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Put a Spring in Your Step
Ask different instructors about the function of shime
and you’ll get different answers. Hardening
the body to withstand blows is one. And indeed there
is a long Okinawan karate tradition of toughening
and strengthening the body, so the practitioner can
absorb punishment and still triumph in a fight.
Another commonsense use of inward tension is to protect
the groin from attack. And “wrapping the groin” is
a strategy found in Chinese martial arts such as
taijiquan (Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming, Taijiquan Theory,
YMAA Publication Centre, 2003).
While taiji might protect the groin with the knee,
its techniques are performed using a soft, fluid body.
With the joints and muscles relaxed, the “body
can act as a single whipping unit. Taijiquan jin [power]
acts
like the whipping of a soft whip. When there is a stiffness
in any joint, the whipping power will be reduced.”
Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming
does a form. In taijiquan
you must keep your body
relaxed and use it like
a whip.
At first blush, Chito-Ryu karate, with its shime and
shibori, seems to be at odds with this ideal of relaxed
or soft power. But this may be due to the way the concepts
are generally interpreted. In his new Ryusei Karate-Do
technical manual, Sakamoto-Sensei compares shime and
shibori to a “compressed spring” or “an
arrow waiting to be shot from a bow.” So when
not applying focus to a technique, the muscles are
supple, not hard, coiled to unleash with whip-like
power.
As with taiji, power should be generated from the
feet, directed and controlled by the waist and finally
manifested
in the hands. And when talking about this type of
power, we are of course referring to ki or internal
energy – the
development of which, I believe, is the chief purpose
of shime and shibori. |
