About Kempo

 

When the sun rose this morning I was in my backyard practicing with a sword — my neighbors must think I’m nuts. Practicing with a sword? People think I’m training for a fight that happened on the other side of the planet a thousand years ago. But my fight wasn’t a thousand years ago, it’s now. And it isn’t on the other side of the planet, it’s here, inside of me.

I tested for my Black Belt a long time ago — and every day since. That’s what many people don’t understand about a Black Belt, you have to be worthy of it every day. Some days I do better than others, but every day I try.

Did you continue your journey today? Learning more and becoming stronger in a thousand ways? Did you live with integrity? Were you honest with yourself and others? Did you meet your obligations? Serve others? Teach others? Did you look for the best in others? Did you give the best of yourself without asking anything in return? These are the questions that stream through my mind every day.

Being a Black Belt is hard.
But I’m not really sure what the other option is.
Giving up? Not today.

Chris Santillo
Black Belt

 

 

A horse stance should be painful.
Let me say that again, a horse stance should be painful.
I find that once we come to grips with this, the particulars become easier to accept.

Your feet should be one-and-a-half shoulder widths apart. The heels of your feet should be pushing outward, causing the blades of your feet to be parallel. This position should cause a stretch in the outside of your ankle.
Your knees should be bending and pushing out over your feet; the goal is having them over your big toe. This emphasis should open your hips and fatigue your quadriceps.
Your hips should be pulling forward, straightening your lower back and further stretching your hips.
Your shoulders should be pulling down and your fists should be pulling tightly against your sides, as high and as far back as possible. You should feel a stretch across the front of your chest and fatigue across your back.
Your eyes should be focussing straight forward at shoulder level despite all distractions.

None of this should be comfortable, comfort is not the goal. The goal is to train the body to be strong and well-balanced, the mind to be clear and focused, and the spirit to be steadfast.

Chris Santillo
Circa 2004

I originally wrote this for a newsletter more than ten years ago. I was more than a little flattered to learn that one of my students had kept a tattered copy all of these years. After rereading it I found that I still liked it and wanted to share it again.
In particular I enjoyed the use of the active voice. Instead of suggesting that your feet should be apart it emphasizes that your feet should be ‘pushing’ outward. A horse stance is not a static position, it is a dynamic masterpiece that you must create in each moment.
I also appreciate the emphasis on the horse stance being a anvil for forging the body, mind, and spirit. The physical benefits of a horse stance are obvious, but are dwarfed by the benefits for the mind and the spirit. Gaining the ability to focus amidst life’s distractions sharpens the mind. Forcing your body and mind to persist when they want to quit develops your spirit.

The horse stance was a integral part of our training a thousand years ago, ten years ago, and very much still today.

Chris Santillo
2015

Congratulations on becoming a Black Belt — whether it was a month ago or a decade ago it is an achievement to be proud of. Please notice that I used the term becoming a Black Belt. Some people mistakenly use the term getting, which misses the point. With deference, some people use the term earning. This is better. But still strikes wide of the mark. Through arduous study and training you became a Black Belt. The piece of fabric around your waist is simply a token to remind you of what you have become — but it was never the objective. The years, the sweat, the blood — that was not given to earn a belt, it was given in the service of becoming something more than you were.

Now answer me a couple of questions.

Are you a better or worse martial artist today than when you became a Black Belt? Do you train more — in and out of the dojo — or less than you did before becoming a Black Belt? Are you a better or worse student — that is to say, do you seek knowledge and challenge more or less aggressively — than you did before you became a Black Belt? Are you doing a better or worse job of realizing your potential as a human being than you did before becoming a Black Belt?

There is no answer key. You know what the correct answers are and you know how you scored. But let me explain why I am asking. A number of things happen as people advance in rank and especially when they become Black Belts — and not all of them are good.

When we become Black Belts we have a tendency to ‘believe our own’ press. Everyone thinks that Black Belts know everything — most of us thought that was true before we became Black Belts. However, now that we are Black Belts we should be honest — we don’t know everything. It is okay for other people to think so, just so long as we don’t delude ourselves.

This is important because to the extent that we believe that we know everything we shut ourselves off to additional learning. White Belts seldom make excuses for their mistakes, they know that they don’t know anything and are eager to learn. However, Black Belts sometimes choose to ‘explain’ why they made a mistake. Saying things like, “The reason I did it that way was. . . “ Statements like this preclude the possibility of learning — if your cup is so full, how could it possibly hold more?

Another stumbling block for some Black Belts is using an absolute — rather than relative — measure of their abilities. By doing so they feel very good about how far they have come rather than thinking about how much further they can go. For most people, by the time they become a Black Belt they are far better than they ever thought possible. The challenging part for any student is to realize that they have surpassed their former limitations, and that they must now push harder than they did before.

