State, Stimuli and Skills.

As I’ve mentioned before, Silat Fitrah is a principles-based art. These principles can be grouped under the following headings:

1. Principles relating to physical movement.

2. Principles relating to state of mind.

3. Principles relating to strategy and tactics.

4. Principles relating to application with others – in both a martial context and as a Life Art.

The syllabus is the vehicle we use to identify and practise these different principles. They can later be expressed unconsciously through the Tari.

A focus on principles leads us away from prioritising techniques and onto a consideration of state, stimuli and skills.

These three are inter-related. However, I think they are best addressed in the order I’ve written them. The reason for this being that state – attitude and awareness – underpins our behaviours and responses to perceived stimuli, and the appropriateness of our responses is determined by our level of skill. State, then, comes first. And if there is no stimulus to respond to, we have no need to exercise our skills.

State

This, I would suggest, is a mixture of intention and willingness to act, combined with

awareness and readiness. All four aspects need to be in place if we are to respond

successfully to any given stimulus.

If we don’t have a clear intention, we don’t know what it is we need to achieve – we don’t know what success looks like – and so we don’t know what to do in order to achieve it.

(Neither do we know when to stop.)

There’s little point claiming an intention if we are not genuinely willing to act on it. Intention without action is a form of inconsequential daydreaming. We have to, therefore, be willing to make the necessary commitment in order to achieve our intention.

For awareness to be useful, it needs to lead into skilled attention-giving. In other words, we have to perceive the stimuli and interpret/understand it accurately. If we fail to do so, our response(s) can be inappropriate, and we can fail to achieve our intention.

To maximise our chances of success, we have to be physically, mentally and emotionally ready to move. Intention, willingness and skilled attention-giving can come to nothing if we are not ready to act swiftly and accurately.

Stimuli

A stimuli can be defined as, ‘A thing or event that evokes a specific functional reaction in an organ or tissue,’ or as, ‘A thing that arouses activity or energy in someone or something; a spur or incentive’.

When we train, just knowing that we are going to the dojo, kwoon, gelanggang etc should act as stimuli that feeds and reinforces our state and our willingness to act.

Sometimes a stimuli can be very obvious – sometimes potentially overwhelmingly so – and then our intention and our state can be challenged significantly. Sometimes, though, the most important stimuli can be subtle and easy to miss; that’s why we need to be continually improving our awareness and our ability to give skilled attention.

In a martial context, for example, it’s far more useful if we can recognise the other person’s harmful intention towards us before they throw a punch, rather than when it’s whizzing towards our face!

We are literally bombarded with hundreds of stimuli every moment of our lives; the key is to know what to focus on – and why – and what can, or should, be ignored.

Skill

Skill can be defined as, ‘The ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in

execution,’ or as ‘A learned power of doing something competently’.

In Silat Fitrah we train to develop physical skills associated with martial movement and expression, combined with strategic and tactical awareness and decision-making. This training is also based on an understanding that, as we progress through our lifecycle, our physical capability changes and so, therefore, must the skills we prioritise.

One of the skills that can, with practise, stand the test of time, is the ability to shift from intention to action seamlessly and with minimal delay.

And that’s it for now. The topic of State, Stimuli and Skills could, honestly, fill a book. I

hope, however, that this very brief introduction has given you a further insight into our art.