Hey Kaoru,

Mutodori is essentially where an empty-handed individual addresses an incoming attack from someone wielding a sword, ideally ending up with controlling the attacker and taking their sword instead of having a big lump on their head for a week :P

By full bore, I mean there is a difference between working with a partner and launching an attack with the intention of caving in their skull. Sure, eventually you might lead up to that, but when working with bokken you generally don't go for uncontrolled and potentially incapacitating strikes until you have a pretty solid idea of what everyone is doing. There is a difference between "fighting" and "training".

At the moment I'm not involved in any particular group. I practice the technique I got from two years of Nami ryu, and the material I received during a seminar with the Yanagi ryu folks last year. I did just discover a classical fencer holding classes less than ten minutes from my home, so I'll be getting a little exposure to Western martial arts tonight. If that seems like a good group I may make that a regular thing, but I'm going to be pretty cautious of groups for the forseeable future.