dojo, sometimes three. On these training days after a long stretch in the office, no matter how much I want to flop down on the couch and just stay there, I always manage to get myself up, pack my training uniform, shoulder my weapons bags and head out the door.

I go training knowing that it will be fun. It will reinvigorate me. The sweat, the hits, the winces and laughs will always reset my mind leaving a tired satisfied feeling in their wake. This is one of the greatest benefits I get from my Budo training. It makes me want to get up and go.

Some aspects of how we train in kobudo (old style martial arts) can be slightly difficult to explain to a friend or family member. “How did you get that bruise on your arm/leg/face?” they ask. On hearing it came from martial arts training most people assume you've been squaring off against an opponent in a ring or an octagon. “Well, did you get him back? Who won?” they'll ask. Explaining how our training doesn't work like that and how you are often quite complicit in your own bruising can get some very raised eyebrows in response.

Kobudo's concept of Tori and Uke and the learning process that goes with it is something that interests me a lot. When I first started training I was told repeatedly to relax. Don't be tense. Relax your shoulders. Don't resist. Its not a fight. “You're about to karate chop me in the neck!” I thought. “You're about to twist my arm and throw me to the mat!.... That surely seems like a fight to me”. 

When I started training I didn't really understand this way of training. Moving at half speed. Lunge punches. Standing in what felt like cumbersome stances. I knew I enjoyed the training but I couldn't quite see what would come of it. If Im honest I was skeptical of what I could learn but at the same time curious to see where it would lead me.

But as I learned, they were right. It's not a fight. To me, each time you receive an attack from Uke it's an experiment. Uke is allowing you to feel your way through a technique as you apply it to them. To take as much time as you need. To feel where their balance lies. To see how their structure reacts to different attacks. Through this collaborative training you can develop a natural intuition as to where someone's balance lies. You can develop a sense of your opponents striking range, where it is safe, where it is dangerous. You train to naturally move to positions where opportunities to attack just present themselves. Training toward achieving these skills as a natural reaction or instinct is something I find very motivating and exciting. 

I may be still quite a way off achieving those reactions but since achieving my black belt I see glimpses of evidence that the training is embedding itself in me. Sometimes it's knowing that Uke is standing too far away to hit me. Sometimes it's knowing the right direction to bring Uke for them to lose their balance. Sometimes it's just knowing what technique can be applied next in a flow. The stances that felt cumbersome three years ago now feel solid, stronger. I understand now how they can be used to generate power and transmit it in a strike through either your hand or a weapon in exactly the same way. 

Many, if not all, of these techniques we learn come from the Kihon Happo, whether performing a kata from one of the schools or attempting to recreate a technique your instructor is demonstrating. I like to think of Kihon Happo as an alphabet to learn. As a child you learn to write in big definite basic strokes 'A IS FOR APPLE'. The basic strokes of Kihon Happo teach structure, distance, timing, remaining solid, retaining your balance while taking that of your opponent, striking with all your body and not just your hand.

To me these fundamentals are like the alphabet of the Bujinkan. We learn to write them in clear well understood defined movements. Later we can take them and use these principles and techniques as we would write our own prose in our own handwriting.  In this way the Kihon Happo is the alphabet of kata, and from that these kata become the grammar of 'real' fighting. This is just my personal idea of how I relate to the Kihon Happo. Undoubtedly it will change as I progress but for now thats my interpretation of it, right or wrong. 

The ideas and understanding I've touched on above are themselves something that make budo so interesting and worthwhile to me. There is so much to understand, so much to learn. I have done other martial arts where you kick and punch your way down a training hall and I have really enjoyed doing them.

But the depth, variety and scope of whats available to learn in the Bujinkan offers me much more. When I have a question for my instructor asking why a technique is done in such a way there is usually a very practical answer. Often in our dojo we come back to a physics principle or physiological reason as to why to apply a lock in a certain direction or why your knee should be over your toe in a certain stance.

Clear answers like this appeal to the engineer in me. They make sense. And yet it's the combination of these clear answers and the more intangible side of the training that make it more engrossing. The intangible side is what's there to reflect on. The side that's less obvious at first glance. Am I learning anything here? What am I learning? How am I learning it? 

Recently this intangible side of budo has become of more interest to me, specifically the spiritual or self development side. I feel though I should give a disclaimer when using language like that. I'm a  skeptic. I don't believe in any form of energy that I wasn't made work out long laborious maths formulae for in university.

So in simple terms what I really mean is what budo can teach you to enrich your life beyond throws and punches. I won't elaborate on this as I don't feel I have any authority on the subject.  But I will say that the fact that budo has this facet is just another reason I have to continue my training and it's something I look forward to learning more about.

And also I don't want to go too far down that sandles and hemp waistcoat road.......yet.