What is kokyu?

Question

Whenever this question comes up on MA forums it gets a wide variety of weird, wacky, intelligent or mystical answers.

What I really want to know is your personal perspective on kokyu and how it apllies to your training.

Answer 1

Kokyu in Japanese simply means breath. A doctor, for example, will casually use the word when asking you to breathe deeply during an examination.

It can also mean rhythm or timing as in "kokyu wo awaseru" which literally means match two or more people's breathing, but actually just means to be in sync. Since you seem to be an aikidoist, you should know that the kokyu in kokyu-nage comes from this meaning of the word.

Breathing of course is important for any sports activity. In fighting, your attack is usually most effective when you time it with your exhalation. By extension, you should be inhaling when drawing someone else's attack into your circle so you can throw the energy back out wheh you exhale.

Focusing on breathing can also be helpful in meditation because it is one of the few activities in which the conscious and subconsious merge. In other words, you can control your breathing with your conscious mind or just let your body conduct it by itself. By observing your breathing closely as you meditate, you start to have a better idea of the relationship between your conscious and subconscious mind, as well as how both are affecting other aspects of your physical activity. This often comes only after years of training, however.

I personally no longer practice ibuki, the loud breathing that is used for training commonly by Goju ryu karate stylist and hard qi gong practitioners. Although I used to pay more attention to my breathing while pracitsing years ago, I now usually just try to stay aware of it and otherwise just let it take its natural course.

I hope none of the above came across as weird, wacky or mystical.

Answer 2

It also means the fifth (ko) rank (Kyu). So in karate every one starts at the seventh rank (white belt). The first rank is the black belt.