Ornoth

The Arrow’s Journey

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:25:20 GMT

My Austin kyūdō group doesn’t have a teacher; it never has. But we fall under the distant tutelage of a Japanese archery group based in Greenville, South Carolina. The South Carolina Kyūdō Renmei (or SCKR) is run by Blackwell-sensei, one of the most senior kyūdō teachers outside Japan, and his wife Reiko-sensei.

SCKR hold kyūdō seminars a couple times a year, which are attended by local South Carolina practitioners, Austin kyudoka, as well as people from all over North America.

Given my well-documented and very fundamental beginner struggles, I never attended a seminar. I didn’t want to take sensei’s time away from his many advanced students to deal with my remedial problems, and I didn’t want to waste an expensive trip if I wasn’t going to get the attention I need.

However, sensei offered to run a seminar just for us, only open to the comparatively junior members of Austin Kyūdō. It was an irresistible opportunity to get sensei’s help in a way that didn’t feel like I was imposing on other archers. So in September I joined ten other Austinites for a three-day kyūdō intensive.

And “intense” is the right word to describe my experience, from beginning to end. There’s way too much to be able to share it all, but I’ll do my best to briefly share the important parts of where I started, what I went through, some of the things I learned, and where I go from here.

The Honda Prelude

Just two weeks before the seminar, I was ready to call off the trip and quit kyūdō entirely. After two and a half futile years enduring consistent failure in stoic silence, I had finally reached my breaking point.

While everyone around me – even complete first-timers! – demonstrated basic competence and increasing proficiency, I simply couldn’t successfully fire a bow without injuring myself or damaging equipment. My arrows would fly through the air sideways and clang off the practice target, or flop feebly to the ground only a few meters downrange. I broke strings, stripped the feathers from arrows, and bruised my forearm. And the months I’d spent trying dozens of different ways to correct it had all been for naught.

In the interest of moving on, I’ll leave it at that for now. But to get a better idea how frustrated I was, I’d encourage you to read the blogpost I wrote eight months ago, entitled “All the Gear and…”. Just take all the anguish in that post and amp it up to eleven.

Ironically, that week I had a promising insight: that I clenched the fingers of my right hand so tightly that they were interfering with my release. That didn’t solve all my problems, but it seemed like a clue: one piece of the puzzle. But I didn’t even have time to put it into practice before the seminar was upon us.

So that was my mental and emotional state going into the trip: off-the-scale frustration, extreme pessimism, and the only thing I wanted out of the seminar was for sensei to fix me… Although I was skeptical whether he would, or could.

It was – if you’ll excuse the pun – “my last shot” at being a kyūdō practitioner.

The Tyranny of Logistics

Bearing so much emotional distress, I wasn’t very tolerant of the usual discomforts of travel. Other than two trips between Pittsburgh and Austin when we were deciding where to move, I hadn’t flown in six years: since before the COVID-19 pandemic. And it was my first time flying Southwest Airlines, whose asinine unassigned seating policy makes boarding a complete free-for-all.

Things didn’t get a lot better once we arrived, either. I had to share a room with another person, which added some more stress. Not only were we going to prepare communal meals, but because no one had bothered to communicate with one another, sensei and his friends had also prepared meals for us too, which was yet another stressor for everyone.

Even the seminar provided some unexpected wrinkles. Sensei vetoed my use of the familiar bow I’d brought. I’d purchased some used zori sandals for outdoor use getting to the dojo and fetching arrows, but those promptly broke, necessitating a special trip to the store to buy replacements. And although the seminar was supposed to be for his Austin students only, we were sporadically joined by 5-10 local practitioners. Despite being able to use the dojo 365 days a year, they took shooting spaces and sensei’s time away from those of us who had traveled from far away for a precious 2½ days with him. And I have to admit I got frustrated by seeing other kyudoka improving much more rapidly than I did.

But the underlying message here is that the seminar was extremely mentally, physically, and emotionally draining. In addition to my already-charged emotional state, I was dealing with lack of sleep, poor and insufficient eating, muscle fatigue, dehydration, headaches and nausea, social stress, and of course the emotional rollercoaster of judging every shot I took.

It was, in short, an incredibly draining experience.

