Winter training
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008It has now been about a year that I have been training with Tom Hilliard. There are now three of us, regular students who meet together to train on Saturdays and Sundays.
Today we trained at Squires Castle as we normally do on Sundays. Tom decided that due to the clothes that some of us were wearing, it would be best to go inside the castle as we did for our last couple of outdoor classes, rather than rolling around on the ground in the snow where we would get soaked. The temperature was slightly below freezing. The castle is a stone shell with only openings for doors and windows, and no real roof. It is a unique stone building on sprawling grounds at a park called the North Chagrin Reservation.
After our normal Sanshin exercise, we went right into practicing Oni Kudaki with one another. It was great! It was freezing and there was actually ice spots to beware of on the concrete floor in the castle where we had to be careful not to slip. We worked back and forth and kept warm by staying very active. Tom spent a lot of time explaining why we do things the way we do, and why we don’t do some things that others do. The Kuden is very important so we all listen and take note of the things that Tom has learned in almost 20 years of training in this art.
