“Kiai” Tutorial & History｜ALL Martial Arts Needs It!

Guys, you can't be literally shouting out kiai for your kata or kihon and the reason dates back to the 1500s. Learn the reason why and the correct way to do it and there's only one single rule to do it in this video. Okay, so let's start with the japanese meaning. Ki means feeling, emotion, spirit, or energy. Ai means together or when something is meeting. Therefore, in a lot of other youtube videos talking about kiai, they conclude that kiai means to get the energy together for your technique. However, that meaning became common in around the early 1900s. Originally, the word dates back to 1560. In Honpukuji Atogaki, which is a diary written by the priest of Honpuku temple, there's a phrase which roughly translates to By staying close with someone you get along with, your ethics will be guided to the right way. So before it was written as these two characters, which means a match in emotion or feeling. Years passed and the word evolved to these two characters and started to be used and studied in the field of kendo from a technical point of view. For example, Noma Hisashi, who was a kendo master, has written in his book of kendo yomihon the nine positive effects of kiai. These are the nine effects. I'm not going to be reading through all of them. However, I want to mention that in the field of kendo, they have been looking a little bit deeper into kiai, and I think you can notice that from their very loud high tone kiai. Therefore, from a technical point of view, it is very important to shout out nice and short, which is the complete opposite of kiai, which is a very long word. Then you might be thinking, well, in other martial arts, they don't shout out at all. Let's say boxing or wrestling, right? Well, this is my personal point of view, but when boxers punch and wrestlers tackle, they are still breathing out sharply. It's just that you don't hear the sound. Also, with the mouthpiece, it's very hard to shout out loudly, right? Therefore, they're still using their abs to breathe out. So it's basically the same thing. Well, now let's move on to the correct way of doing the kiai. There's only one simple rule. As long as the word has these three sounds, it'll make sense. Those three sounds are oi, ei, and ai. The very important point for the kiai to make sense is that the breath is coming out from your stomach and not your throat. If you want the breath to come out, if you close the throat, it's going to be very hard to speak and talk. Therefore, you must open up your throat and it's very easy to do that with the sound of ai, ei, and oi. So let's take it step by step. Step number one. If your head is tilted forward usually, please set it back, okay? And let the air flow through easily. If it's like this, your neck is going to be angled, so there's going to be less air flowing through. So point number one. Set your head back. Point number two. Let's feel something that you shouldn't be doing. Okay, press your throat like this and try to talk. I think it's very hard, right? And your voice is going to get very thin. Now open it up and imagine widening your neck. Ah, like this, okay? Now let a lot of air out and sound out ah, okay? Ah, like this. Don't do, uh, okay, open up your mouth very widely. Ah, like that. Now as you say ah, cut that by putting the pressure on your stomach. So go like this. Ah, ah, ah, like that. That stop, that gets the syllables very short. Last step. Initiate the sound and then cut it suddenly. So the last exercise was the sound was going and then you cut it. Now we're just going to start the sound and then cut it suddenly. Like that. So when you start out, please make sure to open up your mouth very loudly when you try this. As you get used to it, you're not going to be needing to open up your mouth that widely. So you'll get used to it. But you know, when you start out, please do so. If you'd like to see other Japanese related videos, then please check these out. And also subscribe to my channel. And right now I'm doing a free trial for my online group lesson as a New Year's giveaway. So please check that out from here. And I'll see you guys in the next video.