Gareth's Blog

It is quite common in the rush to get to the “bashing people on the head” bit of kendo to overlook one of the most important parts of kendo; breathing.

Method

In kendo the method of breathing is to fill the tanden, a grapefruit sized area in the front half of your gut halfway between your pubic bone and your navel, in line with your hara.
You should breath in quickly through you nose and down into your gut. Your chest should not expand at all. If you are wearing your Bogu you should feel your lower abdomen pushing hard against the confines of your tare.
Exhale slowly through your mouth. You gut should stay hard and expanded. Exhale until you are empty and the cycle will restart naturally.
This is commonly referred to as abdominal breathing.

Mokuso

This is the obvious place to start you breathing.
The feeling is of projecting your gut through the circle you make with your hands which, incidentally, should be in front of the tanden.
Your breathing here is a continuous cycle.

Keiko

During keiko the method of breathing is to inhale at toi-maai and lock the breath down into the tanden with a loud kiai using as little air as possible to produce as louder kiai as possible.
Then move into cutting distance. You should not exhale here. Cut and kiai using most of your remaining breath.
You should have enough breath remaining to make an additional attack.

Kiai

Kiai should feel as if it is being pushed up out of your gut.

Breath Management

A point to consider; If two Kendoka of equal skill are locked into issoku-ito-no-maai (the distance of the one step cut) with neither able to either cut or escape to toi-maai (long distance). The one who has to breathe first will lose.