Breaking it down this way helps. I need to rethink how I practice my katas….. and check my stances… We need to have a horse stance stand-off!

I think sayuchin has these concepts of hard and soft in the kata. There are definitely many horse stances in it.

There is a good reminder of this in our kata that everyone should be aware of. Yang can be characterized by a straight vertical line, while Yin is often represented by a flat horizontal line. When tracing the enbusen (pattern) of Sanchin kata, it moves on a straight North-South line and is representative of Yang while Naihanchi goes East-West and is representative of Yin. Tatsuo Shimabuku was also quoted as saying that Sanchin is like the father and Naihanchi is like the mother to Isshinryu. Interestingly, when we combine those two lines, we get the cross pattern of Seisan. I went into a lot of detail about these different forces in our kata in my 8-codes intensive. I’ll have to teach it again before the year is over.