The Martial Art of Ninjutsu - 3 Lessons of the Ninja's Kamae

In the Ninja's art of unarmed combat known asbeen taught. Each had a name and came from a
ninpo-taijutsu, or budo-taijutsu, there is the coreparticular lineage, or school of combat that had
lesson of kamae - the use of effective bodybeen passed down to my teacher.
positioning. While other martial arts might refer toI pulled out my notes and reread passages in
this strategic positioning of the body as dachi orbooks by my teacher and others who had
"stances," the Ninja sees his or her kamae as anwritten about the Ninja's art of ninjutsu, or ninpo,
outward manifestation of the inner workings ofas it's known in its higher, life-centered, order.
his or her heart, rather than a fixed positionBut, it wasn't until I took a step back from my
dictated by one's style.role as a student trying to get rank - trying to
Progress through any educational endeavor islearn the next kata or "fight-example" - that
often seen as merely learning the lessons that theeverything started to become clear. It wasn't until
teacher gives us. Nothing more. Nothing less.I switched my brain from "learning" to
Rarely does a student question the relevance of"experience" mode that things started to make
any given skill or its relationship to other skills andsense.
lessons being taught at the same time. And this isWhen I looked at my experience as a police
no different in the martial art world.officer and body guard and the lessons that I had
This is especially true when it comes to the skillspicked up in "the school of hard-knocks" I
commonly referred to as "the basics."suddenly realized that, regardless of form...
In fact, it's these "basics" that often go...regardless of whether a kamae came from the
overlooked by students and teachers alike asGyokko-ryu, Kukishinden-ryu, or Koto school, they
being anything more than merely base elementsall were teaching the same lessons.
of a particular style. In fact, they're often seen asAnd then something else hit me.
nothing more than...Even the basics, the things we think of as obvious
...the stuff to learn so we can move onto "thelessons, are themselves teaching us lessons.
cool stuff."I realized that buried within each lesson - within
I know that I, myself, used to believe that. Thateach skill - whether it be rolling, walking, cutting,
is, until I went from conventional, sport-oriented,shooting, or kamae...
martial arts, to the art of ninjutsu....were lessons that were universal in nature and
Of course, in the beginning of my training, kamaeyet invisible unless you either knew what to look
were just that...kamae. I really didn't see them asfor or had a teacher with real-life experience who
any different from the "stances" of my earliercould help you to see them for what they are.
training in karate, tae-kwon-do, and other arts.It was then that I realized that each and every
Even though my teacher spoke of "taking up" thekamae was teaching the same lessons. Some of
kamae and repeating the "idea" of kamae asthese lessons were at deeper levels and required
meaning "mind-body-spirit attitudes" - being themore understanding, but there were three that
physical manifestations by our bodies of how westood out for the beginner.
felt and what we thought we could do in anyThese three basic lessons of kamae are:
given moment.
It wasn't until I had years of training under my1. Cover - the ability to effectively shield oneself
belt, so-to-speak, and found myself hitting a walland make it difficult for an attacker to get at you
in my progress and growth that I finally decidedStability/Balance - the ability to properly position
to take another look at the obvious - at theseand align the parts of your body for maximum
things called kamae.effectiveness and minimum effort, and...
I began by looking at all of the positions that I had