Navadisha

Jay asked if I could explain the logo at the top. Honestly didn't see that coming, guess I really should have. It is the new logo for the new school/class I will be starting. I've been looking for a place to train/teach for a while now. Really just wanted a training group near home that I could explore stuff with and hone the stuff I did with Mushtaq. Not a lot of options in a small town. Would love to have the Pippen golden ticket, a pole barn outside. Maybe if I sold the Camaro. Then about 6 weeks ago I saw one of those signs on the side of the road "Karate/MMA Opening soon" Sounds like opportunity knocking. So I went in and introduced myself and the rest is prehistory. So starting next month I will be running my own Southern Philippines MA class. This will be strictly the Moro Sword work Mushtaq and I have been training in together. See, Mushtaq learned this in the early '60s back when there really was little FMA in California. And this was with a Filipino from Marawi in the South and his son Rasheed. His name was Jalaluddin Abdalsalaam. Mushtaq trained in this very unique style for quite a few years as a youth before going off to college and eventually discovering Silat.
In fact is was Guru Julaluddin who encouraged him to look into Silat as he considered it the source. Fast forward a few decades. Rasheed died in Vietnam and Guru Jalaluddin has died. Mushtaq and I trained together in whatever skills made what I was trying to improve better (dramatically). Oftentimes he would explain that it came from then, other times I just did what he told me. Eventually I realized that this system was incredibly unique. I had never seen anything like it and I knew that it was simply too kewl to disappear.
Mushtaq really didn't realize how cool it was and had never looked around to see that really no one else did it. So I convinced him to teach it to me top to bottom, side to side, angle on angle so to speak as a stand alone system. And it really needs to be. The techniques are interrelated and revolve around the concepts. Not that it can't complement systems, it did for me for years. But to really see the beauty in it, it needs to be done alone. It's quite amazing. I see some skill bits in other styles and hints at how it's done but it's like over the years they've lost what made the movements work.
See this is a bit of a time capsule. Guru Abdalsalaam learned it we guess sometime around the '30s when it was for protection as a merchant.
Then he taught it to Mushtaq the same way. They trained very traditionally the same way he had learned. Mushtaq has never trained anyone with it as a system. You may have had bits of it from him because it helped train an attribute but not really. So whats hard is pulling it back out and putting it back together as a teachable system. Mushtaq remembers learning it at a teenager (picture that) so we have to reenvision it as a teachable system.
So the new school I contacted wanted a syllabus, ect. Kind of a way of gleaning out the pretenders who thought they could teach there. So now we've got a syllabus and a logo.
Navadisha Asika Naipunya is Sanskrit loosly translated at Nine Angle Sword Mastery. We choose Sanskrit rather than deal with all the BS about origins and what word was used when. Sanskrit predates all that crap. The Shield and Swords logo is a modern cleanup of the same logo Mushtaq did for they system back in the 60s with Guru's approval. The nine angles is 9 angles of what happens to me, not how I attack you like most systems. I respond to an attack that comes in one of those 9 zones of my "sphere" and depending on where my weapon(s) and body is in relationship to that angle/zone, will dictate my response.
So there you have it. Mariah Moore and myself are the first since the '60s to open the time capsule and I'm giving the first taste for free in three weeks. Bobbe maybe sooner if the cheese is good.