A few more sources on Kime, if you're curious: (Google: kime, karate)
http://www.karatethejapaneseway.com/articles/kime.htmlthe bit below is an excerpt from:
http://www.shotokankarate.ca/The%20four%20cornerstones.htmthe emphasis on belief in yourself and clear, decisive use of techniques really reminds me of some of the stuff Naito was saying up in Edinburgh...
"KIME
Kime is the sum of all your efforts.
The concentrated focus of all your physical, mental, and spiritual actions combined at a specific moment and place in time is called kime. The moment you make any kind of movement in karate your true level of kime will be reflected in the accuracy and quality of your techniques and any errors in judgement will then be clearly visible for everyone else to see. If your kime is found lacking then in effect nothing you just did should be considered real. No amount of strength, no amount of speed, and no amount of kiai can ever make up for a lack of kime.
In your training you must believe in what you are doing, and that belief must have a definitive beginning and ending, an ending that you will find you can only reach by putting all of your other thoughts aside and focusing for as long as it takes to achieve your goal. Without this all encompassing belief in the success of what you are attempting to do your techniques will become nothing more than physical actions without any mental substance, in a world where mental substance is often the difference between victory or defeat.
Without kime your karate has no value.
Kime is only effective when nothing else matters.
So there you have it, the four basic fundamentals [= stance, posture, balance, & kime] without which your karate will not develop properly.
So train hard, train often, and make these fundamentals the basis for everything you do in the dojo.
Remember
Stance, posture, balance, and kime,
are the foundation upon which you must build.
