In the Hindu epic of the Ramanyan, the character of Hanuman is the King of the monkey forest. He is half-man, half-monkey and represents the best aspects of both. He rescues the princess Sinta from the evil clutches of Ravan and burns down his city. He is both clown and mystical hero. Throughout the islands of Indonesia, but particularly in Java and Bali, Hanuman is the most-revered character in this story, which is told over and over again in shadow puppet plays and dance.
Hanuman is a link between the gods and men, and though he is also an erratic troublemaker, he is the sentinel for the forces of good, and the torturer of evil. It is impossible to understate the importance of this archetype in the Indonesian mindset. With monkeys all around them, the rural Indonesians are constantly reminded to respect nature by their brother primates.
It was into this culture that Willem de Thouars was born, a jungle landscape with a people rooted in nature. Willem is one of those rare members of a disappearing generation of old-world practitioners who were raised from birth in a culture of martial arts. Or as he prefers to put it, fighting arts.
Willem's experience with monkeys comes from living among them on plantations in central Java. For five years he passed through a colony of gray monkeys every day to go to school and do work. "My fortune was that I learned from monkeys," he states. "I touched hands with them and learned their energy. They took acceptance of me and I became one of them."Though Willem teaches 12 varieties of pencak silat and eight styles of Chinese kun tao, it is the monkey "flavor" to his arts that fascinates his Western students the most. Willem can take a technique from any of his systems and "monkey-ize" it. And his ability, perfected over 57 years of practice, to snap in and out of the monkey mind, is shocking.
Willem's monkey practices fall into three categories:
Monkey Drills: Solo practice of monkey antics
Monkey Technique: Which stresses animal reactions of the mind
Monkey Boxing: The final evolution of his style of "no mind" sparring
Exotic Drills
Monkey drills frequently begin with leaping from a crouched position and landing in a silow, then kicking from this position, rolling forward, back and every which way, with low sweeps and high kicks, and a variety of strikes, elbow strikes and monkey-style djurus (hand combinations). Monkey drills have also been known to include climbing trees and leaping about on rocks. These drills start with an order but ultimately the student leaves behind the prearranged set and practices spontaneously.
When Willem was a young man, his training reached the point where he was beginning to feel very full of himself. It was then that his teacher ordered him to beat up a 55-pound macaque that was kept as a pet on a chain. When Willem attempted to grab the monkey, he was thrown. When he tried to strike him, the monkey leapt onto his head, striking Willem's eyes and viciously biting his head. Infuriated, Willem went after it with a broom. The monkey disarmed him and chased him away with it.
"I really came to understand that I didn't know anything," Willem recalls. "That was the biggest lesson I ever had. And now I have come to understand what I have been doing right and wrong all these five decades of martial arts training."
The principle Willem applies in monkey techniques is an accordion-like exchange of energy between the dan tian and sacrum. He uses the contraction between these points to collapse the structure of his opponent, and then expands it to drive his various forms of takedown. He uses this energy to spin like a top, using his spine as a "polar axis." The balance and animal-like reaction to produce this movement is the object of both the monkey drills and the monkey boxing.
Willem's strikes, or "punishments," take the form of open-handed slaps, backfists and powerful fingertip grabs of flesh, and subtle leg maneuvers (langkas) that prevent the opponent from responding.
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