The weekend of July 25-27 was Pencak Silat Pertempuran’s Keluarga. Guru Sean Stark arrived on Thursday evening via motorcycle from Florida.
Sterling had the good sense to fly in from Michigan and the hanging out began. One of my local students, Teri joined us after dinner.
Hugo and Christina arrived from Wisconsin and we hung out at my pad and spent the evening reacquainting or acquainting ourselves, which is always a good time.
On Friday morning, we hooked up at the park and started delving into the art.
Initially, to get things moving, we did a yoga-like version of the evasions that Guru introduced to us a few years ago that usually only pops up at this gathering. They are good for stretching out one’s limbs and core. One other thing we did was to build a wave-like energy to get the blood pumping with a lot of level changing and arm movement.
To augment the evasions, explosive elements were applied to the base movements. Those were a very nice addition to the knowledge and application of them.
We then added hand entries to the evasions and eventually moved into leg entries.
Overall, the day was spent on the first few levels of PSP and fixing minor things here and there with all of us.
One of the major reasons for having Keluarga is that hands on time with people you normally do not work out with. This is a good thing in my opinion so one can break out of the local mold for a little bit to play with those who are unfamiliar to your frames of reference.
On day two we continued with the lower levels of the system and worked some catches, traps and takedowns.
All very well and good and we only supplemented the bruising (or heat rash for me) from the prior day. We worked on some elements of movement that I needed to cover and I was happy to get into that and have some things pointed out to me. We also came to the conclusion that if one has some Tai Chi experience, that helps in how you can feel your body move. Unfortunately for me, I have none; therefore I have more work to get to where I want to be.
Day three continued the takedowns. While fun, after two days the body is moving a little slower. In some ways this is good as it lends to one not using strength and focusing on structure and positioning. We also worked on Jurus-jurus a little more as well.
Aside from the working out, we eat. Instead of the usual Asian food at every meal (which we did eat a lot of – mainly Thai), I thought it would be fun to go to one of my favorite haunts, The Royal Mile: Irish Isle theme and Guinness Draught and now non-smoking (sorry Hugo). If you visit me, we can go; it has become somewhat of a KSMA hangout.
It is at these moments when we find out how nuts and open to bold conversation we can be. For example, Hugo’s big toe is the length of an average man’s flaccid penis.
We also learned that our server for the evening had no problem being referred as “bar wench.” COOL!
Overall this was a small but very productive Keluarga and I am looking forward to the next one. I truly enjoy the people I have come to know over the last several years.
Oh, and if you missed this year's in the Midwest, I hear there will be a Keluarga in Florida tentatively scheduled for January. Watch the PSP website for updates. Otherwise, pencil in every weekend from July through August until we nail down a date.
