Interview (Us) Arts & Combat Magazine : The Evolution of The Martial Arts

Master Michel MORLON will inform us of his new way in the Martial Arts,his philosophy of the Martial Arts through his work on the Energy, the Knowledge and the Understanding of Oneself to reach the True Self-control through Oneself and not through his Master…

Art & Combat Magazine (A&C): The KHIDO has just come back in 2009 to the French Federation of Karate and Associated Disciplines. A good opportunity to meet its Khido’s Founder, Michel MORLON.
At 62 years, this one kept all his energy and his French speech. Impassioned by the effectiveness, it has developed, a method based on the natural movements of the human body. The goal: to arrive at the Control of his body and thus at the Self-control.

A&C: How did you begin the practice from the Martial Arts?

Master Michel MORLON (M.M.): I was born in Vietnam, in Saigon, in 1947. I started the Martial Arts in Vietnam with the Kung fu, the Judo and Karate. Then, I came to France in 1963 and I continued Karate. Around 1969, I practiced Taekwondo with the Master Lee Kwan Young, who was the pioneer of this Art in France.

A&C: Are there people in Karate which you regard as your professors?

M.M.: Personally no, I am rather an autodidact. I knew, respected and rubbed of lot of Asian Masters of any edge, but as a student or a disciple, not, because I was disagreed with their teachings.

A&C:  Why the creation of such as this  school like the Khido?

M.M.: That always was in my frame of mind. Historically, since the three years age, I was a rebel : I took beatings by my father up to 16 years because I was always a revolutionist, namely that I always call in question what one teaches me. When he asked me whether I was afraid of him, I said “yes” and when he asked me why I disobeyed to him, I said to him : “Everything you thought me, this is nonsense, it is not right, for example, did not attend the poor”: I thought there were people well everywhere.

A&C: In the level of Martial Arts, how could you define the Khido?

M.M.: It is a very complex thing. I would quite simply say to be oneself, through all you learn, that is in the life or Martial Arts, anywhere ; to be oneself, not imprisoned by what one learns, but to be free of all that has been learned, it is that the Khido.

A&C: For example, you taught it with some golfers.

M.M.: Yes, because I had a student who was champion of golf and which worked the Khido with me. In fact I have to understand to them what the body is? to be a Master of his technique and not to be a prisoner of his technique. Let us say that they managed to understand the word “relaxation theoretically”, the word “to let go”. They understood many things theoretically, as in the Martial Arts besides, but they did not manage into practice to put what one asked them: since their Masters, their professors, their teachers themselves did not know how to transmit the message, or perhaps they did even know not the way of practicing it.

A&C: To give an example, often in the Martial Arts, one says: such position tended back leg?

M.M.: It is very serious, when we return in the verb, in the language, namely the French language: 99.9 per 100 of the practitioners of this world confuse the word “tended” with “stiffening it” or “contracting”. When you are upright, you have the tended leg, when you say hello, you have the tended arm, but at any time you stiff or are contracted; however the fact of stiffening your arm by giving a punch, the fact of stiffening, of contracting your leg where as you are only in position, even not in action, fact of you a physically disability. Any repetition takes a power: by stiffen; to contract your leg, you become a disabled person. From the beginning, all is false: how do you want that the arrival is good?

A&C: Another example, in the Martial Arts, the term of blocking?

M.M.: All the schools of the world use this term of blocking: however there is no blocking. To block somebody, it is to prevent it from advancing: to block means something having and to prevent the person from progressing. However in the Martial Arts, one block nothing the whole: one nothing but does, if you want, sweep the thing so that the thing does not come on oneself. Therefore, I would call this movement a sweeping, but that cannot be a blocking: moreover to sweep something does not consist in striking like rough. On the contrary, it is done with speed, speed can be, but in flexibility, not with some force. But why everyone make that with some force? Because one understood nothing, one repeats systematically, automatically the thing without anything to understand. I think that if one understood what one teaches us, there would be a little blooming, of self-knowledge or of self-control. Until now, one preaches the self-knowledge, the self-control without to give the means of them.

