Martial Arts for the handicaped

  Martial Arts for the Handicapped

copyright 1994 by Chas Clements

Everyone is in danger. Tolerance is at a minimum. No one is safe. It is the responsibility of all people, of whatever physical condition to protect themselves, their loved ones and their own property. Just because you cannot see or walk or run away does not give you a special “pass” from thugs and bandits, they were looking for an easy hit when they first saw you.

Complete martial arts systems have a special tradition for handicapped people. Often it is referred to as “The Old Mans’ Style” or is taught as a woman’s style. Generally it is an art of finesse and sophisticated, requiring great courage and a dependence on misdirection and evasions. The arts always include weapons training (a good sharp knife will replace track shoes for almost any occasion), anatomical weapons and targets are a deep source for study, as are the arts of mental domination and perception.

The first lesson in any martial art is to reduce your ‘target time’. Don’t be a target for any longer than can possibly be helped. Good personal awareness and overcoming your resistance to being inconvenienced will reduce a great percentage of your hazard exposure. In military terms: a good perimeter defence, good patrol discipline and proper equipment will reduce your KIA’s. Pay attention to who is around you and where you are, look for places for assailants to hide, prepare your defences and responses to attack. Pay bills and bank by mail or computer, go places in groups and armed, don’t do sleazy things with people that you don’t know.

More people get seriously hurt because of their mental state than because of their physical condition. Many people in this culture find it hard to believe that they are actually in hazard of being assaulted, and that kindly ‘Officer Friendly’ is off doing SWAT penetrations on crack houses. In point of fact, the police are not responsible for your safety, only that of ‘society’. You cannot depend on anyone but yourself, your family and friends, and they have no one to depend upon but you. The acceptance and reaction to ‘threat’ is a matter of mental preparation. Work it out in your mind: fantasize your worst fears and figure out a good reaction while you have plenty of time and can fail for free. The more complete your ideation, the more your preparation will work when the chips start to fall.

Another preparation that you are responsible to do is to figure out what your religious or philosophical posture is about conflict. In an assault you have no time to philosophize about the karmic ramifications of defending yourself by doing force on your opponent. You won’t make him more angry by fighting back, you will inconvenience him enough to go away. If you rip his tongue out; he was the one that brought it on. A Lakota saying: “A Thief is Shot in the Night, Whose Hand is on the Bow?

The reason that there are so many martial arts styles is that different people have different bodies, clothing/armor, topographical surroundings and so on. We need to choose the type of martial art that suits our physicality. Kicking arts are not suitable for all people, balance arts or ‘juggling’ arts mightn’t be appropriate for others, but there is an art for you somewhere.

In our tradition, when the Sultan prepared to learn his lifesaving martial skills, he would call the advanced practitioner and that man would analyse the Sultan and teach him the useful arts that fitted him.

To acquire a martial skill is not to give ones’ life to the art; it is to learn a skill as one would do with any finesse action. There is the body and there is the mind, to understand the action of combat and accommodate ones’ body to the event.

The key to any art is practice. You can practice in ‘reverie’ or meditation- you can get good practice just moving through the world remembering your martial body attitudes.

Most schools will open themselves to you for your consideration. Distrust teachers or schools that will not let you observe their training, you are not going to learn their ‘secrets’ in one short exposure.

Choose your weapons. Our debilities and challenges are enough to put up with, that meeting a thug in his arena without a weapon is entirely too much. If he had any respect, he wouldn’t be bothering people who already have enough to do; he deserves no consideration whatsoever. Your weapon can be as benign as you care for it to be, but it should be effective. Let him be in hazard for offending you for a change. He was happy enough to chance an assault on a stranger, let him carry the consequences.

One of the secrets to the study of any weapon is to live with it for thirty days. Eat, sleep, bathe, carry the weapon with you always. It will share its’ secrets with you if you coax it. Own the best weapon that you can afford, show it to no one (o.k., maybe your Mom- but only once and don’t show her your best trick!)

Make your martial skill part of your life. Read books in the interest area that you have. Get some tapes and see what the opponents are learning. Talk about it with your friends, practitioners or not, find out what they think about the philosophical questions. Join a group of practitioners, work out with them, (let them work out their defenses against someone doing wheelies on their chest). Choose a tradition that honours people for their mind or art or craft, not for their abilities to divorce themselves from their compassion. Martial art is the true path of peace, we know what the alternatives are.

Having taught handifolk for over twenty-five years, I have identified some consistencies: Hand/arm strength likes Southern Chinese stylings, Kilap Silat, Hsingpo- Balance strength likes TaiKek, Silat Bukti Negara, PaQua- Leg strength likes Northern Chinese stylings, Pentjak Silat Menang- Intuitive response in short body movements like the Silat Betawie, Pamur, Petjut Silat, the Wing Chun and PaQua. Names are mentioned only to give you a place to start looking, offering the wide variety of Martial Arts schools. All styles have attributes that can be modified to serve people of whatever variety, you must learn to trust your own strengths and enhance them.

It doesn’t take a long time. Let me repeat that for the gentleman in the last row: It Doesn’t Take A Long Time! Martial skills are different from martial art in the same way that one can do a little necessary plumbing without becoming a Water Engineer. When the emphasis in martial arts change to the Do form, a Way of Enlightenment, from the combat practice of the military soldier, an emphasis was lost.

One can become a competent spearman in about six months; a good spearman in three years and a great spearman in some five to seven years. If what you need is fodder for practice, you can give about six months or a year to learning a ‘form’ that will give you movements to answer most problems. Your own practice is what will make the difference in whether you survive an encounter.