kiai points in your kata?

Most ryu/styles of karate and Tae Kwon Do practice kata/ forms. It is common for the kata to contain one or more kiai or spirit yells. A common mis-conception is the way the sound is made. Often student will yell hai-ya. This is not what the old masters intended. The kiai is a sound, not a word. It is used to focus the mind, body, and breath. Done correctly the kiai will allow the martial artists to generate much greater power for a fraction of a second. The proper way to develop you kiai would take too much time to put into writing here. Suffice it to say that it is slightly different for each person. It is a quick short sound that comes from the diaphragm, not the voice box.

When practicing kata there are usually only one or two places where you should kiai. Now it has become all to common for those performing kata in competition to kiai often during their performance. This is not the way the old masters practiced kata. It is believed that in the early day of karate, the kiai was not done at any particular place while practicing a kata. The old master would kiai if and only if they felt the urge and need to kiai. As kerate began to be practiced by larger and larger groups, the kiai points where assigned to a particular move. This was not so much because it belonged there. The kiai points were done at a certain place to make group practice more uniform. By having the students all kiai at the same place, there would be less distraction during class. It would be easy to imagine a large class where the students would kiai when ever they wanted to. It would be very distracting to say the least.