Silat for Health, Self-defense and Artistry

I have come to realize that m artial arts training is NOT all about the combat aspects. It doesn't even have to be about fighting. Martial arts can be fun, beautiful, enriching, and restorative. If you extract the training methods, you may benefit your health and wellness, knowledge, socialization, and life as a whole. You are learning the attributes and principles that have served the warrior culture (武士道) so well since time out of mind and using it to serve humanity as a whole.

I love self-defense based trainings because they are challenging. You improve endurance, grow stronger/ more flexible, increase limb coordination, have better balance and experience stress in a controlled environment. Most importantly, you learn to protect yourself and your loved ones.  So, keep up with your training, stay focused, humble and kind!

I have been reading about the potential benefits of cold immersion and cold showers, and I decided to give it a try since last month. Mind you, this is during the winter season so the cold water is not quite as warm as it was during summer months. Here's a conversation piece on the benefits and risks on cold showers/immersions:  Cold showers are supposed to be good for you. Typically, I start off with warm water, and when I'm mentally ready, I'd turn the dial all the way to the coldest setting. I thought I could improve on how long I could endure the cold blast. I can hold at least for 10 seconds, and the longest I managed was 30 seconds. It doesn't get easier, even after a month, but I'm getting used to getting past the initial shock.   I enjoy the immediate refreshing feeling, and that I don't feel the cold in my surroundings at all. I could sense my core body temperature being higher. Sometimes, I feel lighter in the head. Overall,  I try to maintain this rou...

 The local concepts of Silat are concerned with the artistic as well as the martial aspects.  A Malay old saying goes:  " In the move, lies the dance In the dance, lies the flower In the flower, lies the fruit In the fruit, lies the punch In the punch, lies the crunch" From the book " The Fighting Art of Pencak Silat and its Music "  edited by Uwe U. Paetzold and Paul H. Mason. 

Sleep is the foundation of health and productivity.  I typically sleep less than 6 hours every night, and so I make it a point that those hours spent sleeping are of the highest quality. I recently got a  Phillips DeepSleep Headband , and have been using it for three weeks now.  I'm sharing my sleep graph from a single night of sleep. Here's the story of my sleep: I went to bed at 11PM yesterday. It took me 4 minutes to fall asleep, and went straight into light sleep cycle. I then went right into the most restorative sleep phase, the Deep Sleep, the phase known to be correlated to cognitive functions such as insightful thinking, creativity and memory formation. It is also known to be a phase known for resetting the immune system.  So that's when my DeepSleep Headband contributed to boosting my Deep Sleep quality. All in all, I had 70 minutes of Deep Sleep, 90 minutes of REM Sleep, and the remainder 185 minutes of Light Sleep.   Check out this video below ex...