Johnny Silmon continues his odyssey tlrrough Indone sia, meeting and traming and learning from Silat

masters tluoughout the region...

o matter how well you have planned and prepared for an event such as a trip overseas, you [ ( ] always have to be flexible enough to know that often times even the best laid plans can change at the last minute .. . This was exactly the case with my South East Asian sojourn on several occasions, but luckily I was prepared for the itinerary changes - some times, however, at a painful cost to my ever decreaSing bank balance I My original plan was to stay in Purwakarta to train with Mang Eem in his Cimande system for three weeks, but it turned out for this particular outing, I needed only ten days. In a sense I was totally relieved , as Purwakarta is not exactly a tourist friendly town with me being the only Westerner it seemed, in the entire region. I am fine with the odd comment thrown my way - after all, it is more than probable I would be the first Westerner many of the locals would have ever seen in the flesh . It's just that when heckling as well as stares are non-stop, it can really test your patience and play tricks on your mind. Those first couple of days I found myself a little subdued, but soon snapped out of it the more I trained with my new, eccentric Cimande teacher. Still, it makes me giggle to think of the things we often go through in our quest for martial arts. I guess, in every one of us there is a sense of magic and adventure looking to spice up life every once in a while! The system of Cimande learnt from Mang was somewhat different in structure to my former teacher's version, with only twelve base jurus to the latter's sixteen. I had mentally programmed myself for many changes, not least of all 10 remind myself I was more focussed on the underlying principles and shapes over actual techniques. The beauty of this line of thinking is that principles and All that being said, Mang Eem's shapes become letters of an alphabet which you can then combine to make up 'words' - an infinite sea of applications. As mentioned in part one of this series in last month's edition (June 2011) the bulk of my training was centred around perform ing the twelve jurus, with little focus on physical conditioning. With it being almost 100 degrees at times in the teacher's house, sweat would often pour off of me as though I had been sat in a sauna. I had to stop more than a few times just to catch some air - my body burning up with the sweltering heat. As I pushed on and slowly acclimatised, the more I trained the movement, the more I saw both the differences and similari ties to my other version of Cimande. It seemed to me that in this current form the focus was more on grabbing, pulling , off-balancing and fast directional changes .. .whereas Guru Makmur's style was focussed on smashing and blasting its way through adversaries. I was very excited about this because I could see how both versions could perfectly complement each other. This is probably one reason why there are so many different styles of Silal. It is because people will always use, bor rowand, dare I say, sometimes 'steal' material. It is a natural process to be influenced and or inspired by people and your surroundings and, I for one, have no qualms about saying where I have gotten my material - whether it's been taught to me or if I have had a moment of inspiration and formulated it myself. The point is, even the most ancient systems had a beginning and someone - or a group of people - first made it up or put it together. Old does not necessar ily mean better. It just all comes down to understanding what you 're learning and being able to really make it work for you .

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ments of Cikalong Silat as well as uses a number of weap ons - namely short knife (pisau), machete (golok), sickle (kujang) and single sword (pedang) . Interestingly enough, I was keen to find out about stick fighting in Cimande as I had read in the past about Trumbu being a small and fairly unknown aspect of the style. Well to confirm, prior to my trip, I had Guru Ed do some research and go to Trumbu vi llage in Banten province and he reported back to me that it was not only the most useless style - if it could even be called that - but that it was mainly steeped in religion and had nothing to do with Cimande. It's quite possible that a version of Cimande was mixed with Trumbu , rendering it yet another variant and that certainly isn't 'wrong ,' bu t I can safely say that Trumbu or stick fighting in general has never played any significant part in Cimande Pencak Silat! As the days progressed, I found myself working through those twelve jurus fairly easily - no doubt due to the fact that when you have learnt complex movement from the age of 14, motor skill sets are pretty honed . My only real problem was training and moving in lower postures due to my dodgy knees but, overall, I was very satisfied with the new material I had been taught and was excited to go away and adapt and combine the old with the new. Eventually the day came to say goodbye to Mang and move on to the next phase of my journey. He had told me to practise these jurus and then develop them by putting them into my own Kembangan or flower dance, which is like a free-flow shadow sparring expression that is played to music with a certain beat. This is the Pencak - the artistic side of Silat. I have to say, I grew very fond of my diminutive

