Continuum: poles, median point & tornado hands.

What we did:  Sunday 26 February 2012

Group 1:  Making ice cream and birthday cake, selling and serving same.  Developing confidence and communication skills with strangers.  Practising ninjutsu and the art of concealment behind sensei.  Challenging others perceptions.  Clearing up kitchen after ice cream and cake making (this is what comes of having a three and a half year old granddaughter who occasionally visits the dojo)

Group 2:  Note: One of our long term members has cerebral palsy and is undergoing a difficult period.  He is moving towards mobilising himself again so that he can get back into the art proper and begin to take part in class activities.  This involves specific strengthening and mobility exercises.  Walking; lying down; rolling into prone position, rolling into supine position, leg raising, knee bending, cycling, elevating self onto elbow, getting up; supported half squats.  Mindset, positive, negative, achieving a can do mindset.  Target setting and maintenance.  Walking to lobby. 

Group 3:  Review of Kata Shinzen, Tenshu, Tenzen and Channan.  The Continuum Principle and the Median Point.  Recognising that "a continuum is such a thing that every finite segment of it contains infinity within itself.  When the finite contains the infinite, that is continuum."  Finding the poles of a linear continuum and creating a discrete model for an infinitely variable process.  

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

But where were they?  In a void, some nether region, a twilight zone of being neither one thing nor the other?  What is being neither here or there?  What exactly does halfway mean, does halfway have any substance at all?  Can halfway even exist and if it can exist how relevant is it?  Is not halfway a non-existent point between one quality and another?  Being either here or there is dependent upon being the distance of bazillionth part of one atomic particle one side or the other of the median point.  

Turning non-duality into duality.  Another look at hand techniques in relation to the lissajous curve and tornado hands.  Thrusting over and under; palm and backhand techniques; high and low;  inwards and outwards; Identifying the median point as part of the process of creating a discrete model.  Direction (of technique – in, out, up, down, forwards, backwards, rising, descending etc.), development (how it gets there in relation to the cover hand, over, under, past, straight, curved, multi-directional as in both forwards and outwards simultaneously or a spiral for example), and tool (the part of the hand or arm that makes contact or gains control.  Haiwan (back hand side of arm/hand), naiwan (palm side of arm/hand), gaiwan (radial side of arm/hand), shuwan (ulnar side of arm/hand) and all variations and hand tools (haito, shuto, koken, seiryuto, teisho etc).  (Kick) preparation (raising the knee), execution (the kick) and recovery (the return to the knee and step down).  Creation of full working model to be practised at speed as a cardiovascular trigger response exercise.