Kata - Part 3

This is Part 3 of a 3-part blog entry. It was co-authored with Neil MacInnis. This section provides some suggestions on how you can improve your practice of kata.

Make kata fun! Where kata forms a large part of the Karate-do path, you are far more likely to stick with your journey if you enjoy it. If you dread kata or if you finish kata feeling exhausted, frustrated and demoralized, you need to lighten up. Celebrate your improvements and consider mistakes as challenges not failures. If you nail a kick without wobbling or landing out of position, you should feel good. If you just can not get a turn right, take a deep breath and don’t let it haunt you. You are more likely to make mistakes if you are ruminating on missteps than if you are focusing on successes and challenging yourself to get things right. Enjoy the process.
 
Don’t feel too self-conscious. If you flub a move, it is so easy to feel ashamed if everyone around you nails it. Don’t sweat it. Everyone learns kata at different speeds and the best of us make mistakes or have momentary memory lapses where we forget a next step. Breath, relax, and try to get it right the next time – don’t worry about if people noticed your mistake. Chances are they are busy dealing with their own challenges, and even if they did, who cares? The path of Karate-do is a personal one. Enjoy each step and have fun!
 
 Be aware of the others in the kata group. Try to synchronize your movements with those of the leader and others in the block. This is a way to model the movements of more experienced members. It all teaches us how to be aware of others at the same time as being focussed on your own movements.

Don’t be too concerned about what each technique or combination of movements “means” or what the practical application of each one might be in a self-defence situation. It can be useful and interesting to take specific techniques out of the kata to practice them with a partner sometimes, but no one really knows for sure what each technique was originally intended to do. For example, the opening movement in Heian Shodan is gedan-barai. Or is it actually an outside block followed by a low hammer-fist strike? In addition, many of the sequences don’t make a lot of sense on their face. Advancing three steps while doing rising blocks generally presupposes that an opponent is doing three punches while stepping backward. Hmm. But again, kata is a method of learning how to concentrate and use our bodies and each movement doesn’t have to be taken literally.
 
 Be relaxed and breath naturally throughout the kata. Breathing smoothly from the lower abdomen with the shoulders down. This is also the case for when we are facing a partner. There is no syncopated breathing in Shōtōkai and we should never hold our breath.
 
Practicing kata is a Zen-like activity. It keeps us focused on the here and now, feeling our breathing and our bodies without undo concern about the practical meaning of each movement—even though each movement should be completed with intention. But we can only start to get there after we have practiced a kata enough times that we can do it without needing to think about what comes next. Some have called kata a form of moving meditation.

• Neil MacInnis & Clarence Whynot