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Penjak Pukulan Cimande Pusaka
After geeking out on martial arts with a friend, did a quick workout and figured I should write a bit about "this thing I do".
"Penjak Silat"
The term is a blanket term for Indonesian martial arts, as much as "Kung Fu" has become a blanket term for Chinese martial arts (at least in the Western world). There's thousands of silat styles, mostly varied by region or location. The styles that typically make it to the western world have shifted over to the school/lineage format, which is generally what you see for any martial art that ends up becoming globalized.
Generally, most styles of silat in the US come from the filipino styles, in conjunction with kali and eskrima. Indonesian silat has a better foothold in Europe, since the Dutch were the colonial power in Indonesia. Several styles of silat also have made their way through the Muslim diaspora, as Indonesia is primarily Islamic at this time.
Cimande Silat
The style(s) of silat I study come from the Cimande River region of Java. The styles generally share quick hand movements, crossing steps, trapping and locks, knife techniques, takedowns and finishing moves. A couple of core principles include flanking the opponent to limit their attacking ability and to attack the limbs first to disable them before moving in for more vulnerable targets. Combat utilizes shock hits, then attacks to muscle or joints to completely disable.
I don't know if it's true of all silat or cimande styles in particular, but the forms (jurus) are often deceptive- what looks like a simple movement, might have 10 variations which are completely different techniques you can apply from the same position.
For example, the classic "fist at waist" position that you see in Chinese or Japanese arts, as a cocked position to throw a punch? In silat jurus, it's often: 1) A position to pull a weapon from, 2) a place to pull someone's arm after they've grabbed your wrist, 3) a downward backhand to counter a low punch or mid-kick, 4) elbow coverage to the back from a swinging punch/kick, 5) a way to clear an opponent's arm from your midline 6) a way to trap/break someones arm after you've caught it... and probably more I can't think of right now.
The specific style I study is Pukulan Cimande Pusaka, which is a fusion of a few different Cimande styles together. It retains a strong influence of the older Hindu and indigenous Kebatinan influences which have been in decline in Indonesian martial arts with the cultural shift to Islam.
Learning Process
As it was taught to me, we'd do jurus/techniques as form practice, then pair up to practice the applications, then do bunga- shadowboxing.
One of the expectations of the learning was that you'd learn a couple of applications from a juru or technique, but you are expected to use your mind and discover other techniques that come from these positions on your own. In this way, once you have a basic grasp of the movements and principles, you can always return to the jurus to learn more without necessarily having the teacher show you 1001 techniques. This also means the forms are applicable to weapons, though most silat styles give weapon specific jurus as well.
The juru gives you the principle movements to practice, the drills and application practice help you develop timing, movement and actual ability to use it, and the bunga is so that you can naturalize the movements to your body.
The theory is that bunga is where you take it into your subconscious. The more Western explanation would be now that you've both familiarized your body to the basic movements, felt the actual applications, you're now able to apply visualization in conjunction with the movements and make it into neuromuscular training.
Four Animal Spirits
The four animal spirits are the Monkey, Tiger, Snake and Crane. While this is echoes Chinese martial arts, there's some major differences as well.
First, the animals are not so much a "form" in a collection of techniques, but rather an attitude or style of movement applied to a technique. So you could do the same Juru with the Monkey, Tiger, Snake, and Crane for different movements and results.
Second, the concept is not to "move like an animal" but rather, coming from the older beliefs, that you are invoking the animal's spirit to possess you, and the movements arise from that.
If you want to take the non-spiritual view of it, you can consider it an interesting and advanced idea on self-psychology - by disassociating yourself from the act of violence and survival, and letting an "animal persona" do the work, you can perform the necessary combative protection and produce a psychological rationalization or shield from what you just had to do.
Obviously, that's a pretty dangerous mental state to put yourself in, if not used responsibly. The other side of that thinking, was that if you're going to train for violence, you would want to train yourself to do it while in this mode, and not to have these violent tendencies floating around in your normal, everyday personality. (This does mirror what I've read about some older societies in terms of giving warriors some kind of rituals and time before re-integrating them into civilian life.)
The only thing close to this I've heard of was some Chinese practitioners who invoked Chinese deities for possession fighting, though it's quite probable similar techniques/beliefs have been/are in use around the world. Western practitioners have alluded to this being the case for NDNs and Celtic berserkers, though this is conjecture at best.
Third, the animals are not considered the only 4 possible- but rather like cardinal points on a compass- you could, in theory, go any direction between and get a different spirit- a different attitude and set of movements.
A love of the art itself
The hard part for me has been trying to find folks to train with. Sadly no one in the local area studies my style, and there's at least two schools doing very different styles of silat. Silat never has had a wave of fad popularity like most other martial arts, and the best movement hasn't really been put up on the web at this time.
Add in the fact that martial arts in the US tend to attract either the type of person who obsesses about "UBERMACHO STREETFIGHT MMA" or else "Perfected Spiritual Pacifism Zen Happy" and neither one is the kind of person I want to work with.