A&C: Presently, did you say to me to arrive at the Self-control, there are several steeps?

M.M.: Yes, indeed; would be only to turn its sugar in a cup. It is already necessary to understand what a spoon, power to seize the spoon is, and to be able to turn the spoon if not you could not sweeten your coffee. Thus the stages, with regard to our body, it is already to understand our body through oneself and not through our Master, because our body belongs to us into clean: our flexibility, our muscles, all belongs to us, one is single: we cannot adopt the same position as our Master, to have the same flexibility as our Master. All that is impossible: Thus self-knowledge initially, the true one, not that of our Master nor of our former Masters and the Understanding of oneself. I insist on the Understanding of oneself, because knowledge is a thing: knowledge is close to everyone, it is enough to learn and one knows. But to understand, it is other thing; I quote you an example: you can know 1000 people, but without anything to understand with the person.

There are always conflicts between parents and children: Why? Because they do not know each other. Do the parents know the children since they were born, but are what really they know their children? Do the children know the parents? They know them, yes, but they are not understood. Thus in the life, whether martial, social or religious Understanding is essential, it is the most important key.

A&C: Should its body initially be understood?

M.M.: To understands its body: if his body is not understood, one cannot open out his body.

A&C: Are the techniques important?

M.M.: The techniques do not have any importance: only image; even when it gets dressed, it is looked in the ice and especially it wonders: “Is what I am beautiful?” whereas it should wonder itself: “Am I this feel well?” Thus it always needs image: it takes a position, it asks its Master: Is my position right? Is my technique right? But it never raises the question: Is what I feel well in this position? It is the fact of feeling well which brings the self-control. In fact the self-control, it is as when you sat: you eat, you discuss; there is the self-control, because you do not need more to make efforts. The true self-control, it is when you do not need more to make efforts, you do not need to contain you. In fact the self-control is in oneself: when you walk, you do not need Master to say to you if you walk just well or not.

When you make a Zen-kutsu or a Ko-kutsu, no matter the names, that should be as when you walk: one need a Master to say to you that it is necessary to take a step of one meter twenty that your foot postpones is with 45 degrees. Is there anyone in the world which says to you that your step is bad because the spacing of your feet is lower than the spacing of your hips? And you are very well: here is the self-control. The man, not having understood yet that, invented techniques. Such Master having received a technique A does not feel at ease; as it did not understand anything, it will create a technique B. And a student of the technique B, not having still understood anything, feeling badly at ease, will find in a technique C something of better. And so on. Where as the technique imports? It is the feeling which is paramount. It is the feeling and the understanding of what one does which is important. It is not the image. The human being saw it.

A&C: Being young, you often tested your efficacy in competition on K.O.?

M.M.: Yes, I had a certain reputation, founded or not: for a tiny weight like mine, I did not « move a world badly », whether it is with my kicks or my punches. People were very astonished and I remember of a great man, Dominique Valera, who came to tell me “Michael, what a punch you have! How is that done ? ”

A&C: Did you speak about an anecdote presently in connection with a May Geri and  an Oi-Tsuki?

M.M.: Yes, I said that I had never seen a basic technique in competition, a May Geri or an Oi-Tsuki. Therefore, I bet with my students that with the championship of France, I will use these two techniques. I held my bet: I obtained two K.O. with an Oi-Tsuki to the body and a May Geri. The technique does not have importance when it was understood how to use his body in a natural way. If you are prisoner of a yoke, you will not be able to open out you fully.

A&C: Another anecdote: a push against an adversary who weighs over than 200 lbs?

