Last month, during the Perseid meteor shower, I decided to take my boh out to the lake at night to do a practice called “knocking down the stars.”  Basically, as I understand it, you raise the boh in tenso (vertically overhead) and slowly begin making circles in the sky with the end of the boh. And so it goes…five minutes, ten minutes, circles in the night sky.

My thought was that at some point during this meteor shower, a meteor would streak across the sky as I was drawing circles with my boh, and it would be amazing. It didn’t happen. This wasn’t a good year for the Perseids (full moon). But I enjoyed being out on a pleasant evening focusing on the starry sky — something I hadn’t done for years. I played around with the boh and the jo (4 foot stick), doing a variety of exercises moving the sticks through the sky, extending through the boh, cutting the sky. Very nice.

I’m planning on doing this again next year, sometime around August 12, 2012. Maybe a few of us could get together and try knocking down the stars.