A Kyudo Addiction

Last night, I hit my first bulls eye from 28 meters. It was my third official day mato no mae (in front of the target). Official because the week before Mita-sensei said I was ready to shoot at the target I went to my friend Chen's college dojo to try out shooting at the target, and that was without the permission of the sensei at our dojo. On the second day of practice I had an amazing experience of beginner's luck. When the sensei first introduces a student to the target he or she takes the student to the 14 meter mark to get the feeling of aiming without the distance. In my case, I hit the target on the first two tries, so he said that I should go back to the 28m point. I missed the next two shots, but hit three of the four following. I then hit a few more times before my form started to collapse. Too much ego, or thinking, or attachment to hitting the target. I am not sure whether it was one of those, or all of them together. Mita-sensei just smiled and pointed back to the bale of straw saying, "Makiwala o renshu shimasu." (Practice the shooting bale) I spent most of the remaining session attempting to readjust my form until Nakagawa-sensei arrived. Almost immediately Mita-sensei started telling him about how well I did on my time in front of the target. Nakagawa-sensei simply crossed his arms in a casual manner, and told Mita-san that he wanted to see me shoot. The pressure was on, and I buckled. All four of my shots had bad form, and were far from hitting my intended spot. Then yesterday evening i returned to the dojo. When i started practicing in front of the makiwala it was as if over the weekend I had forgotten everything i had learned in the past month. I started hitting my face and chest with the string again, and my center line was way out of balance. I had to slowly remind myself of how to shoot. After one hour, I felt that I was ready to go in front of the target again to try my hand at aiming. Unfortunately, I was just as poor at that as I had been at the form earlier that evening. I certainly did not repeat the multiple hits in a row, but did have the ocasional good shot. And for the first time in my career I hit the bulls eye.