There is an incredible carpentry tradition in Japan, founded largely upon creating structures and furniture with joints—where edges of wood come together—that don't use any nails, screws or glue.
Instead, they rely on and apply ancestral knowledge regarding the shape of strong connection points, and build incredibly stable structures largely by making very precise cuts, by hand.
Now |FNAME|, I wanted to to tell you about this today because it has a deep connection to how we can approach our bodies in a different, and I think better, way than main stream culture would have us do. This is a longer one, but it's been brewing for a while so…stick with me :).
In addition to being as effective, and sometimes more effective, as modern Western carpentry methods (using metal and glue), the result is stunningly beautiful.
I was first captivated by this art/craft/culture after college, when I found myself living in a small town on the Western brim of Massachusetts. It was as hot and humid that summer, and the only thing going in town was the library, where I stumbled upon the classic, 'The Art of Japanese Joinery'.
The 10yr-old in me flipped, and I fell into a deep and abiding fascination with how something so simple—essentially wooden blocks—could be assembled into everything from tiny, jewel-like boxes to sweeping temple roofs that have stood for 400 years, outlasting many more 'modern' buildings.
I learned about the guilds that had carefully cultivated these secrets.
I learned about the careful forestry and harvesting they did of the trees, so that the eventual structure built from a certain tree would actually become stronger, tighter, as it aged.
But I became most engaged by the tools of the trade.
See—foregoing modern materials wasn't the only way Japanese carpenters didn't conform; they also maintained an almost holy obsession with their simple, mechanical implements of their predecessors: handsaws, chisels, mallets and lines of string for marking straight lines.*
One night, as I randomly perused Japanese carpentry articles online, I finally read about what it was like to be a carpentry apprentice.
Here's how I remember it…
Apparently, at first, they just have you sweep the floor. For about 6 months. Very clean.
Then, they begin to teach you about sharpening the saws, some of which are 100+ years old. 100s of saw teeth. Sharp.
If you're still there after a couple years of sharpening saws, they'll graduate you up to the planes, and then finally the chisels which do much of the final joint-shaping. Make them Very Sharp.
After 5 years, they begin to teach you the way that you cut and shape wood into joints, and then it's several more years (like 10+) before becoming a master.
The more I learned, the more it became clear that the sharpening of knives was not just a tortuous initiation process to weed out casual hobbyists.
No, it functioned as an indoctrination into the essential, fundamental mind-set of a carpenter, and it informed everything they did.
After 5 or more years of simply sharpening tools, I imagine that one must come around to appreciating this subtle act.
They must form a connection with these precious, inanimate objects, and how to best conjure a sharp, cutting edge.
And then, as they learn how to wield them on the precious, natural gift that is a dead tree, these students of the steel realize that all their their dedication to sharpening is now coming back to them in the form of steady cuts and straight edges.
Over and over and over, steady cuts and straight edges.
No machines are needed when a master craftsman is wielding a sharp blade over a clean, hand-selected board.
Now for the analogy to our bodies that I have endlessly pondered since that sweaty Massachusetts summer… what is the valiant, daily act that we might do for ourselves that best compares to a carpenter sharpening their blades?
What will not just make us sharper, but actually more capable of doing our craft and making our work?
What action/s will hone our bodies into the most true version of ourselves, the most effective and joyful version?
What beliefs will we need to hold onto, amidst all the bullshit swirling around, and what will we need to ignore?
And finally, what attitude will we take to our work, and what will our work inspire us to do next?
The underlying connection is that the work of our lives—be it "physical work" or just, you know, the fact our lives occur inside a PHYSICAL BODY—will always be the result of our ability to use our tools,
And the tools of "living in a body" are our joints. Our knees, and shoulders and all the rest.
That's right—in the world of movement, which is our world, our joints are the fundamental way that we get through. It is how we go toward the things we want, and go away from those we don't.
It's how we grow, and how we multiply.
Our joints are the carpenter's chisel, our saw, that we use to construct the work of our dreams: our lives.
This is why I am so adamant about spending the little time that we each day to move—at least some of it—on "sharpening" our joints, on making our 'movement-parts' work a little better.
What would you make with joints that cut a straighter path to where you wanted to go?
-Coach Will
Ps: If you're curious about what a 'Daily Sharpen' might look like for you, reply to this email with SHARP in the subject line and l'll send you a Kinstretch class to try out. You gotta feel it to believe it…
*No power saws, no drill presses, and most of the work was done on the ground. I know—WHAT?!