Sherifka

I WAS beginning to write about how we're not getting any sleep here, dogs, fireworks, temple music at 5am etc etc etc ...& Sherifka stopped by.

I can't really explain what it is like to be around him. If you were to meet him on the street, perhaps you would think 'really nice man" and nothing more, but I am constantly astounded at his level of knowledge.

Tonight he was telling us more about the different forms and the way they are constructed, and which lineages do which forms, and why some don't. Also he was talking about some of his own teachers, how far he traveled to study very specific elements of the practice with them, and his efforts to write curriculum for all the styles of Kalari, so that they can be preserved as much as possible. This quest to find the most complete Kalari practice & treatment systems has been his life's work.

Skerifka has gone so far into this knowledge that he actually has palm leaves from hundreds of years ago with instructions written on them about how the forms should be, and the healing and fighting applications for them as well. For example, after receiving the traditional massage which is quite loosening, there is a danger of injury to the joints , so the palm leaves indicate stamping & jumping in a certain way to re-integrate. This is a technique he started using only after studying the texts for years & this Kalari is the only one currently using the technique. Since incorporating the stamping & jumping, the injuries he was seeing are totally gone.

All of this goes in to what we do here every day & I am so humbled by the opportunity to be here & just hang out on the porch with him, I know for sure that I have only begun to get the smallest idea of the amount of knowledge Sherifka has. I know that if spent the rest of my life studying with him, I could never know what he knows. These people are rare in the world today. I am so lucky.