| |
 |
| |
| |
Award Of Excellence
Tomasz Gudzowaty
Yours Gallery / Focus Fotoagentur
"KALARI PAYATTU - MOTHER OF MARTIAL ARTS"
|
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1 of 12
|
 |
|
'Kalari
payattu' literally means 'combat on the training ground' in Sanskrit. This
ancient martial art from southern India, which originated around the 400 AD,
includes both armed and unarmed techniques in which punches, kicks and
strikes are directed toward 108 vital points of the human body. Every duel
turns into a spectacle with perfect turns and amazingly high jumps. Provided
that a kalari adept at the second of the five stages of initiation can
deliver about one hundred blows a minute, the weapons used Ð like a double
horned dagger or an 's' shaped stick - are potentially lethal. Mercifully,
the student is allowed to learn the inner mysteries and the most deadly blows
only after he receives the full confidence of his guru who must feel certain
this knowledge will never be misused. The practitioners believe that kalari
is the mother of all martial arts, which is backed up by the fact that
Bodhidharma, the inventor of kung fu and founder of the famous Shaolin
monastery in China, was born in southern India.
The pictures feature the masters from P. Vasudevan Gurukkal's C.V.N Kelari Kollam
healing centre, where kalari payattu is practiced as a
body and mind exercise.
|
|
|
