During Yamabushi training there are a lot of restraints. We aren’t allowed a cellphone, we aren’t allowed to talk (except for chanting and to say ‘uketamo’, I accept), we aren’t allowed to drink coffee, we aren’t allowed to write or read. Well, actually we are allowed, but we’d get told off and told that we aren’t doing training, which is true. We place these restraints on ourselves for the sake of training ourselves.

And by doing so, you come to realise how unnecessary some of these things are. For example, I have a habit of picking up my phone whenever I have idle time, but by doing training, I realized that I can get by without doing so. I can just sit there and be idle and take a moment to think of things.

One more example is when it comes to eating. We don’t eat much, at all, and after a while you get used to it. This is when you come to realise that, no I don’t actually need to eat that much or that often.

It’s not necessary for me to do all these things that are like default options for being. You come to realise that a lot of these default options are also placed on us by our cultures and those around us too.