ACHIEVING POTENTIAL WITH TANG SOO DO by Maggie PierceIn Renaissance Italy, somebody asked Michelangelo how he was able to carve such beautiful angels out of a solid block of lifeless marble. He is said to have replied that one simply cuts away everything that is not an angel. According to San Diego lang soo do instructor Lloyd Francis, the same is true of human potential. “t's more or less like a block of marble,” he said. “All you do js chip away the pieces and take away the things that don’t belong, and the statue imprisoned there is what you're trying to produce... 1 don’t think anything comes from out the human mind. | think it’s there on the inside. And there's hhot as many new things coming in as there are unused things ‘getting dusted off and cleaned off that are already there. And | think this idea of self-discipline or mental discipline is already there in the beginning. The seed is already there. It’s just up to somebody on the outside, maybe, to nurture that seed so it blossoms.” For Indiana-born Francis, the nurturing for that seed came from seven years of tang soo do with Jeong Lee. After that seven years (the number of years the mythic hero usually undergoes his trials), Lee cut his pupil loose, telling him “he hhad taught me everything he could teach me,” For a while it seemed to Francis that a part of his life as natural as breathing hhad been taken away. “But to be honest with you,’ he said, ‘I think it's probably, the most profound thing he ever did for me. Because at that Point, instead of looking to him for knowledge, | started looking to. myself, and that’s when all these things started happening.” “All these things” included a deeper study of yoga and ‘meditation and their application to karate for Francis, though both had been interests of his previously. And with a longabiding interest in hypnosis and the power of the human , they have combined to make him both a better martial artist and a better teacher. A Golden Gloves boxer in his youth, Francis also brings to his karate the benefits of yoga, meditation and modern dance. ‘When | watch dance, | see the karate, And I've had some friends come by and watch me teach and they see the dance,”” he said. “It just depends on where your awareness happens to be, of where your Focus is."” The subtler similarity between the two is not simply the forms or even the physical execise, but what Francis calls “the flow.” “I'm not trying to put a lot of power into things. feel the energy is flowing through you all the time anyway. And that's what we're talking about, the flow. You're just trying to tap in ‘on the power that’s in the universe and let it just flow through you.’ Does he think of this “flow” as ki power? “Yeah,” he said, “definitely so. 1 think of it like a second childhood, what has bbeen explained to me in my reading as a reawakening. Just like your first childhood is finding out about your hands and your nose and the outside world and blossoming out that way.. Your second childhood is when you start an inward blossoming. You're really trying to find out who you are and what you're really all about, instead of just the body. “I think we're getting into the internal flow and things of that nature with ki, Being able to have a technique and just do what you want. Instead of just throwing a kick or punch or whatever out there, you're able to snap it right out and get the same thing done without wasting alot of time and energy.” But Francis would really rather prefer not to define the “flow” as ki or as anything else. “It's alittle,” he sald, “like trying to define the soul. We can all agree the soul is there and that life stops when it's no longer there, Maybe that's the point of ki. If you've got it, you understand it “As far as techniques are concerned, | would probably be getting into prana (a yoga concept), which involves contral of breathing and that type of thing. I get somewhat of a physical feeling that might be hyperventilating, when you're oscillating the body and you can fect a lightheadedness or a surge of energy, and you can feel what you've generated. Now, I'm not sure if i's physical or a mental thing. But as long as it works, Why puta definition on i? "When I watch H.C. Hwang do a form, he's lowing, | see energy flowing when | watch Master Lee do that triple kie. You can’t tell me he hasn't locked in on ki, because physically that's a hard thing to do. I’s power and flow and speed.” Though he participated in wrestling in high school and fought in Golden Gloves competition, this product of an intensely academic Catholic education found that in college his attention to his studies took alot of ume away from more athletic pursuits. A major in Spanish (he now has his master degree) and a minor in philosophy (in which he also earned a BA) kept him at his books for long hours. “And when you're studying," he said with agri “you're In Tijuana, Mexico, tang soo do practitioner Lloyd Francis (left) defeats Ron Glovits four to zero In Grand Champion- ship. atIn a San Diego tournament in the mid-1970s, Francis took first place in tang soo do team competition. ‘eating. And one day | looked down and couldn't find my belt T weighed about 190 or 200, and | don’t need that kind of weight, $0, having always been into something physical, 1 started looking around. “{ didn’t want to get into weight training or something like that. | looked at kenpo and some other hand techniques, but having boxed and wrestled, | really didn’t feel that would be much of a challenge for me. | wanted to get into something | didn’t really feel complete in. With the dancing behind me, | knew | could do something with my legs. And this friend of mine, Ron Hawkins, was working out in tang soo do, so ! went down to take a look “L was watching this green belt throw a front snap kick, and 1 wasn’t that impressed. Then he threw a turn kick, and | wasn't that Impressed. And