The First Principle of Silat Fitrah

The first Principle of Movement that students are taught is:

‘Feet to core to four led by the head travelling on the breath.’

Whilst it might appear that this is a principle purely about physical movement, that’s far from the case. As I’ll explain in future blogs, the ‘feet to core...’ principle is all encompassing, combining physical, cognitive, and emotional elements.

For now, though, let’s start with the feet.

If you are upright, movement begins with your feet pressing into the Earth. It requires one foot to drive into the planet in a specific way in order to propel the body in the chosen direction. This means that one leg is pressing down hard, working to create momentum and drive, whilst the other is empty and light as it moves through the air. When the sole of that foot feels the Earth beneath it, it then automatically becomes the driver and roles are reversed.

In its most simple form, we call this walking. It’s a very natural thing to do. We need to find this naturalness in our martial arts practice. It can be a challenging thing to do. A temptation, for example, when watching a martial movement being demonstrated is to focus on the hands and/or whichever part of the body is being used to strike or grab.

In Silat Fitrah students are trained to focus on the demonstrator’s feet first, to identify how they interact with the planet to move the body in a desired way. This is important because, as a basic rule, if your feet are wrong, everything that happens above them will also be wrong.

Remember, in purely physical terms, feet move the body. And they have an entire planet beneath them, offering itself as a launch pad. (And offering itself as much more, if your feet encourage your eyes to look and ears to listen.)

So, if you want a good training exercise for developing yourself as a martial artist: make sure that you feel the planet with every step that you take.

More about ‘feet to core to four led by the head travelling on the breath’ next time.