Tai Sabaki and Shifting Directions

Tai sabaki is a shift but it is not a final destination, you have to keep moving.

PT didn't clear me for karate this week so I'm watching videos of Higaonna-Sensei. My goal is to find one physiotherapy modality that will help me develop the functional muscle movements and stability to perform one thing a little better than before.

My focus has landed on tai sabaki, body shifting, which can also be translated as body management. Defensively, tai sabaki is used to move quickly out of the way and often includes facing a different direction.

Since my last three hospitalizations I've had to dramatically switch directions in my life. Switching directions shifts one's vantage point, which allows for refocusing. In fact, it requires refocusing, if you're going to get anything done. Tai sabaki is a shift but it is not a final destination, you have to keep moving.

The hips drive tai sabaki. The more stable your core, the better the control. Faster, stronger, easier, smarter. Less easily fatigued. More readily engaged.

PT has been incredibly hard and slow to progress. I feel less likely to fall but I'm still too weak to do a number of functional tasks. For instance, I can't go out to buy groceries and then also put them away when I get home. It has to be done in steps with rest in between.

With tai sabaki you have to stay relaxed, "not too busy", as Higaonna-Sensei explains it. If you get anchored down you can't move or change when you need to. My PT is good at changing directions and finding new approaches. It's not easy work to manage my frustration when a task doesn't work out; a quick shift of focus keeps my time in PT productive and developmental, even if it's not the original task I set out to accomplish.

The goal is to get through, not to land a particular punch. That's why you have to be able to shift, and to practice all different kinds of things. A little at a time, all those little efforts add up to the win.

https://youtu.be/8Ru-fQ10c3Q

Recently I had a nurse evaluation, one of many. "Staying alive, is that what your goals are with your doctors right now?" she asked. Yes, that's the primary goal right now. But it's leveling off and the shift is toward recovery and functional goals for Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Karate isn't on the list as a method right now, even though it involves exercise. But that doesn't stop me from asking for clearance to go each week. That's the direction I want to be facing, even if I have to shift now and then.

Anxiety at 2-kyu

I'll be ready when it's time to test or I won't test, but having been 2-kyu for over a year, it's heavy on my mind.

At least once per day I get anxiety about the fact that I'll eventually test for shodan (black belt). I worry about how the test will look, what will need to be adapted, and what Higaonna-Sensei would say about my performance. I tear up thinking about it because I cycle among different ways of looking at it:

1. Everything I adapt will be to something that would work in the street. If it wouldn't work in the street, it's not an adaptation and needs more work, which takes more time.
2. The day my Sensei decided he would take me all the way to black he told me he was going to hold me to the same expectations as everyone else. I trust my Sensei, and he won't let me slide. To let me slide would be to give me a false sense of security, which would put me in real danger.
3. While I can't test to the level that able-bodied people can test, very few people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome ever approach martial arts at all, and I don't know many able-bodied friends who would practice karate if they had the challenges I have.
4. A shodan is just the mark of the most basic self-defense techniques being loosely known. It takes a lifetime for them to be truly undertstood and applied.
5. The real job of the obi (belt) is to hold your gi closed and that's it, so the test shouldn't matter.

Things that make me nervous: I have a terrible time remembering bunkai, and I'm slow on the uptake to learn new techniques, especially complex ones like joint locks or grappling. Class moves fast in the dojo and I don't have opportunities to practice outside of the dojo. Being pretty much deaf on the floor, I'm recently becoming aware of how much incidental learning I miss, and it makes me panic because there aren't many opportunities to follow up. Exhaustion is also a factor that hurts my memory and follow-up. It would be different if I were taking notes, or working with subtitles or an interpreter.

I'm so focused on staying conscious in the dojo, and on managing joint pain and dislocations, that it's hard to concentrate on anything but the next move I have to make. That makes it good for me in that I have to stay in the moment, in tune with my body and with my partner. It's great exercise for my body and a paramount stress buster. But it also keeps me from higher thinking about applications, similarities to other moves, connections with kata, and so on.

It's time to deal with these matters but I'm not sure how to proceed, besides talking to my Sensei about it. Such puzzles aren't new, they've been present since I started karate. But they hit me harder now that I've finally returned to the dojo after a long absence and I am fighting a whole new battle to stay functional, a long war against failing health.