Ryukenkan Dojo - Tauranga New Zealand
"Karate in Paradise" - It's a rough task, but someone has to do it!
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Ryukenkan Dojo - Tauranga New Zealand "Karate in Paradise" - It's a rough task, but someone has to do it!
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Kamae Understanding the role of Mind, Body and Spirit in technique Kamae (pron. cah-my), in most cases, is usually translated as "stance" and generally only used as a word after the stance name, or swapped freely with the word "dachi", such as "Naihanchi Dachi" or "Naihanchi Kamae". In our system, it is wrong to think of Kamae as only a physical posture. The true meaning of Kamae in Ryukyu Kempo Karate entails three entities; the physical posture, the mental attitude and the emotional disposition. This can be called "Kata wa seitsu" or "Karate no Michi" where the body, mind and spirit come together as one. For a Kamae to be correct, all three of these entities must be balanced and correctly allowed for. The physical part of the Kamae is only a small part of the whole picture. If your mental and emotional attitudes don’t reflect the physical posture, you will be in deep trouble. If you stand in a physical posture which is viewed as an “offensive” or “attacking” posture, but your mind is set on defence or retreating, or, you don’t have total and complete faith in your abilities to follow through your actions (emotional state) then your Kamae is not balanced and your imbalance will be shown to your attacker. It is easy to see when somebody is standing in a posture which doesn’t reflect their inner intentions. When entering a situation – providing you have time, you must assess your attacker, and your own beliefs for the outcome and then adopt a Kamae which represents your intentions. It is often seen when a beginner to Kumite (sparring) is not comfortable with the situation, but still adopts an aggressive offensive posture. The whole position of their body-mind-spirit is seen to be imbalanced. If they understood their feelings and intentions and then adopted a Kamae which suits that situation they will give over the impression that they are much more comfortable with the situation and able to deal accordingly with it. When a persons body-mind-spirit is not balanced, it makes it so much easier to defeat them. As a strategy, the ability to unbalance someone’s body-mind-spirit is an excellent way to start a confrontation. By breaking their spirit, they will lose their confidence. By changing their mindset, they may walk away without needing to use physical force at all. By using body shifting or nearby objects you can force your opponent to change their stance or render the stance they use or their fighting method ineffective. Only by understanding the correct use of each Kamae and the total body-mind-spirit combination associated with each Kamae can you use then to your advantage and create your own Kamae which suit your individual needs. It is important to ensure that you don’t falsely understand Kamae and miss the correct application of each Kamae.
Originally written in 1999, Copyright 2006 Marty Rickard - All Rights Reserved
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