then he threw a side snap kick, and 1 wasn’t that impressed, but then he spun and did a back kick! Vd never seen a back kick in my life before! And the thought flashed through my head that if was fighting this guy, I'd be lying on the ground. I'd have been standing there wondering why he was turning his back for an attack, and by the time Id a2 hhave figured it out, it would have been all over. "So | decided that’s where 1 would give somne serious time land study. | liked the fact that tang s00 do sald you've got to reach, you've got the power, and instead of giving you something that you don’t have and that you may not be able to get, we're going to deal with something you already have and develop that, That made sense, And I've been with it ever Two years later, in 1969, Francis received his black belt, though in tang soo do, of couse, the “black belt” is blue. Francis explained, “Blue is symbolic of the universe. Black js the ultimate, the supreme, death-the completion of everything, The completion of life is death, We as human beings are imperfect. Black is black and it will never change, but with the blue you can keep changing to another color, so there is always room for growth and improvement, and it’s not the ultimate. It's the first step up. From there you begin, instead of being a point where you've arrived.”* Tang soo do, he said, is the best thing that ever happened to him. The boxing was important too, of course, though he was only 13 at the time. The most important aspect of that experience, Francis shrugged, was learning never to retreat “You came to fight, you know. You didn’t come to run, And the most important thing that experience contributed to his martial arts, he feels, is an attitude. “In other words, if | lines Mrinttctti daishsexpect to get a lot from it, I'm going to have to give alot to it. That's the answer we have when we have problems with respect and that sort of thing, Because if they (his students) feel that by giving respect to somebody they have to give up something, they're wrong. You know, the more you give, the more you get.” Respect is'always an important concept in the martial arts and no less so in Lloyd Francis’ dojo'than in Jeong Sook Lee's. ‘And one aspect of that deals with the use of names. Francis feels that only close friends should be on a first-name basis, ‘that respect from student to teacher or child to adult is demonstrated by a respectful use of Mr. and “sr.” “For instance, you get someone in here who is sixteen of seventeen years old, and | am Mr. Francis and he is Mt. Cortez. That gives him‘no option except to give respect to this particular person. What we're really talking about Is not a seventee-year-old person but a person who's urying to represent a particular rank. Like in the service, they say you salute the uniform, not the man. This also has a good reverse effect, because the seventeen-year-old is trying to live up to the respect you give him. It pulls him up to a different level of respect that perhaps he wouldn't otherwise be on. “Also, | put more emphasis on the responsibility of having a belt rather than the privilege of having it. That's going to keep him together, and itll keep him tight, and maybe that little circle of discipline will keep his act together.”” ‘Actually, Francis finds that respect and discipline are the most compelling parts of the study of the martial arts, “| think our society today is broken down, because you have little kids calling you by your first name and so on. They are going to school and getting a piece of paper but not an ‘education. The discipline has definitely dropped out. It doesn’t hiave to mean being subservient to anybody. It just means you're giving respect to get respect.” Francis himself came from a highly disciplined household in Indianapolis, Indiana. He remembers, almost fondly, talking back to his mother as a child and “having to grow a couple of new teeth. “My mother was four-foot-eleven, and she was r sons by herself. The respect i still there, and | think Granted, we still have our battles, and | realize that I'm a man and not a child. But | can still give her the respect she deserves. Tang.soo do says love and respect your parents.” Self-respect, of course, comes in here too. “Tang, soo do doesn’t mean going down into the street and kickit that moves. It just means you're able to pick up and find out things about yourself, things that you're able to apply to other situations." ‘And as has so often been noted, sometimes the fact of your ‘own skill in the arts is actually enough to keep a person from Using it in violence. (nie Christmas Eve, Francis recalled, he had stopped to pick Lup supplies from the ‘janitorial company he operates and, “meaning to be right out, had simply parked right in the driveway of the place. Unfortunately, when he came out, somebody who's car he had blocked was waiting for him. “and he was irritated and hostile, He’s standing there, hrands on his hips, and I'm 18 how many times can | hit him before he knows what hit himmbecause he has underestimated who | am. But then I say to myself, ‘Hey, get ‘over it And I say to him, ‘Hey, it was a stupid thing I parked in the driveway and I’m sorry and Merry Christmas.” And his, jaw dropped, and it took it all away from him, and he apologized and said, I guess | was really being a jerk.’ think more was gained by not hitting him than would have been by decking him or breaking his kneecap.” Francis has been teaching tang S00 do in San Diego for a little more. than 10 years. His dojo, presently with about 40 students, has won numerous awards in tournaments all over California and Mexico. And although his heavy teaching schedule limits his own tournament activity somewhat, he has still managed to captain the United Karate Federation's Team Number Two, which took an honorable second place in the 1977 and 1978 International Karate