I confess, I didn't do the Stances last Friday
Published: Wed, 09/18/13
I acquired some books at Stav camp, works by Dave Lowery, an
American who has trained in Budo arts all his life and written
extensively about his experiences. (Thanks Lynne for passing them
on) One book called 'Towards Stillness' has an essay on the
concept of 'Tsune' which translates something like daily
habit. This means something as basic as brushing your teeth or
eating breakfast, things that, if you omitted to do it, would make
your day seem very odd. When martial arts training reaches a level
where it is 'tsune' in your life then rather than being an
effort to train it feels stranger not to. I have to confess that
there was a day last week when I didn't do the stances, I think
it was Friday but I had a problem with my back and on Friday I
couldn't stand unaided. So I didn't do the stances that
day for the first time since, well probably the last time my back
gave out on me. (I was find through the camp but I worked under a
car on Tuesday and Wednesday and lying on cold concrete turned out
not to be a good idea, yes I am fine again now, thanks for asking.
But it did feel strange not doing the stances that day and the
next day I did do them even though I had to be very careful how
deeply I bowed or went into Ur. (doing Bjork and Rei was
interesting too since I had no balance!)
There are three factors which make it possible to progress along a
path of self-development through a mind, body and spirit training
system such as Budo or Stav, daily practice (tsune), teaching and a
willingness to walk alone. I will discuss the other two tomorrow
and Friday. But for the moment have a think about what your daily
habits are? How many are beneficial and which ones may even be
harmful? The Stav stances can be incorporated into your day in ten
minutes or less, half an hour and you could do a lot of training.
In order to help people do more with Stav I am developing the Ice
and Fire membership scheme. The enhanced scheme will have a
greater element of distance learning and more support to encourage
students of Stav to make the practice of the stances part of their
daily life. Check out http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/join.html to
see why you want to act now if you are really interested in Stav.