Heian Shodan is the first in the series of 5 Heian Katas. Heian literally translates into “Peaceful Mind” and Shodan means “First Level”. It is the first Kata you learn after gaining your first color belt, however, you should not be fooled into thinking that this means it is the easiest – far from it. Although Heian Shodan consists of what is generally considered to be “basic” it takes a lot of training and learning to truly understand it and to do it correctly.
As with all Kata there are many lessons to be learnt from each Kata. Depending on what level you are at will determine your focus. As a beginner learning a “beginners” Kata all you want to do and all your Sensei will want you to do is to memorise the movements. This does not mean just memorizing them in your mind but in your body. Many people never think about this fact yet it is a key factor to developing great basics and foundations to all your karate moves.
What I mean by memorising it in your body is – creating muscle memory. I am sure you have heard the saying – “it’s just like riding a bike, you never forget”. This statement is mostly true, but why is it true. Because as a child you rode your bike from as early as probably 2 or 3 years of age and my guess is that you were still riding bikes when you were into your late teens. That means that you had a good 15 years where your body conditioned itself to riding a bike. Think about when you now watch a young child riding a bike, they need to remember where the brakes are, how far to turn the handle bars, which muscles to use to create balance. Yet in your teens you just jump on and go.
Same with driving a car. When you first learn, you have to learn how much clutch to use or let off, how much to press down on the accelerator. You have to look down to find the gears etc. After a few years you can drive your car while you talk on the phone, drink a coffee, listen to the radio and put your makeup on or have a shave on the way to the office. Not recommended but it is a fine example of muscle memory. You don’t even have to think about it, you just jump in and go.
That is what we want to achieve when you are learning and memorising your Katas. As a beginner doing a front stance Zenkutsu Dachi (front stance), you have to look down and think about where your feet are positioned, are your hips turned correctly, is your back leg locked out or bent etc. By training and practicing and training and practicing your Katas you will create muscle memory for all these “basic” stances so that as you move up the grades you won’t have to look down to check your feet you will just feel that they are ok.
This goes for every move of every Kata. I talked about it with Taikyoku Shodan (Kihon Kata) and now here. There are certainly more advanced Katas but Heian Shodan should not be considered a basic Kata.
As you move up the grades towards Purple and Brown Belts your focus is going to change again. You shouldn’t have check your your stances anymore, when you now perform Heian Shodan your focus should shift to things like hip movement, ensuring you are finishing your hip rotation in timing with your stance and your attack/block to create strong and affective attacks/blocks. This is where you start fine tuning the “basic” moves and you now start to realise that these “basic” moves are actually a lot more complex than you first thought.
As a higher Kyu grade you will also start to learn and discover Kata Bunkai, which is the adaptation of Kata to create an actually attack or defense that works. I discuss Bunkai in another of my Karate Blogs, but just to emphasise again that Heian Shodan is by no means a basic Kata just think about how you are currently performing it when you train. Could you affectively defend yourself from an attacker in the street with what you have learnt from Heian Shodan. I don’t mean get into a front stance and step forward with block and punch. I mean adapt that block and punch with speed and power to defend yourself? If not then you have a lot to still learn about Heian Shodan. You need to start studying it in depth.
As a Brown and Black Belt your focus will now change to attempting to perform Heian Shodan so that it looks effortless, yet powerful, fast yet not rushed, graceful and affective. What kind of things would you need to focus on to achieve this? Have you ever watched someone perform Kata and it just looks rushed, it often happens in class when everyone is trying to compete with the person next to them. The fast part of the Kata should be the actual techniques, not the bit between the techniques. Your punches should be EXPLOSIVE – FAST – POWERFUL with fast pull back and stop dead on target in time with your stance. Your hips should rotate in perfect sync with your attack and stop rotating exactly on impact. Now here is the really hard bit, you should be able to let go of all that built up tension and relax for just the split second in between each movement ready to explode into the next one.
So as you can see, Heian Shodan is by no means a “basic” Kata! It has many lessons, some will call them “Secrets” within it and you will start discovering these lessons and secrets as you move up through your Grades. It is a stepping stone to all other Kata, for example you first learn Shuto-uke (knife hand block) in Heian Shodan, you start creating muscle memory for it right here, then by the time you get to say Bassai Dai you shouldn’t have to think about how to perform Shuto-uke.
There is so much more to talk about in Heian Shodan, we could break down each move or start discussing Bunkai but the purpose of this blog post was just to emphasise the importance of Heian Shodan and to hopefully show you that although it may appear to be a basic simple Kata there really is so much more to it than meets the eye.
Enjoy discovering this Kata and next time you go to training start focusing on some of the different aspects of each Kata. Question each Kata. Study each Kata through practice and continuous repetition.
Karate Del
www.karatekata.net
