My mom has joked about my selective hearing tor years. I would be so consumed by a task that nothing else existed. Not her voice, dinner, the cat jumping onto the table, my cup spilling, nothing. This might be considered focused. But lately I’m learning a different type of focus.
In yoga, the instructor guides the class through 26 poses with dialogue and encouragement. Today’s instructor is very detail oriented. She reminds us to direct our gaze, engage our abdominal muscles, relax our mind, straighten our spine, control our breathe, … Every part of the body and mind are active in every pose; and every pose is interactive with the environment around us.
The same is true in Isshinryu. I have known this since the first class at our dojo in August 2009. My mind was disconnected from my body though. Then something clicked in September. I felt it accumulating for about a week before a kiai came forth. Since then, the kata applications and the kata itself have become more realistic. I just had to learn how to focus my whole self to understand what I was doing.nnIsshinryu is really quite an amazing art. The UBBT is showing me how amazing and how widely applicable.