This is the basic idea of seme. Don’t be so serious! Just have a fun!
In kendo, you have to make an opening, if you cannot see one.
You must make your opponent confused, puzzled, afraid or uneasy, surprised by your kendo.
In order for you to do so, you have to DO something, right?
The game in the video is telling us how to do so.
Just apply this concept to kendo. You can have more fun.
Great! I guess you have to “fake” moves with tension or not tension, flexibility, speed and slow.
I guess your opponent react to you body language too.
In a combat fighters will always react to many things, like look of eyes, reflex with fast moves.
Know how to speak with your body moves and all is a good way to make “mind skills”, which create a reason for your opponent “open” and so on you have a opportunity to hit then?
As much as I don’t like to use the word, fake, it is a part of the mind game we do in kendo.
We need to have a conversation with our opponent. Without that, we can’t tell what our opponent is thinking to do. So…
We need to observe our opponent
We need to talk through the shinai with our opponent
We need to know how our opponent reacts to certain movements and actions.
We need to make them think that we do certain things but we won’t.
It is like reading body language with shinai.
This “fun” very much reminds me of “push hands” in the tai chi tradition:
Meditative: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XALpOmuQR88#t=2m25s
Competitive: https://youtube.com/watch?v=awrSlh1n8_o
Very interesting!
Feeling our opponent through the shinai is very important but it is super hard to do!
We probably should practice something like that in kendo!