The Silat Forest

Sometimes in the martial arts it's easy to lose site of the forest for the trees. The big picture. The one that attracted us to the martial arts to begin with. Here are some example trees which you have no doubt caught yourself or still might be looking at:

As a Student:
Rank
Style
Techniques
Philosophy
Spirituality
Fighting
Principles
Attributes
Flow

As a teacher:
Student Numbers
Income
Trends
Raising Instructors
Spreading The Art
Being Respected/ Revered/ Feared, etc.

There are probably more but those are the things that popped into my head. Not all of them are bad. In fact, most are not bad at all—depending on how you are looking at them.

As I have begun looking back at the last decade of teaching, learning, and Silat Pertempuran respectively (actually closer to 14 years now), I noticed some "creep." It's easy to do. It only takes a little persistent external force to move something already in motion or to have been slightly off target to begin with and the further your arrow travels the further off target it gets.

Now, I'm looking at it and saying, it's time for change, I've stuck with some of it for a while now and other parts have slowly migrated. It's time to re-orient and look objectively at what I'm teaching and what my goals are for those teachings and push it back on track, cutting away chafe, and pushing and prodding it closer to what it was intended to be—Combat Silat. That ball is rolling. It means change, but not change for the sake—I'm not a fan of that.

PSP is moving forward, addressing struggles and miscues, pushing along. Our new videos on youtube.com show the direction but not the destination.

It means redefining the primary emphasis or actually defining one.
It means refocusing the work or actually focusing the work.
It means letting go of what could be and embracing what actually is.





















Enjoy.
Sean