Conceal Your Technique

Furuya Sensei posted this to his Daily Message on November 17, 2002.

Conceal Your Technique: In this day and age as techniques are becoming more and more flamboyant, I believe it is important to follow the older maxim to in which our opponents cannot "see" our technique. Especially in Iaido, we move in a quiet way and in a way that our opponent cannot see our actual movement. Of course, we are not standing still, we are moving our hands and feet and body, but we should imagine that we are moving in a way in which we are completely still and our opponents cannot "catch" our movement with their eyes. Our movement becomes "hidden" and very subtle. Try to understand how to move so that you yourself do not even realize that you are moving at all. This does NOT mean to make our movements smaller and smaller, no, not at all. This is something completely different from "not moving," this is "not moving within the movement." This hidden movement is another subject which cannot be conveyed in words, please try to discover this in your own training.