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he and his wife showed me, with the precious little they had - it puts so many people I know with far more, materially, to shame. During my last farewell to him, I made a pact with myself to make sure I never left it too long before seeing him again - as I did with Guru Makmur - because sometimes you just do not know if it might well be the last time. I am planning on going again next year, but perhaps this time with a small team who can also experience the 'delights' of training authentic Silat in Indonesia. With another stage of my journey complete I was very glad to get out of that region of Java. My next destination , I was looking forwards to a little more. Depok is a city just to the south 01 Jakarta and has one of the main university campuses based there, so it's a vibrant young city that has lots going on. This was so timely because I still lelt somewhat 'shell-shocked' during my Purwakarta stay and lelt as though I needed a bit more 'civi lisation' - not to mention a few creature comforts - so I booked Ed and mysell into the best hotel in town for five nights. I had been told so much about Mas Agus, who was hopefully also going to accept me as his student in the internal power or Tenaga Dalam art of Sabhandar. Metaphysically based subjects have always been a major personal study of mine and when it's narrowed down into the area of martial arts such as 'no touch knockouts ' and 'repelling from distance,' then I am very curious to be able to experience the facts from the fiction. I know for a fact that there exist levels of human ability where thought and intention have the power to maim or even kill. Granted, I think those who can really demonstrate these extreme, high levels of skill and mental mastery are few and far between, as it takes years of dedicated development in my opinion. I have stacks of written material detail ing methods and formulas to do things such as remotely view, remotely influence and perform psychic warfare on the astral plane, but I have neither the time or motivation to put any effort into these areas, not for now anyway... The first thing I noticed about Mas Agus on first meeting him was just how damn ripped he was! Standing around my height, a lofty 5ft 5in, but around 30kgs lighter, he had a superb, naturally lean body which he put down to a good simple diet and daily practise of his system. It also turned out that he happened to be a master of the al leged original Tari Kolot version of Cimande which has 33 jurus. In fact, he and his younger brother ran the 'Pajajaran Cimande' School with several hundred students on their books. I experienced The system itself which comprised 23 short movements worked in three separate areas - those being self defence, healing and telepathy. The short forms, when combined with certain breathing techniques, are My real interest was in his internal power system. Having travelled a long way and spent a great deal of money, I wanted to ensure I was not wasting my time so my idea was to simply attack him and if his stuff wasn't real I would walk away. Great in theorY of course, but in practise quite disrespectful in the culture, so I had to take a more diplomatic approach. Also, I was assured by Guru Ed, who had found him, that he was in fact the real deal. When I saw Ed attack him and then get thrown back ten feet, crashing into some chairs after not being physi cally touched, I wasn 't sure what to believe ... The options in my mind were that they were both in on the conspiracy; it was purely psycho-somatic or, of course, it really was real. Then it was my turn! their open air training facility out in the sticks. As it was on the school curriculum, it was much more regulated like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, with a belt grading system and, even though not to my taste, it was fantastic to see so many students training in their own indigenous martial arts.

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along the lines of bio-electric/magnetic energy. It is this internal energy that is able to repel any negative force that is directed to it. I had to develop some real bad intent and then attack Mas Agus - however, as I had my scientist cap on and wasn't feeling at all ag gressive, I didn't get the same dramatic effect as what I had witnessed. However, on a purely physical level, the speed of his evasions were quite impressive. I was told it does not work in all circumstances - only when there is a nega tive force and your own energy is positive. To be honest, it is so abstract, I do not have a great deal to really say about it - suffice to say that I am training the five first movements which I learnt and, in several months, I will get my friend to get his well trained bull terrier dog into a frenzy and then attack me, as I was told it also works on animals too. My reasoning for this is that animals will not 'go easy' on me and, well, one of two things will happen .. Either my arm won't be too severed or, in fact, I will be able to repel the dog - in which case I will go deeper into studying it. It was a very interesting five days in Depok and, like anything learnt, it needs to be looked at objectively and logically and trained to see if it has any mileage. Mas Agus is a good work ing family man, of solid character and teaches freely, so I have no reason to believe there is any ulterior motive - however, the proof is truly in the pudding. I will keep you posted on my progress .. Next month, I will tell you about my time spent in West Sumatra climbing mountains and liv ing with teachers in the jungle. Stay tuned ..

JOHNNY 5ILMIIN

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