Well, hopefully I'll find some folks soon.
"Penjak Silat"
The term is a blanket term for Indonesian martial arts, as much as "Kung Fu" has become a blanket term for Chinese martial arts (at least in the Western world). There's thousands of silat styles, mostly varied by region or location. The styles that typically make it to the western world have shifted over to the school/lineage format, which is generally what you see for any martial art that ends up becoming globalized.
Generally, most styles of silat in the US come from the filipino styles, in conjunction with kali and eskrima. Indonesian silat has a better foothold in Europe, since the Dutch were the colonial power in Indonesia. Several styles of silat also have made their way through the Muslim diaspora, as Indonesia is primarily Islamic at this time.
Cimande Silat
The style(s) of silat I study come from the Cimande River region of Java. The styles generally share quick hand movements, crossing steps, trapping and locks, knife techniques, takedowns and finishing moves. A couple of core principles include flanking the opponent to limit their attacking ability and to attack the limbs first to disable them before moving in for more vulnerable targets. Combat utilizes shock hits, then attacks to muscle or joints to completely disable.
I don't know if it's true of all silat or cimande styles in particular, but the forms (jurus) are often deceptive- what looks like a simple movement, might have 10 variations which are completely different techniques you can apply from the same position.
For example, the classic "fist at waist" position that you see in Chinese or Japanese arts, as a cocked position to throw a punch? In silat jurus, it's often: 1) A position to pull a weapon from, 2) a place to pull someone's arm after they've grabbed your wrist, 3) a downward backhand to counter a low punch or mid-kick, 4) elbow coverage to the back from a swinging punch/kick, 5) a way to clear an opponent's arm from your midline 6) a way to trap/break someones arm after you've caught it... and probably more I can't think of right now.
The specific style I study is Pukulan Cimande Pusaka, which is a fusion of a few different Cimande styles together. It retains a strong influence of the older Hindu and indigenous Kebatinan influences which have been in decline in Indonesian martial arts with the cultural shift to Islam.
Learning Process
As it was taught to me, we'd do jurus/techniques as form practice, then pair up to practice the applications, then do bunga- shadowboxing.
One of the expectations of the learning was that you'd learn a couple of applications from a juru or technique, but you are expected to use your mind and discover other techniques that come from these positions on your own. In this way, once you have a basic grasp of the movements and principles, you can always return to the jurus to learn more without necessarily having the teacher show you 1001 techniques. This also means the forms are applicable to weapons, though most silat styles give weapon specific jurus as well.
The juru gives you the principle movements to practice, the drills and application practice help you develop timing, movement and actual ability to use it, and the bunga is so that you can naturalize the movements to your body.
The theory is that bunga is where you take it into your subconscious. The more Western explanation would be now that you've both familiarized your body to the basic movements, felt the actual applications, you're now able to apply visualization in conjunction with the movements and make it into neuromuscular training.
Four Animal Spirits
The four animal spirits are the Monkey, Tiger, Snake and Crane. While this is echoes Chinese martial arts, there's some major differences as well.
First, the animals are not so much a "form" in a collection of techniques, but rather an attitude or style of movement applied to a technique. So you could do the same Juru with the Monkey, Tiger, Snake, and Crane for different movements and results.
Second, the concept is not to "move like an animal" but rather, coming from the older beliefs, that you are invoking the animal's spirit to possess you, and the movements arise from that.
If you want to take the non-spiritual view of it, you can consider it an interesting and advanced idea on self-psychology - by disassociating yourself from the act of violence and survival, and letting an "animal persona" do the work, you can perform the necessary combative protection and produce a psychological rationalization or shield from what you just had to do.
Obviously, that's a pretty dangerous mental state to put yourself in, if not used responsibly. The other side of that thinking, was that if you're going to train for violence, you would want to train yourself to do it while in this mode, and not to have these violent tendencies floating around in your normal, everyday personality. (This does mirror what I've read about some older societies in terms of giving warriors some kind of rituals and time before re-integrating them into civilian life.)
The only thing close to this I've heard of was some Chinese practitioners who invoked Chinese deities for possession fighting, though it's quite probable similar techniques/beliefs have been/are in use around the world. Western practitioners have alluded to this being the case for NDNs and Celtic berserkers, though this is conjecture at best.
Third, the animals are not considered the only 4 possible- but rather like cardinal points on a compass- you could, in theory, go any direction between and get a different spirit- a different attitude and set of movements.
A love of the art itself
The hard part for me has been trying to find folks to train with. Sadly no one in the local area studies my style, and there's at least two schools doing very different styles of silat. Silat never has had a wave of fad popularity like most other martial arts, and the best movement hasn't really been put up on the web at this time.
Add in the fact that martial arts in the US tend to attract either the type of person who obsesses about "UBERMACHO STREETFIGHT MMA" or else "Perfected Spiritual Pacifism Zen Happy" and neither one is the kind of person I want to work with.
Well, hopefully I'll find some folks soon.