Thanks for sharing your view. I agree that it's important to detach the Shu Ha Ri from the Dreyfus model and not to worry too much about focusing on how they interrelate.

I cast my mind back to being taught Aikido (where a lot of this is from). For me, the level of progress is about awareness, reaction and where your focus lies. For me, a Shu person spends most of their energy focusing on execution. When I think about martial arts, this is about being fully aware of following the kata, repeatably. The worry is about executing it right.

For me, they reach Ha when they start to spend less energy focusing on execution (hence the Detach) and they spend more energy focused on its application. For example, instead of focusing on “blocking means raising your arm in this position”, a Ha person would be thinking “a blow is coming my way, I need to block”.

The Ri person is that of the martial arts masters where their energy flows between many movements. I remember going to an Aikido demonstration where the master would be swirling around several black belts all attacking, always blocking, grabbing, throwing them in various directions seamlessly. At the end of the demonstration, he barely had any sweat (unlike all the black belts).

This post was mentioned on Twitter by andypalmer: What do you keep in your Shu boxes? http://bit.ly/7IUh5E…