The Devil and Sifu Frank
A few years ago, I happened to be in NYC while an instructor of mine was teaching a defensive tactics class to an NYPD undercover squad. Sifu Frank (as I'll refer to him here) asked if I'd like to assist him which sounds much more impressive than it actually was. Basically, he just wanted to use me as a tackling dummy because I was trained and somewhat durable. I jumped at the chance because I have a great deal of personal affection for Sifu Frank as well as the fact I always learned something cool everytime I trained with him. Little did I know that this 2 day seminar would change everything I knew about the martial arts and what was possible in the world.
It all started when he was teaching takedowns. The officers, being brute force guys, were all trying to muscle a particular technique and butchering it as a result. In his frustration, Sifu Frank grabbed me and stood in front of the class. "Look, it's not muscle. It's alignment!" With the he had me stick my right arm straight out with my palm facing forward. He placed his index finger in the middle of my palm and slammed me to the ground hard with just that contact point. It happened so fast all I could do was laugh. I got up and to prove a point he threw me to the ground again, this time with his pinky and even harder. I hit the ground with such force that I couldn't really bend my arm too well after that for a few weeks which made my sponsors really happy. "See. It's alignment. Not strength."
Now you have to picture Sifu Frank. He's about 5'4" and 130 pounds soaking wet. At that time, I was around 180 pounds and in fighting shape. I had more than 20 years of hard training under my belt and my balance was such that I almost never got taken down. Yet Sifu Frank did it with just his pinky. I was simply blown away. I'd never felt anything like it.
That night I went home and had a serious crisis. What the hell was I doing? What I experienced earlier in the day completely shook up my understanding of the world. There was something else going on.
The next morning, I got to the Academy early and pulled Sifu Frank aside. I said to him,"Sifu. You screwed up my life. I have absolutely no comprehension of what happened yesterday. How did you do that? More importantly, how do I get there?" He could see the pained expression on my face and took pity on me. He simply said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
With that pronouncement, he faced me square on, brought his hand together in front of him and pointed at me and without touching me, pushed me backwards. It wasn't a hard or fast push but there was enough there that I had to take a step back to keep my balance. I was impressed but my skeptical mind said that I probably picked up on some physical cues and reacted to them as I had trained with Sifu Frank before. As if reading my mind, he then stood behind me and pushed me forward without touching me. As to prove a point, he buckled my knees without telling me he was going to do that.
I couldn't have seen him. I didn't know he was going to buckle my knees, but he did it and I was a noncompliant subject. One of the officers (a devout catholic I later learned) happened to be watching this example. When I locked eyes with him, all color had drained from his face and he looked terrified. He very calmly said, "Sifu Frank, you are possessed by the devil" and ran out of the gym, failing to return for the rest of the training.
Truthfully, all of us who witnessed this display were all pretty scared. Sifu saw this and made some joke about using this power at the clubs to get girls to move in closer to you. We all laughed that nervous laugh- the one where you're not sure if you're going to cry.
I share this story because JPD and I are having a debate about faith, reason, etc. on his blog. Check it out for the backstory. My point here is that there is more that I can comprehend, more than I can logically understand, and the fact that this experience cannot stand up to any serious intellectual rigor, it does not diminish the experience in any way for me. This experience changed my life and my understanding of the arts and not in a way that I can verbally explain. But Sifu Frank and many of my other instructors noticed the change. My technique feels different. I move differently. I am different because of what was done to me, what was shown to me. There's something to be said for that.
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