Make some noise

I don't write about my day job for a host of very good reasons. Nevertheless, I can say that this was a tough week - between demanding bosses and the occasional whiney co-worker, by the time Thursday night rolled around, I was real tired of it all.

During jodo class, we began with the first set of kata, and worked from the familiar to the strange - er - less familiar. I should point out that our jodo class is a workshop - we are all beginners, pretty much, and we practice together because we have to - the only way to learn jodo is to learn it together.

I have been struggling with one kata in particular that requires a big hikiotoshi strike to the opponent's bokuto at just the right moment. I learned this kata years ago; but have rarely, if ever, gotten this strike to work correctly. Even though we practice hikiotoshi uchi every week, my strike at this point of the kata, whether because of distance, timing, attitude, opponent's position, my position or some combination of all these, is frequently weak and barely effective.

But not last night! As I went through this kata with my training partner (a much bigger person than me) I let out a sharp kiai and whacked his bokuto with a surprisingly focused strike. Ha. Just like that. I saw his hands curl back to his right, just like they were supposed to. And they curled back that way because they had to, not because the kata called for it. Shazam, I thought. Could I do it again? Yes, I could! I did not feel as though I had put more effort into the strike at all - it just seemed to work better. A bad day, a kiai, and a focused strike.

Recently an article in the NY Times outlined an experiment designed to see if creating music would improve people's workout results. I found this amusing, considering that there are work songs from virtually every culture that have been around for centuries, at least. But this is science. The researchers rigged up some workout machines to generate music while subjects used them. The control group just listened to the same music playing in the background as the kind of soundtrack often heard at the gym.

When they analyzed the results, they found that the subjects who had used the music-generating machines not only had a better workout, they had a more efficient one - they used less oxygen to produce similar results. They also reported less fatigue, even though their workout levels were as good or better than their baselines, done on the same machines without being able to generate sounds.

I thought about this article on the way home last night and wondered if my kiai, in focusing my strike, had made it better. Not just the expulsion of breath, but the creation of the sound. Many years ago, I remember (vaguely) a meditation teacher claiming that generating certain sounds was supposed to create certain states of mind (though, if I am recalling correctly, one didn't need to sing - he said rich people would hire musicians to play certain notes at the right time - it just figures). The gym experiment did not include singing as a music-making activity, though it seems to be the logical next step.

Maybe people in the fields singing work songs, or soldiers singing as they march, are not just passing the time, or coordinating their rhythm with others doing similar work - maybe singing makes their work more efficient - that is, they can accomplish more with less effort. In the same way, maybe the sound made in kiai has more to do with focus than just vocalizing an exhalation of breath.

Only one thing to do - test the theory again next week.