Workouts are a practice in variable resistance and we set the resistance ourselves by the power and speed of our movements, the depth of our stances, and the height of our kicks. Finding a workout to be ‘easy’ is not a comment on the workout — it means you weren’t trying. Today you might be able to strike harder than you could as a Green Belt without breaking a sweat, but you should be striking as hard as you can now. You might be able to hold a better horse stance than you could as a Blue Belt without even trying, but instead you should be in a much better horse stance. You have become more efficient and therefore must work even harder.

Maybe you feel like life has been busy and that this year will better. And I think you’re right. But this year will only be better if we make it better. Or maybe you don’t feel that this letter has anything to do with you, and maybe you’re right. But please keep it handy and read every now and then — just to make sure that it never does.

Either way, I think you’re great. I really do. I’ve always been proud of the quality of our instructors and students. There is an old saying (of mine) that everyone has their demons — we just take more notice of our own demons. I’ve never been impressed by people without challenges in their lives. I’m impressed by people who face up to their challenges and overcome them — like you.

With respect,

Chris Santillo
Black Belt

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.

 — Unknown

We pursue excellence in a thousand different ways, but for simplicity let’s just consider a person who wants be able to do more push ups — a noble goal to be sure. Let’s call him Jim and assume he can do ten push ups but he wants to be able to do twenty.

The pursuit of excellence is a long and arduous process. It can also be fun and enjoyable — but don’t forget that it is long and arduous. The first step in attaining excellence is to do more, and the second step in attaining excellence is . . . . doing more. If Jim wants to be able to do twenty push ups he won’t get there by practicing ten. He will only get there by doing twenty. How is that possible if he can only do ten, you ask? Perhaps the first time he tries to do twenty he will fail, perhaps he will only do twelve — that’s okay. The next time he tries to do twenty perhaps he will do fourteen. The important thing is that he is trying to do twenty, not trying to do fourteen, and certainly not trying to do ten.

People very commonly practice the same thing over and over assuming they are getting closer to their goal. By doing ten push ups every day Jim will become quite skilled at that task, but he will never reach his goal of twenty. There is great appeal in continuing to do ten push ups because it is much more gratifying — in the short-term — to succeed at doing ten push ups than to fail at doing twenty. However, in the long-term, getting to twenty is worth all the work. As Zig Ziglar put it, “Happiness is not pleasure, it’s victory.”

If you want to climb a mountain you need to climb the mountain, not a number of small hills. So pack up your gear, put on your boots, and start climbing the mountain. If you fail, take a rest, reflect, and then get up the next morning and try to climb the mountain again.

Oh, one other thing. If it’s easy, you’re not trying hard enough.

Master Chris Santillo

The Dragon of the East

In the West, Dragons have long been depicted as evil creatures that raid villages, hoard treasure and commonly end up being killed by valorous knights. Despite the use of the same name, Chinese Dragons could not be more contrastive. They differ substantially in appearance but more to the point they are almost universally benevolent. Dragons were first depicted in statues and carved into jade more than six thousand years ago. Since that time they have come to play an important role in Chinese culture and — to our point — the martial arts. This verse from a popular song by Hou Dejian illustrates how intertwined the Dragon is with Chinese culture

In the Ancient East there is a Dragon
Her name is China
In the Ancient East there is a people
They are all the heirs of the Dragon [Read more…] about About Kempo: Shaolin Dragon

You can’t always get what you want.

But if you try sometimes,

well you just might find,

You get what you need.

— Rolling Stones

Devin studied Kempo many years ago. I knew his Sensei and enjoyed reports from both of them about how well Devin’s training was going — until it wasn’t.

Devin was an early bird and always got to work crazy early in the morning. He would then schedule Kempo lessons in the early afternoon to make sure that he didn’t get pulled in to any meetings. With great joy he would say “Sorry, Joe, I can’t today. I have an appointment this afternoon. Make sure someone sends me the minutes.” A Kempo lesson is a much better way to spend your time than in a meeting, to be sure.

This worked really well until there was a meeting that he just couldn’t miss. Devin called his Sensei to apologize and canceled his lesson. His Sensei didn’t seem phased, “No big deal, maybe we can do it tomorrow.” he said. Devin thought this was amazingly kind and thanked him profusely. Unfortunately he stopped studying Kempo just a couple of months later.

What happened was simple. He could no longer skip meetings with the explanation that he had an appointment — he knew that he could reschedule it whenever he wanted. He got pulled in to more and more meetings and eventually stopped even protesting. His attendance at the dojo became abysmal and he eventually quit. Once he saw that his Sensei did not prioritize his lessons, he found it hard to do so himself.

It’s unfair to blame his Sensei for his quitting but we can’t ignore the effect his actions had. At the end of the day the goal — unrealized in this case — is for a Kempo student to reach their highest potential and everyone involved needs to support that goal or it won’t happen. This includes the student and Sensei — of course — but also friends, family and classmates. They say it takes a village to raise a child, well I say it takes a village to help someone earn a black belt.

Master Chris Santillo