[Suzy]

In response to sirdarksol's comment about the breathing in the Shorin Ryu system, many Shorin Ryu styles use only a kiai during kata for a very practical purpose. It gets all the air out of the lungs. During kata it helps develop this technique so that when the practitioner needs to use a kiai, such as when they are hit or fall, there is no air in the lungs. If you are holding your breath when you get hit, or hit the ground...it hurts a hell of a lot more than if you exhaled.

Also, in my particular style most of the higher ranked black belts tend to think that the breathing on every move in a kata is just silly. Why would you let your opponent know when you are inhaling? Holding your breath while getting hit is one thing, but inhaling while getting hit is about 50 times worse.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that sirdarksol is correct in saying that many Shorin Ryu practitioners only use a kiai rather than the excessive (in my opinion) breathing of other styles, however it's not that Shorin Ryu has abandoned the importance of breathing, we just found a different way to do it.