This semester I continued to practice kyudo with Kawaguchi Sensei at the Budou<\/p>\n
center one to two times per week. Unlike the first few months, the sensei does not
\ncome to supervise me as often. What happens usually is I would practice by myself
\nfor one or two sessions, and then Sensei comes over and corrects one small posture,
\nand then I continue to practice for a few sessions focusing on correcting that one
\nposture until Sensei comes to correct another small posture. This may sound
\nincredibly boring but for the archer herself every shot is a brand new cycle of self-
\nexamination and so it was never boring for me.<\/p>\n
Kyudo is not a group sport and people like to be left alone especially during practice,
\nwhich makes perfect sense, so I only rarely interact with people other than Sensei.
\nMy interaction with Sensei, however, varies session to session but sometimes is
\nquite a lot. We have talked about everything from her family to knitting to my class
\nproject related to kyudo. I definitely do not always understand 100% of what Sensei
\nsays, but luckily kyudo is not something that requires one to understand 100%
\nverbally. I have, however, gotten involved in a few “Changing Room Chats” but never anything very deep because most of time I don’t understand what they are talking about. Instead I just made it an opportunity to observe the way female acquaintances communicate with one another.<\/p>\n
As to advices, kyudo is definitely not a workout or a very social activity but what
\nyou get out of it is a deep sense of connection to Japanese tradition. Many people
\nbegan practicing kyudo for its relationship with Zen. But what seems to be the
\ncommon consensus is that you don\u2019t usually get to think about that until you\u2019ve
\nperfected your skills, which takes years and years and years. At this early stage, you
\njust get used to simply follow the Sensei and not question. This sounds like a very
\nnegative thing, and of course if you have a question the Sensei will always answer,
\nbut the chance is that because your skill is so horrible at this point that even you
\nunderstand the idea of what she says you would not be able to put it into practice, so
\nyou might as well focus on the actual skills first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This semester I continued to practice kyudo with Kawaguchi Sensei at the Budou center one to two times per wee … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080