The Yoga Loft
April 28th marked the beginning of a new era for Pencak Silat Gerakan Suci with our inaugural class at the Yoga Loft. After a year of holding classes in my basement amidst unpacked boxes, baby toys and strollers we are opening up classes to more participants. We had a nice turnout to kick things off; Nelson, Jordan and Paul who have been studying with me here in my San Francisco basement; Steffan, Alice and Patrick came up from Santa Cruz and who also were kind enough to bring the tumbling mats. We were also joined by Guru Karen who teaches White Crane Silat at the Yoga Loft also. She is running an intro series at the same time as our class and fortunately for us at least no students showed up for her class so we benefited from her presence in our class. I am hoping though that students show up for her class starting next week!
There were many reasons I chose to hold classes at the Yoga Loft. It is centrally located with easy access from all parts of the City. There is reasonably good parking in the area. The space itself is large and spacious with two wood-floored studios. The yoga practice is centered on Iyengar, which I have been practicing for the last ten years and hope to continue my practice here. The energy in the space is what you'd expect from a studio that has had movement and dance in it's hallowed space for all of it's history. And of course the fact that they have another Silat class as well as Tai Chi and Chi Kung. Those that know me understand my commitment to knowing and working with other martial and dance styles. So with all of these positives it should be no surprise that I followed the clues to this lovely space.
This coincides nicely with the release of Gerakan Suci syllabus v2.0. I have finished dividing the physical curriculum into series order and am now dividing the other information into the series levels. This includes the conditioning, self defense, training guidelines, and internal practices such as breathwork and meditations. I have set myself the goal of having the first draft ready for editing by May 9th. In the meantime I have been moving the entire student body through Series One with a tentative test date of the first week of July. It is now compact enough that I expect students to be able to complete Series One in 4-5 months. For the Santa Cruz class this is review of previously learned material in a new order, while the San Francisco class is just getting fully into the material. This will give me a good idea of how the syllabus works with both experienced and beginner students.
White Crane Silat
I had the good luck to visit PGB in Bogor, West Java in 1992 after the Jakarta World Championships. It happened that there were several Americans training in Java when the Championships occured and they were invited by IPSI to join the American team. We were all invited to spend time training at PGB and so most of the pesilat that had traveled with me joined them in Bogor. It is a beautiful training hall set within traditional Chinese walls with a round gate opening.
I had heard of the art before but it was my first real exposure. White Crane is an example of 'hybrid vigor' in action. White Crane is a style of Kung Fu brought to Indonesia with the Chinese immigrants and over the years has absorbed many aspects of Pencak Silat. A simplistic way of describing the art would be to say that it has the training mindset and forms of Kung Fu with the infighting and movement paradigm of Pencak Silat.
Cikalong is not a crane
As an aside to this story, I studied White Crane Kung Fu for a year before I found Pencak Silat with Pak Herman. It is too far in my martial arts past to know how close it is to the Indonesian version, but there is still a soft spot in my heart for the art. This is the root of my saying that Cikalong had crane attributes. This was interpreted by Pak Herman as my calling it a crane style for which misunderstanding I take full responsibility. This has lead to even more misunderstandings. So let me chime in: Cikalong is not a crane style and it is not a bat style. It is not an animal style at all in the Kung Fu sense of the term. Cimande is not a water buffalo style either for that matter. They have may have the attributes of those animals, but the similarities end there. I used this imagery to help people learn to move and found it successful, but to avoid further confusion have dropped this from the current syllabus.
On the other hand Pak Monyet IS a monkey style and Pak Macan IS a tiger style. :)
Guru Rennie
4/30/07
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Gerakan Suci 2.0
Salaam web traveler,
Welcome to Sifat Kilat, the attribute of lightning. My desire in this forum is to share my thoughts and experiences in the martial arts and perhaps stir up thoughtful discussion without stirring up too much controversy.
The title of the blog refers to the moment of understanding that comes when you have been working through a problem or challenge which usually strikes when you least expect it. My personal process of understanding includes working on different aspects of a challenge, whether a physical exercise or a mental conundrum, and then letting it rest and percolate. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, comes that stroke of lightning that illuminates the darkness for just an instant. But that instant is often long enough to see an answer. This will more often than not lead to more study and investigation and deeper understandings.
There are many things happening in my martial arts life that I hope you will find interesting. After living in Santa Cruz, California for 25 years, I moved to San Francisco a year ago. The main impetus for that move was getting married and having a child. The hardest part of having that child I left to my lovely wife Eleanor, but I did what I was able and we have been rewarded with the presence of an amazing young fellow by the name of Leo. (He will get his own blog soon, I will try not to wax on too much here.)
So, here I am in San Francisco, ready to share my love of Indo-Malay martial arts with the denizens of this fair city. I have three students of Gerakan Suci already and in a move to make classes more regular have contracted with the Yoga Loft to hold Saturday afternoon classes in their studios. This will also give us more exposure through their students and marketing efforts. I still have a great group working very hard in Santa Cruz and I am working equally hard to make sure they continue getting the direction they need to complete the training despite my having moved an hour away.
In an effort to bring greater understanding to my art I recently attended a teacher training workshop in Silat Kuntau Tekpi with Omar Hakim in Ausin, Texas. Omar had been telling me for several years what a great system of martial arts this was and I finally had the time and energy available to devote to learning it. I'm glad I did! Not only is it a a simple and elegant system in itself, it has provided me with wonderful insight into my own system. This is having immediate effects in that I have embarked on the process of reworking my own syllabus to make it more modular with more clearly defined goals.
