Shadley Cuts

Well, at last I've found a group of people interested in the same sort of thing as I am. The freestyle cutters are a group of people who practice swordsmanship using mainly the katana. It seems to be as intense as you want it to be, allowing you to dedicate as much or as little time as you want to it. I of course have the character defect of allowing myself to endlessly obsess; so I have and will be practicing regularly enough to enjoy all sorts of muscle related injuries. go me :)

I spent a fair amount of time deciding whether or not I wanted to be a part of it before picking up my favourite practice sword and making it out into the garden to unceremoniously lop a few bottles into pieces and pass the first part of the bottle curriculum (the part of the 'course' if you like, that involves 500ml bottles filled with water). The second part I'm saving up bottles for as I speak (and replacing a sword, but thats another story)

For quite a while before finding the FSC I was toying with the idea of iaido or kenjutsu but the outlay was prohibitively expensive and the relation of the form to the practice of using a sword seemed slightly disconnected or distanced. I appreciate that practice of form in iaido makes a better swordsperson but without the actual act of cutting something it seemed a half filled cup. The only other group I found was 'Ken Kai Ryu' which from my research and of course in my very humble opinion, seemed like a group of people opposed to outside influence, without any history, teaching their own kind of posturing and posing. Dont get me wrong, theres a place for posturing and posing, but it's not at the beginning when Im trying to seriously learn something.

Since attempting the bottle curriculum within the FSC I've been shown inadequacies in my own physique and my mental outlook that I've had to combat, thatI've pretty much had to face head on and sort out. My body is now stronger and faster and my outlook on things is more positive. As long as I have access to my swords and my garden, the rest of life seems to fall more into place than it did before. It's strange to think that something so small thing in the scheme of things could have such a profound effect on my life.