Nana Dan the Sensei

I’m gonna be honest: I felt a lot of trepidation going into my first experience with Blackwell-sensei. In speaking with my friends who had worked with him in the past, my preconception was of a teacher who was willfully terse, irritable, intolerant, and easily offended. But after telling their daunting stories, my friends would always add the postscript: “… but as long as you’re serious about kyūdō, he’s really great!”

During the seminar, Blackwell-sensei was actually very willing to give me the benefit of his time and instruction, and he patiently listened to my observations and needs. Despite my skepticism and obvious frustration, he was able to see the mistakes underlying my problems, and gave me clear strategies for correcting them. And he did so with patience and graciousness.

While fixing my issues will take lots more practice and reinforcement, my shooting did begin to improve by the end of the seminar, thanks to his valuable and generously-offered instruction.

Not that he isn’t surly and cantankerous and all that. But I think it shows up in his interactions with more experienced students, with whom he has higher expectations and more established relationships.

My Threefold Incompetence

So what exactly did I get out of the seminar? Well, there were lots of little, specific learnings, but those will be documented in my kyūdō notebook, rather than here. And as far as I was concerned, the only thing that really mattered was figuring out the cause of my constant misfires.

Over the course of the weekend, we identified three specific issues with my release. I’ll distill them down as briefly as possible.

First, my grip on the bow was incorrect, which was causing the string to slap my wrist and the bow to invert itself. Fixing it requires both holding the bow more loosely, plus making small changes in how my fingers configure themselves on the grip.

My second issue was what I’d identified just before the seminar: by locking my fingers around the string, they interfered with the string when I released it, causing the arrow to fire off-kilter, with very little power, and stripping some of the fletching. Ideally, I wouldn’t lock those fingers at all during my draw, but for the time being I’m simply trying to consciously loosen those fingers before I release the string.

I developed the habit of locking those fingers because the string was prematurely coming out of the groove it’s supposed to sit in within the glove. Sensei gave me several techniques to counteract this tendency during my draw, including: keeping my right hand flat; being careful to keep my thumb level or pointed up, rather than downward; making sure my right elbow comes down and back as I draw; not drawing the arrow all the way down to the chin; and not holding my full draw for very long.

Of course, there’s an immense difference between a conceptual understanding of what one has to fix versus actually physically performing it reliably each time one steps up to shoot. And because I’ve spent two years developing muscle memory of improper techniques, my attempts to correct my form feel completely unnatural and wrong. So even though I know what I should be doing, it’s going to take time and lots of practice to learn new habits.

The Fourth Problem

As chance would have it, our kyūdō trip coincided with two Zoom calls that I wanted to attend, both organized by Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, where I practiced meditation for 12 years, and which has been an important part of my growth for more than two decades. Saturday’s call was in honor of CIMC’s founding teacher, Larry Rosenberg, who is in his nineties and in poor health; and on Sunday we celebrated the 40th anniversary of CIMC’s founding. These were intensely moving for me, and featured several of my dear old friends. A shaved-headed version of Ornoth even showed up in the background in part of the “community reflections” video they shared!

The main reason why I mention these here is because those celebrations included poignant messages about looking at how one relates to the challenges and suffering that arise in one’s life, and to pay close attention to what one is attached to, especially ego-based ideas about who one is and how one wants other people see them.

The applicability of these ideas to my kyūdō practice couldn’t have been clearer, and really put the past couple years into perspective.

To clarify further, here’s a citation from a recent article in Lion’s Roar magazine that stated things rather well:

Often a problem at home or at work isn’t just troubling because of the surface issue that the problem is about. It’s what the problem makes us feel and think about ourselves that is disturbing. Taking the time to examine those feelings and thoughts using our meditative practices often shows us that we have some internal hook by which the external challenge has grabbed us.

[…]

Try answering this self-exploratory journal question: “What is the difference between the actual problem posed by my situation and my perception of and feelings about my situation?”

A neutral observer would see that there’s really nothing objectively painful about my kyūdō practice, other than maybe an occasional abrasion. The towering mountain of anguish I’ve endured is entirely due to the meaning I’ve attached to my practice, specifically my need to be seen as a competent – if not a skilled – archer, both in my own mind as well as in the estimation of others.

