Pencak Silat Cidepok

The Cidepok Silat is an ancient, uncommon, precious and almost unknown form of Indonesian Pencak Silat.
It's practiced exclusively inside the small Hindu community in Bali Island by a chosen group of people, often only after facing a mystical initiating ritual, as it was tradition by the old gurus before accepting a new murid (student).
The Balinese master Guru Besar Ketut Gysir, who mainly carries the function of Hindu minister (Mangkù), taught Cidepok only to the components of his community and to just two non-Indonesian people, one of them was Aemrican, the other one Italian.
This ancient and pure style of Silat , consecrated to self-protection and far from sporting competitions, is not a modern style practiced in the great schools open to tourists which are present in the big Indonesian towns, but a brilliant and eclectic traditional system, reserved to few people, and it has an ancient, mystic and martial flavour.
It was born from a medley of Pencak Silat from Java Island and the Pencak Silat from Sumatra, two near-by islands almost completely Islamic, and its main purposes are self-defence and the well-being of mind and body.
The five jurus (forms) of this fascinating martial art contain concepts, strategies and techniques of fighting, coming for the most part from the well-known Cimande style of Java, and from the famous, now also here in Occident, Harimau of Sumatra (the tiger style). They meld in only five, short, brilliant and useful strings of movements the concepts of the two main and most dreaded Indonesian styles.
Bahlinesian people soon understood the importance of studying and assimilating movements and letal techniques of the one of most efficient fighting style coming from the two big near-by islands.
Cidepok is a summary style with only five jurus (there are Pencak Silat styles with more than thirty jurus) and a few langkah; it gives the possibility to fight on foot and ashore, and we can find a perfect mixing of the two main principles that are at the base of Indonesian Silat: permainan, which means playing, and it refers to the levers, wiping out, projections and all the imbalancing movements useful to destabilize the enemy, and pukulan,which means hit, with every part of our body - punches, kicks, nudges, pushes with shoulder, knee, fingers, and every other hit useful to finish the fighting as soon as possible.
Practicing Cidepok regularly can keep us in a good form, giving us flexibility and motor coordination; Cidepok is also a spiritual practice, deeply connected with nature and with the mighty tiger movements. It gives us the opportunity to descover feelings that we don't remind, forgotten from the childhood, when that ability of moving in a certain way was natural and instinctive.
In our school we teach Cidepok in its original pureness, without other Pencak Silat styles contaminations.

In Indonesia they use to say: You don't choose Silat, it's Silat who chooses you.