Grand Rapids, MI Silat Seminar

It's been awhile since I've posted - mainly because I don't always know what to post anymore about martial arts. So many of the topics have been done before. Many of the others are just difficult to post about given the nature of martial arts.

In any case, I will be giving a two day seminar in Grand Rapids, MI July 10th and 11th. It will probably be fairly small. Most of mine are. If 10 people make the effort to roll out for it, that'd be a good one.

If some of those attending are PSP people, I will be donating a portion of the time to whatever they want to study. In addition, we will be working with weapons a lot. Stick and knife primarily but we may roll into some other aspects like Bandana, explosive entries, offensive hand entries, set points, telegraphing, combative PSP vs. training PSP and whatever else we decide to do.

Much of this material is unique. I've not seen the material taught by anyone else (no really - no one else) and it's relatively new for me to teach but the material has been extracted from me by my current students here in Florida. Through the constant prodding of them asking me "what are you doing?" and me perpetually saying "I don't know." In the end, I've spent the better portion of the past 5 years refining Pencak Silat Pertempuran. I'm sure the refiner's fire is not out yet. That said, the material I'm going to cover is not covered anywhere else in the PSP curriculum. This material is unique and will benefit any martial artist open to learning - PSP student or not.

That said, I think PSP students and those who don't train with me regularly, view the materials that I provide publicly, as all that there is to PSP. In some ways, they are, but that is also to say that they are also NOT.

The materials that are on the DVD's and in the books don't show, with significance, the higher levels of how the skills work together to create, they don't show how the materials become combative, they don't show - even though it's stated over and over - how the materials are only meant to build attributes - the materials are not the ends but the mean to the ends.

The material of PSP is meant to be a bridge for those who would seriously study it, for using all those cool techniques they learn in a classroom but are so ineffectively applying in reality.

Perhaps it will lead to the creation of another DVD for those who don't make the journey to train with me - on the other hand it may just lead to an entirely different passage for those active in PSP and for me as an aging teacher :)

Hope to see you all there.