Championships. And this ‘year he was one of five chosen out of 500 blue belts to go to England for the first tang soo do tournament there, the first, international tournament in which the American federation hhas participated. One feason Francis feels tang soo do instruction is $0 valuable, he said, is that martial arts practice can help alleviate, some of the tensions and stresses of modern life. “It gives you an opportunity," he said, "to alleviate some of the animosity and, by the same token, maybe it will give you something that will make it possible for you to go back out there on that street and make life more liveable for you. It gives you the tools and techniques that you need to apply to some of the situations that you get into.” Since many of Francis! employees are also his students, opportunities to use those techniques came up oftener than ‘one might expect. “Number one, 1 guess I’m more tolerant of people by having to be more tolerant and accepting of myself,” said Francis. “You know, if a person shows up late.for work, or 2 person doesn’t do a job, you have to keep constantly telling them till they get it right. What happens is that I'm constantly ‘on myself and I accept that | have to be strict with myself. 1 slip a little sometimes, so I’m a little more tolerant with them slipping sometimes.” ‘Actually, the fact that most of them are his students may make things on the job alittle easier. “They understand where I'm coming from," he said, “and the fact that I’m shooting for perfection.” And in the dojo he expects even more of them. He trains them with a firm but loving hand, “If the class is really with it, then maybe it's a little more relaxed,” he explained. “In other words, I'm only an authoritarian if that’s what they're telling me that’s what { have to be. Sort of like if a child is behaving himself, then he doesn't need to be disciplined. But if he's running around in cireles and demanding attention, he is, in a way, telling you, “Hey, this is what | need and 1 can’t do it myself. | need these outside forces to come in and mold me into shape.’ So | think you have to be very fluid. | work with them. When you're ‘working with people, there’s no problem; they'll go wherever ‘you lead them, “And I find that the students 1 have, that 1 don't really have to be that authoritarian. Once the discipline is accepted, they do it themselves.” Francis also has his experience with hypnosis and. meditation techniques to aid in his instructing, both of which may lead to a deeper understanding of ki power. “Let's say somebody is in a hypnotic trance,’” he said, 43| “And you tell them that their arm is rigid and straight, well then, you might be able to bend it somewhat. But this is dealing with a different type of awareness. If instead of that you tell them that this arm is righd and straight and it extends ‘out into the universe for maybe a block, or a mile, then the arm becomes part of that configuration instead of just stopping at the fingertips. And you find that he is generating ‘more energy, more ki, than if it did stop at the fingertips “For another example, | have a student who is four-footeleven and weighs ninety-seven pounds. Her conce is having enough power to be able to break something. If you tell her what she's doing is taking this force and extending it ‘through the arm, through the target into infinity, she's going {0 be less hesitant to pull that arm or to pull that leg, because she can see:that she’s flowing with something that is much more powerful than she is.” As much or more important than hypnotism or “fantasizing” may be meditation. In a way, said Francis, “You are the essence of whatever it is you are doing. | want (my students) to get into whatever it is they're doing. To try to feel the kick and try to be the kick, instead of just doing the kick. Te try to touch the essence, instead of just trying to do it. “think it all ties together. One of the most exasperating things in my studying was, when | got my belt, my instructor took me all the way back to the basics. Here | thought I'd arrived and I thought there was going to be something special ‘And the only thing on the other side was the appreciation of what it was | thought I'd learned in those first two years. And "ve come to an appreciation of the forms, because it’s the bass, the foundation. You get that in order to stat linking everything ese together. “ad a student who had studied with me for about fifteen months and one day she came up to me and said, "You know, I'm blocking somebody's foot.’ And that’s what I'd been trying to get acrom 10 her all the time, But finally. the realization came through to her. And | have another student who, after five years of kicks and me talking to hlm about extension, suddenly says, ‘Hey, extension makes sense.’ “You know when you'e ready for that piece of information to make sense fo you. It isn't going to happen any Sooner, This is algo in line with certain premises in yora: There’ no place to get to, there's no ‘over there’ Where you are sit, here and now. You just learn to accept that and work with i" Francis admits now that after 10 yeas he is stil very much 4 student and that in teaching a technique he may learn as tmuch of more than his own student. “The more I lear," he said, like many another teacher, “the more | don’t know. When {spend three hours on a Sunday workingon kicks with 4 student, I'm the one who learns and he’s the one who comes fut sore and exasperated. So we work on them-flying Spinning back kicks. And | watch him, and maybe because his body fs into it alittle more than mine is, can learn from what Vm teaching him. | might tell him to make this or that correction, and | make the correction, too.” ” Kim Pacific Proudly Presents A Whole New Concept In Shin-Instep Guard. motets or le upon request. Order form on Page 61 211 KP. 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