Having worked with and refined the Gerakan Suci curriculum in its present state for the last 10 years I have been able to define it's strengths and weaknesses. I would say that it's greatest strength is that it is a complete art in so far as providing a good mix of self defense, artistry, fitness and spiritual practices. The major weakness is that even with clearly defined levels, getting students to a finished place has been difficult. Part of that is inherent to Pencak Silat in that it is based upon facility more than memorization; but another part is that because Gerakan Suci is a subset of Mande Muda, there is a huge amount of information to impart to the student. When I originally embarked upon the systemization of Gerakan Suci in early 1998 I was faced with a mountain of information that I had been bequeathed by Pak Herman Suwanda and his family. I went through a lengthy process of looking realistically at what I know well and what I knew only in passing. Of the information I felt strong about, I went through a further process of deciding what I felt I personally could apply to self defense, self improvement or artistic expression. What was left was what became the Gerakan Suci curriculum.
Now I feel that the only thing still missing from the art is an endpoint that is clearly defined and attainable within a reasonable amount of time.
This is something I have always respected in most of the Filipino arts I have come in contact with, particularly Bahala Na Eskrima which I had the honor of studying for a few years. A concise but complete amount of information that can be completed in two to three years with a defined process that allows one to explore and improve within the art for the rest of your life.
This is also precisely what I found in Silat Kuntau Tekpi and I am looking forward to learning and teaching more of this concise system.
This led has led me to rework my own syllabus into Gerakan Suci 2.0. The self defense, fighting and philosophical foundations of the art remain nearly the same, but I have found a way to shuffle the contents so that the system is more modular with clearly defined goals.
Also, one of the things I have found in my 20 years of teaching is that many people can grasp a technique only superficially unless you take the time to place it in context of the way the people who developed the art move. And any guru will tell you that Pencak Silat all comes down to good footwork. So my reordering of the curriculum has allowed me to include many of the exercises that are geared toward teaching this 'movement intelligence'.
In the spirit of solidarity.
Guru Rennie
Welcome to Sifat Kilat, the attribute of lightning. My desire in this forum is to share my thoughts and experiences in the martial arts and perhaps stir up thoughtful discussion without stirring up too much controversy.
The title of the blog refers to the moment of understanding that comes when you have been working through a problem or challenge which usually strikes when you least expect it. My personal process of understanding includes working on different aspects of a challenge, whether a physical exercise or a mental conundrum, and then letting it rest and percolate. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, comes that stroke of lightning that illuminates the darkness for just an instant. But that instant is often long enough to see an answer. This will more often than not lead to more study and investigation and deeper understandings.
There are many things happening in my martial arts life that I hope you will find interesting. After living in Santa Cruz, California for 25 years, I moved to San Francisco a year ago. The main impetus for that move was getting married and having a child. The hardest part of having that child I left to my lovely wife Eleanor, but I did what I was able and we have been rewarded with the presence of an amazing young fellow by the name of Leo. (He will get his own blog soon, I will try not to wax on too much here.)
So, here I am in San Francisco, ready to share my love of Indo-Malay martial arts with the denizens of this fair city. I have three students of Gerakan Suci already and in a move to make classes more regular have contracted with the Yoga Loft to hold Saturday afternoon classes in their studios. This will also give us more exposure through their students and marketing efforts. I still have a great group working very hard in Santa Cruz and I am working equally hard to make sure they continue getting the direction they need to complete the training despite my having moved an hour away.
In an effort to bring greater understanding to my art I recently attended a teacher training workshop in Silat Kuntau Tekpi with Omar Hakim in Ausin, Texas. Omar had been telling me for several years what a great system of martial arts this was and I finally had the time and energy available to devote to learning it. I'm glad I did! Not only is it a a simple and elegant system in itself, it has provided me with wonderful insight into my own system. This is having immediate effects in that I have embarked on the process of reworking my own syllabus to make it more modular with more clearly defined goals.
Having worked with and refined the Gerakan Suci curriculum in its present state for the last 10 years I have been able to define it's strengths and weaknesses. I would say that it's greatest strength is that it is a complete art in so far as providing a good mix of self defense, artistry, fitness and spiritual practices. The major weakness is that even with clearly defined levels, getting students to a finished place has been difficult. Part of that is inherent to Pencak Silat in that it is based upon facility more than memorization; but another part is that because Gerakan Suci is a subset of Mande Muda, there is a huge amount of information to impart to the student. When I originally embarked upon the systemization of Gerakan Suci in early 1998 I was faced with a mountain of information that I had been bequeathed by Pak Herman Suwanda and his family. I went through a lengthy process of looking realistically at what I know well and what I knew only in passing. Of the information I felt strong about, I went through a further process of deciding what I felt I personally could apply to self defense, self improvement or artistic expression. What was left was what became the Gerakan Suci curriculum.
Now I feel that the only thing still missing from the art is an endpoint that is clearly defined and attainable within a reasonable amount of time.
This is something I have always respected in most of the Filipino arts I have come in contact with, particularly Bahala Na Eskrima which I had the honor of studying for a few years. A concise but complete amount of information that can be completed in two to three years with a defined process that allows one to explore and improve within the art for the rest of your life.
This is also precisely what I found in Silat Kuntau Tekpi and I am looking forward to learning and teaching more of this concise system.
This led has led me to rework my own syllabus into Gerakan Suci 2.0. The self defense, fighting and philosophical foundations of the art remain nearly the same, but I have found a way to shuffle the contents so that the system is more modular with clearly defined goals.
Also, one of the things I have found in my 20 years of teaching is that many people can grasp a technique only superficially unless you take the time to place it in context of the way the people who developed the art move. And any guru will tell you that Pencak Silat all comes down to good footwork. So my reordering of the curriculum has allowed me to include many of the exercises that are geared toward teaching this 'movement intelligence'.
In the spirit of solidarity.
Guru Rennie
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