M.M.: Yes, I do it with each demonstration or each training course. I choose in the assistance the person more strapping man, 100 kgs or more. I ask him to take a strong position (in general, they take all Zen-Kutzu) and to take my belt; then I ask him to push me. The person does not arrive there, even if I am held on one leg. Then I push it in my turn and I leave it the carpet, although I do 120 lbs: it is not a question of strength. On the other hand I would not arrive there against a beginner.

A&C: Why?

M.M. : Because he uses his legs : he really pushes on his back leg which is used to him as support, contrary with a practitioner of Martial Arts who poses his leg on the ground ; it does not feel the feeling of the foot of support. Moreover, it pushes me while making use only of its arms. When it pushes me, it pushes itself. It is similar when I give a punch: the force comes from all my body; the arm is only used to transmit the movement.

A&C: Have you any kata in Khido?

M.M.: No, there is not. A kata, it is choreography: the whole, it is of living what you do. When I ask a student why it carries out such movement in a kata, it is unaware of it. The Khido, it is the life: be in harmony with yourself. If I ask you why you make such or such movement; give me an answer: because I feel it thus. The machine should be left.

A&C: What do you think  about the work of the internal energy?

M.M.: This is very well, because they are natural things, starting with breathing.

When you make an effort and you block breathing, it is not natural. They all are simple things that it is necessary to demystify. The animals live very well without knowing the work of energy as long as they are not domesticated. Einstein said that the human being is the animal easiest to domesticate. As soon as one is domesticated, conditioned, one loses his means.

I respect any conditioning: one cannot live without, but that it is only one conditioning, it should be known is not an absolute value. The human being rests on conventions, but it is mistaken: it is sincere in his error, but it cannot open out. No self-knowledge, no Self-Control.

 A&C: What do you think about the competition?

M.M.: It is only a game; it is to make an alleged fight. One should not confuse competition with a fight: a competition supposes rules; in a fight, his life is risked. A champion should not be caught with the serious one: if it is found taken in a true fight in the street, for example, all will be different. Being young, I was myself a competitor and a fighter street: I can say that there is an enormous gap between the competition and reality, that to you does not have anything to see.

A&C: In connection with the effectiveness?

M.M.: If you ask a karateka to choose two effective techniques, it will take a Gyaku-Tsuki (punch in against) and a Mawashi-Gueri (circular kick). Why? with a Gyaku-Tsuki, one does not need to control displacement. However one does not learn how to us to control the movement.

Why a Mawashi-Gueri? Because the blow badly given can hurt one does not estimate the distance well. The other techniques require a good estimate of the distance compared to the point of impact to be effective: before or afterwards, that does not go.

Take the example of a side kick on a breakage of boards in demonstration: the executants will take his distance.  If the distance changes because the partners move back, the blow will be ineffective. So facing a moving target, one loses 80% of his efficiency. In more if the person who takes the kick advances, that which gives the kick will fall. On a punch with the body, while advancing, one can twist the wrist of the adversary. All that because the person who striking is strong only at one exact time, that of the point of impact!

A&C: What do you think about the boxe?

M.M.: It is already more natural than the Martial Arts, the circular techniques are natural movements. Boxing is not a competition, it is a regulated battle and there are sometimes deaths on the boxing ring. However even the boxers make use too much of their arms, they do not feel enough their fists.

A&C: Which difference make you beetween the Master and the Expert?

M.M.: When you are an expert, you are not a Master of Martial Arts: actually, art, the technique became your Masters, you do not sometimes happen more at you to escape from it. The technical control has nothing to do with the self-control: at the time of the last Olympic Games, one saw a champion Taekwondo to hurt a referee.

A&C: How could you define the Self-Control?

M.M.: Through the Control of its body: oneself, it is the body. One says sometimes: The body, it is the past; any repetition takes a power on us. One says well: a leopard cannot change its spots; in fact, it is not natural, it is conditioning.

Thus to arrive at the Self-Control, it is necessary to be reconditioned or manage to understand its conditioning.                                                        The Technique will be your Master.

TO FOLLOW…

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