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