Pencak-Silat Is Accepted As a Way Of Indonesians Life

In fact, an exponent of pencak-silat is trained to be ready to ward off an attack at any time; his body must be flexible enough to make an instantaneous response. Crouching stances and smooth movements into and out of low postures require the exponent to be both extremely strong and flexible in his legs and hips-qualities that can be developed to their fullest only when pencak-silat is accepted as a way of life. Indonesians make daily use of the full squat posture, a posture that, as anyone knows who has tried it, requires well-developed and flexible leg muscles. Some of the stances and postures of pencak-silat make greater physical demands than those of Japanese karate-do: they will thus be found to offer an interesting and useful challenge to advocates of karate-do.

The notion that pencak-silat was evolved solely for use by slight, small-boned people is a mistaken one. While it is indeed ideally suited to the needs of short, slender fighters, many of its most remarkable exponents, like the mountain dwellers of Sumatra, Java, and Bali, are large bodied. Some one hundred and fifty different pencak-silat styles an be identified in the three thousand islands that comprise Indonesia and stretch across as many miles from the Indian Ocean in the west to Australian New Guinea in the east. The world's largest archipelago, Indonesia, extends between the Southeast Asian mainland and the Philippines to the north and Australia in the south, and, throughout this vast expanse, pencak-silat is to be found in both its pure orthodox form and in various combinations and with various modifications.