3rd Training

It was raining and I thought there might not be practice. Turning up anyway, I saw that we were going to train this time in the hall. I wondered how different it was to train in a hall and in a Kalari.

We went through the tumbling first as usual. I was determined to get it right for once. So I kept practising Fall 6. I kept having to talk to myself so that I'll let go of thoughts that will cause me to hesitate. I wondered if that form of concentration and devotion into the execution of a single move is similar to the state of meyyu kannakaku. It reached a point whereby through my determination, I finally let go of my fears and did it. The feeling of executing it was something that I didn't feel in my past few sessions. On top of that, the feeling of victory overwhelmed me. I asked one of my orange belt classmates to check if Iwas doing it correctly because thinking that it feels like I'm doing it correctly does not mean it is being done correctly. Apparently, I still did not get fall 6 right because I was using one shoulder to do the fall rather than 2 shoulders as required of fall 6. However, the fall I did was correct for part of the combination in fall 3 and fall 4. So what I thought was executed correctly for falls 3 and 4 had been wrong all this time but I didn't know it.

I was reading in Zarrilli's book that he was striving to do the moves correctly, rather than "well". So through today's session, I gathered that the correct execution of the steps itself might be one responsible for training the attention and priming the consciousness for performance, rather than being brought to a state of consciousness that comes through physiological means. At least, I feel that what I experience was more intense mentally than it was physically. To a certain extent it was still very much the mind tell the body what it should do and I felt that I haven't experienced the understanding of the "bodymind". Maybe I did not train long enough.

After the lesson, I asked Master where the style of his Kalarippayattu came from, southern or northern Kerala. It may be due to the fact that I was learning a different form of Kalari so what I am practicising here does not seem to connect very well with what I read about. He told me that his style is a combination of Northern and Southern Kerala styles. He had trained under both schools and formulated his own style that he felt was more applicable to a local context. As such, both Zarilli's and Master's Kalari are both not the Kalari imported wholesale from Kerala but adapted. However, I get the impression that Master might have incorporated more southern forms than Zarrilli. The context of the usage of Kalari also makes it different. Zarrilli used Kalarippayattu for actor training but Master used Kalarippayattu in the context of gradings, martial arts displays as well as the fundamental functions of attack and defence.

Master told me about how his fellow martial arts practitioner acted in a Bruce Lee movie and it seems to me to demonstate how Kalarippayattu is spectacular enough in itself to constitute a performance.

We also learnt the Sudus today. Which are a combination of steps that executed as a set. What I felt about Kalarippayattus that is different from the other martial arts is that its "pattern" or sequence of moves are not constituted from basic kicks or punches but rather, constituted from "basic steps" that are sequences in themselves. This phenomena is more pronounced in the higher level students since their basic steps are more complicated.

There was also a demonstration today with a black belt senior and one of my purple belt classmates. Though I had been quite disappointed in what I've seen in class so far because I did not see what Zarilli wrote about in his book that he was afraid of the "controlled power" of Kalarippayattu, this demonstration gave me a glimpse of what Zarilli might have experienced in Kerala. What I saw in the demonstration, I might use his exact words to describe, "controlled power". And I was similarly afraid of the hidden potential of the power hidden in the moves. They were doing Silambam, which was using sticks in the fighting. As the blackbelt senior fought, I could hear the sound of the stick cutting through the air. Yet it was controlled enough not to hurt himself or my purplebelt classmate, who fumbled some times. He was sharp enough to stop half movement to wait for his "opponent" to catch up.

Maybe it will take more time to experience meyyu kannakaku.

K8