My need to be a skilled kyudoka was the source of a great deal of pain: that is the fourth problem with my archery practice.

I would free myself from an immense quantity of suffering if I were able to let go of that need, or at least hold it more lightly. Like changing my shooting technique, that’s easier said than done, but just having that mind-shift cleared some space for me to relate to myself and my struggles with more ease, more compassion, and hopefully a little more freedom.

Since my early days as a tech consultant, I’ve known that I don’t thrive in my “stretch zone”; I thrive in the “comfort zone”. I want to enjoy life as it comes, in accordance with my own values, without unnecessary effort or discomfort. I don’t understand people who fixate on personal growth, always striving for something more, wanting to leave their mark on the world. To me, that sounds like living in a perpetual hamster wheel: lots and lots of effort, achieving nothing of value. Or as Devo sings: “Toil is Stupid”.

I had an exchange with one of the senior kyudoka from South Carolina which was especially discouraging. He told me that he enjoyed having the younger Austin people visit, because they reminded him that practicing kyūdō could actually be fun. If enjoying kyūdō is an alien concept to such a longtime practitioner, that raises a big question about whether I even want to continue. What’s the point, if there is no enjoyment?

Kyūdō challenges my self-image, my attachment to how I am perceived by others, and the basic values I hold toward life. Hopefully I can work through those challenges and find a better way to relate to them, so that I don’t have to suffer as much as I have for the past two years.

Seeking the Target

So where do I stand?

Sensei actually gave me both hope and a number of specific changes that I can incorporate into my shooting technique. It would be logical to make a sincere effort to adopt his suggestions, to see whether they actually improve my shooting or not. That will take time and practice to prove out, but that’s an investment I’m willing to make.

I’m also willing to work on my relationship with kyūdō. It’s important that I learn how to let go of the frustration that comes with identifying as a competent archer, while at the same time asking myself whether kyūdō’s endless self-improvement treadmill is something I am able and willing to tolerate over the long term.

As such, I am not going to quit kyūdō… yet.

But at the same time, I am only suspending judgement long enough to work with sensei’s suggestions. Those changes might not help, and I might still decide that I can’t cope with kyūdō’s perpetual challenges and frustrations.

So we’ll see. The arrow’s journey continues, for the time being.

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All the Gear and…

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:22:01 GMT

Like golf, kyūdō is supposed to be a little humbling. Part of this Japanese martial art is to provide the archer with opportunities to observe and reflect on his emotional reaction to stress, adversity, frustration, and failure.

I really don’t think it’s supposed to be this hard, tho.

But before I talk about what’s going wrong, let’s talk about what’s gone well: buying things!

Soon after restarting my lapsed kyūdō practice in a new lineage, I purchased a basic kyūdō uniform: a dogi, kaku obi, hakama, and tabi (i.e. shirt, belt, pleated skirt-pants, and footwear). Plus my first yugake (shooting glove), custom-sized for my hand and specially crafted in Japan.

Last year I added the essential equipment. I ordered four semi-fletched arrows from respected kyūdō teacher Dan DeProspero in North Carolina for close-range indoor use with a makiwara target. Then I gained a beautiful set of six fletched arrows for long-distance shooting, which my buddies picked up for me while they were attending a workshop at Blackwell-sensei’s dojo in South Carolina. And I topped it off with a new, extra-long (yon-sun), 12kg draw weight Jikishin II composite bow in a group order from Japan’s Sambu Kyuguten.

I definitely look the part. So what’s the problem? Literally everything else!

But taking aim at the main problem: I can’t release an arrow properly. Sometimes the arrow launches feebly and bounces off the practice target. Other times it flies thru the air sideways and clangs off the target. Sometimes the string tries to rotate around the bow so violently that the bow “flips” and inverts itself, requiring a manual reset. I’ve even broken the string on one bow. And every misfire produces eye-wateringly painful abrasions and bruising on my left thumb or wrist.

This kinda thing happens to archers from time to time. With a normal problem, you would diagnose what you’re doing wrong, correct it, and move on with your practice; but it’s been more than 18 months, and I’ve tried so many things, with no success in fixing my release. In the past six months, I’ve made just 23 successful shots, against 31 misfires of various kinds. And I sat out three entire practice sessions purely out of fear of shooting. I’ve even had actual nightmares about kyūdō.

