Interesting...

Remember yesterday when I mentioned how cool it is when fellow buyu just 'happen' to be teaching the same things I happen to be teaching my group? Synergy, remember?

Well, I emailed my friend Alex to announce I would be Gracing his dojo with my presence on Saturday and wondered if he would be teaching. He emailed back with a resounding "YES!" and then told me he would be starting the Shoden level of Rokushakubo!

And, what did I write about starting this last class with MY group? I love it! LOL!

Anyway, what's really cool is that he said he knows kata from Shoden, Chuden, Okuden - which are different than the standard Sabaki Gata! This is such a regular thing now, to find out that there are kata other than what is commonly known in any of our ryuha! It always seems that Soke and the Japanese Shihan hold more than what they reveal.

Those who boast about knowing all the kata in the Bujinkan (or any of the ryuha within the Bujinkan) are funny, aren't they? I also think this is why it's almost useless to go 'kata collecting' because there are just so many to have to remember. At some point, you'd have to just throw up your hands and just keep moving forward in your training, forgetting what you knew because you can't walk forwards while trying to always look back. I believe trying to constantly remember all this stuff eventually becomes like rock collecting - at some point the bag will become too heavy to carry and you have to either stop and take what you have or start limiting which rocks you want to keep.

That's my conclusion at least. There are others who are far more proficient at collecting more rocks than I do. But, I like to think that the few I keep are the best I've discovered so far and at any time a better one could take the place of any others I have in my bag. So, even if I like the ones I have, I also acknowledge that there will eventually be ones which are better - so I'm not partial to any of them and can let them go if need be.

Tomorrow's training with Alex will be yet another rock hunting trip and I'm hoping I will walk away with some gems to replace some of the rocks I come in with...

Hopefully, the rocks in my head won't keep me from discovering the gems....

Ok, enough symbolism! I need more coffee...