As I've already mentioned, I'm practising now Iaido for more than eight years. It has
been a constant source of motivation for physical, personal and human development.
Short History of Iaido
Most modern schools consider a samurai called Hayashizaki Jinsuke Minamoto no Shigenobu (1546-1621) as the originator of iaido. As the knownledge about his life is pretty poor, some scholars doubt his existence as a historical figure. The two largest schools of iaido that are practised today, Muso Shinden-ryu and Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu, claim both a lineage starting with Hayashizaki.While not a hard and fast rule, frequently the word iaido is used to refer to the modern self improvement oriented form taught by the All Japan Kendo Federation (AJKF) and other iaido associations while iaijutsu is used for the older, combative techniques of the koryu. The word iaido itself was coined by Nakayama Hakudo (1873-1958) in early 20th century. Before that various other names like batto-, batto-jutsu, or saya no uchi were used instead.
What's my personal experience with Iaido
I've started iaido in the year 1997 at an university course. I can remember the
first training hours in an old school hall. Although I have come a little bit too late,
because of the public transport system in Hamburg, it feels right from the beginning to do
this. The first form, I've learned was the Kata "Ukenagashi", one of the twelve Katas from the
basic school of the → Seitei Iai
(at that time the Seitei Iai contains only ten Katas). "Ukenagashi" means take and give back.
So you transform the drive from an opponent sword to give the strike back to the opponent
itself. With a wooden sword, a bokken, we exercised this Kata first with a partner and
afterwards alone in self studies. 
Although this lesson is now quite some time ago there are a
few things that have not changed since then. One thing is the joy and excitement that comes from
practising and learning. Of course progress is not a linear thing (the more training you
have, the more you learn), but also deals with frustration and times of stagnation. It depends
maybe on the personal speed of learning, that can't be pushed by force. In the end I remember
this first training hour to recognize that I don't do this because I have to, but want to. The
joy and excitement that comes from practising and learning is a value of its own, that holds
as long as you do it. If there is no joy in the daily practise, there is definetely something
going wrong. The other experience I remember was te rhythm of partner excercises with a Bokken, that is a wooden imitation of a sword, and later the self studies with an → iaito . So the training element of partner excercises exists, but the main work has to be done fighting with your inner imaginary oponnent. This is at the beginning of the iaido training something you get used to, but in the end it turns out (at least to my mind) as the most efficient way to work on your personal human development.
So if you get interested in Iaido, just drop in and find out →
The Iai-Laboratory
Since November 2007 I am working and living now in Valencia (Spain), which was a big personal and cultural change for me. Of course it also changed quite severely my Iaido training habits. The long story short is that everything, which was easy before became always a huge challenge. Already finding an appropriate training facility was difficult. With my very limited knowledge of the spanish language it turned out to be impossible to get some training time in a sports hall, which is a pitty, because public sport halls are funded by the public authorities. Finally I decided to use my physics labority to have the opportunity to exercise Iai at all. An article about this topic you can find in The Iaido-News Online where I am writing from time to time some articles ( The whole journal is in German ). Due to my lack of supervision, I decided to put from time to time recordings of my work on the webpage. Please feel free to send me your comments or opinion.
Setei Iai 2nd February 2009, Valencia, Spain
Hasegawa Iai 25th September 2009, Valencia, Spain
Setei Iai 18th April 2010, Valencia, Spain
Links for more information about Iai
→ Iaido-News Online
→ Budoforum for Iaido
→ Budo Studienkreis
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