Inaugural class in San Francisco

The Yoga Loft
April 28th marked the beginning of a new era for Pencak Silat Gerakan Suci with our inaugural class at the Yoga Loft. After a year of holding classes in my basement amidst unpacked boxes, baby toys and strollers we are opening up classes to more participants. We had a nice turnout to kick things off; Nelson, Jordan and Paul who have been studying with me here in my San Francisco basement; Steffan, Alice and Patrick came up from Santa Cruz and who also were kind enough to bring the tumbling mats. We were also joined by Guru Karen who teaches White Crane Silat at the Yoga Loft also. She is running an intro series at the same time as our class and fortunately for us at least no students showed up for her class so we benefited from her presence in our class. I am hoping though that students show up for her class starting next week!
There were many reasons I chose to hold classes at the Yoga Loft. It is centrally located with easy access from all parts of the City. There is reasonably good parking in the area. The space itself is large and spacious with two wood-floored studios. The yoga practice is centered on Iyengar, which I have been practicing for the last ten years and hope to continue my practice here. The energy in the space is what you'd expect from a studio that has had movement and dance in it's hallowed space for all of it's history. And of course the fact that they have another Silat class as well as Tai Chi and Chi Kung. Those that know me understand my commitment to knowing and working with other martial and dance styles. So with all of these positives it should be no surprise that I followed the clues to this lovely space.

This coincides nicely with the release of Gerakan Suci syllabus v2.0. I have finished dividing the physical curriculum into series order and am now dividing the other information into the series levels. This includes the conditioning, self defense, training guidelines, and internal practices such as breathwork and meditations. I have set myself the goal of having the first draft ready for editing by May 9th. In the meantime I have been moving the entire student body through Series One with a tentative test date of the first week of July. It is now compact enough that I expect students to be able to complete Series One in 4-5 months. For the Santa Cruz class this is review of previously learned material in a new order, while the San Francisco class is just getting fully into the material. This will give me a good idea of how the syllabus works with both experienced and beginner students.

White Crane Silat
I had the good luck to visit PGB in Bogor, West Java in 1992 after the Jakarta World Championships. It happened that there were several Americans training in Java when the Championships occured and they were invited by IPSI to join the American team. We were all invited to spend time training at PGB and so most of the pesilat that had traveled with me joined them in Bogor. It is a beautiful training hall set within traditional Chinese walls with a round gate opening.
I had heard of the art before but it was my first real exposure. White Crane is an example of 'hybrid vigor' in action. White Crane is a style of Kung Fu brought to Indonesia with the Chinese immigrants and over the years has absorbed many aspects of Pencak Silat. A simplistic way of describing the art would be to say that it has the training mindset and forms of Kung Fu with the infighting and movement paradigm of Pencak Silat.

Cikalong is not a crane
As an aside to this story, I studied White Crane Kung Fu for a year before I found Pencak Silat with Pak Herman. It is too far in my martial arts past to know how close it is to the Indonesian version, but there is still a soft spot in my heart for the art. This is the root of my saying that Cikalong had crane attributes. This was interpreted by Pak Herman as my calling it a crane style for which misunderstanding I take full responsibility. This has lead to even more misunderstandings. So let me chime in: Cikalong is not a crane style and it is not a bat style. It is not an animal style at all in the Kung Fu sense of the term. Cimande is not a water buffalo style either for that matter. They have may have the attributes of those animals, but the similarities end there. I used this imagery to help people learn to move and found it successful, but to avoid further confusion have dropped this from the current syllabus.
On the other hand Pak Monyet IS a monkey style and Pak Macan IS a tiger style. :)
Guru Rennie
4/30/07