Peter-san: So this is really stupid. But it was only on Friday – which was actually the first time that I stopped swinging the jo in a shallow trajectory from waki, which is something I’d been doing to avoid the intentionality of trying to have them meet in shomen-uchi…. but on Friday, when I just did the shomen-uchi, that was the first time I realized that ‘the form’ is not a visual thing.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Oh no. Oh no, no…
Peter-san: It’s not a precise collection of appearances, it’s the whole body working as a… like a ‘macro‘… So that you can deploy the ‘macro‘.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: It’s a mudra. ‘Mudra‘ could be translated like ‘macrocosmic’, ‘microcosmic’, holographic’ and all that. Right? And so… a lot of people have trouble with the concept of form, because they don’t realize that it’s full. They tend to think it’s some appearances: a bunch of very precise, approved appearances. But if you do the internal form and if someone looked at it, they’d say “oh, that’s it!”
Peter-san: So…well… it’s a whole. It’s a whole thing.
Kimbal Anderson Sensei: Yes, I’ve heard that about aiki…!!!