odd stuff, disturbances in the force

this morning i did the stretch routine mostly with my heels off the floor.  to arrange the angles to be able to "relax" into it: within the set parameters there are better ways to do it.  5-8 minutes heels off floor: relax the calves, relax the shins, burn baby burn.  and this time the wiggling fingers put out to the edge of the visual field to therefore pay attention to both sides at the same time.

yesterday in class 2 people got hurt separately, one just doing a forward roll, other did a breakfall wrong i guess, i didn't see it.  first went to hospital, sensei thought broken collarbone, other some problem with a leg.  wanted to slow down & relax more than usual.
there is a spot of time between the demonstration of the technique and the first try that the lesson falls out of the head.  the bow, the finding of the partner, the bow, the entry into the technique, the arrangement of the lesson falls apart & i stand there & have to put it back together if i can.  or, if i've trained enough on it i can go with the training & not think about it.  that empty zone, like a dream, when i got up the dream ended, i can try to piece together the fragments of the memory.  passive active.  how wide is the transition zone between passive & active?  does it perhaps only seem that there is an absolute distinction of off/on?  must investigate further.

today with a staff

today was first i was doing everything with the switch-hands rotate forearms around the stick, the tricky what to do with the thumbs, is the thumb covers outer 2 fingers like boken right for jo?  have to ask.  everything could be done in at least 2 categories: right or left palm up when jo horizontal.

arms set so jo was eye level found & doing the side to side head motion in the frontal plane i noticed that the picture of the jo seemed to have a lag in its reflective density: head tilted one way the top was solid, the bottom see through, head tilted the other way the bottom is solid.  noticed a situation in which as i rest in the tilt position the scene changes so that the solid side seemed to solider, the see through zone diminishing over some short period of time.  investigation eventually revealed an attention preference one eye over the other.  the attention was habitually drawn to the side of the tilt.  having found that tendency i could modulate/control it so that keeping the attention alone in 0,0,0 i could eliminate that scene evolution thing so that the side to side transition became equalized, like um a "perfect" sword cut.

and later i discovered that doing shomens and yokomens to the bird feeder pole is just totally excellent.  and that manipulating the jo above and behind the edge of the visual field, using the antenna function if you will, is fun if done real slow.  today.

stretching with staff

i'm not sure why i haven't kept recounting the training.  there was a period of not feeling right, the symptoms only tendencies, a wanness of spirit, little physical issues & minor viruses, combined with a steady pace of business to attend to.  wanness made "me" feel inferior in the good old childhood outcast way.  that apparently pretty much cleared now that spring is here.

bendover is still the main thing i'm working on.  been working with a staff last couple of days.  the staff is as long as from my feet to my armpit when i'm standing normally.  with pinky side of my hands encircling the ends of the staff, thumb lightly over pinky & ring fingers, one palm out, other in, arms will always move together.  now relax.

my quads have become strong enough that i can go almost all the way to the floor and get back up again with just one leg, that out leg just doing balance.  on a mat i can do it on one side but not quite the other yet.  that means that i could do it on the floor too but it would be rough i ain't into rough.

the staff preserves spatial relationships between body parts, helps orient in space by preserving a straight reference line.