These days, I panic before every shot, anticipating the painful abrasions and bruising that accompanies yet another humiliating misfire. Obviously, my “release anxiety” isn’t helping matters at all.

Another frustration is the number of plausible fixes I’ve tried. At first I thought that the glove on my right hand wasn’t holding the string securely, causing it to slip free unexpectedly, with my other fingers impeding its release. When fixing that didn’t solve my problems, I started looking at my left wrist, which is weak and thus has a tendency to buckle inward or outward at full draw. Then we tweaked my grip on the bow, even swapping in a larger grip, because my fingers are considerably longer than those of the average Japanese archer. I tried rotating my right arm vertically on release rather than horizontally, in case that motion was interfering with my release. I tried changed where the arrow was positioned against my glove and putting less torque on my right hand, thinking my glove might be nudging the arrow out of nock. I’ve perpetually been advised to loosen my grip on the bow, but that’s something I’m pretty cognizant of, and doesn’t seem to be the main problem. Because I’ve been afraid of doing a full draw for so long, I tried altering my stance to force myself to fully extended my left arm, in case that was influencing the flight of the arrow. And most recently, I’ve tried focusing my grip on the bow with my middle finger. Out of all these things I’ve tried, nothing has worked.

A complicating factor is that our club doesn’t have an actual experienced teacher among us. Our most senior member is still pretty junior, only recently graduating from Second Dan. So although I get a ton of well-intentioned advice from other members, it’s mostly amateur guesswork and is sometimes contradictory. So many different suggestions have been piled on simultaneously that I can’t adequately test whether any of them are working. Especially when we are only able to shoot three or four arrows per weekly session!

As I said above, part of being a kyūdōka is learning how to manifest stoic strength, showing neither elation nor disappointment in one’s performance. So I’ve been exceptionally patient, never showing any overt emotional response. Meanwhile, I’ve helped new practitioners, who began with considerably less skill and self-awareness, advance far beyond me in skill. Although I really don’t care about rank at all, after nearly two years of incompetent struggle, I’m not improving, and I’ve finally exhausted my willingness to suffer in silent solitude.

A normal kyudoka would long ago have called on the experience of their teacher. For better or worse, our Austin group falls under the auspices of a Seventh Dan teacher who lives in South Carolina and runs his own group there. He never comes to Austin, and we can only travel to see him once or twice a year, when he holds kyūdō seminars that are well-attended and open to the public. At those seminars, he prefers to work with his advanced students, and I don’t want to show up on his doorstep asking for him to solve some aging stranger’s beginner struggles. Ideally, I’d get my problems cleared up and develop some basic competence before working with him. But until that happens, I’d be too ashamed to show up with such fundamental problems, and it would be a pointless waste of a trip if I was unable to participate in shooting.

While I expect my struggles to continue, there are two potential options for possibly getting help.

Our sensei has mentioned the possibility of hosting a weekend seminar specifically for our Austin group. This could be a way for me to meet him and get some personal instruction without taking his precious time away from his favored students. The challenge would be getting a critical number of students to schedule travel together to South Carolina to make it worth sensei’s time. And meanwhile, I’ve got an upcoming surgery that’ll prevent me from flying for six months.

Another possibility might be sending video clips to him for his critique. This has the advantage of being easier to make happen, but it would limit how much sensei can see, as well as how quickly I could test out his suggestions and get rounds of feedback. Plus it would still be an imposition, and he’s known for being terse and a poor correspondent.

At any rate, I’ll be taking the month of March off from kyūdō following my upcoming surgery. I have no idea whether that downtime will be a useful reset for my technique or an opportunity for me to atrophy and fall even further out of practice.

This is all an immense challenge to the air of competence and Buddhist stoicism I usually try to exemplify. Despite my obvious struggles over the past year and a half, I successfully remained nonchalant and kept my frustration on a low simmer. But at this point the pressure has built up and reached an explosive level where it has to come out. It’s been a very long time since anything has frustrated and humiliated me so thoroughly as kyūdō.

After two years of continuous struggle, it would be illogical to think anything is likely to change. So there’s no way to end this post optimistically. Just venting, while documenting my lengthy, painful, and ongoing struggle.

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