Innovation
As some of you may already know, each movement of karate is directed to pressure points of the body to subdue an attacker. This formerly secret knowledge has been brought to the public's attention, en masse, by my teacher George Dillman (www.dillman.com). This knowledge is several hundred years old, dating back as far 750 years ago, as far as we can tell. Just when we thought we had seen it all, someone does some research and comes up with something truly innovative. There is a black belt in DKI (Dillman Karate International) that has been hard of hearing since birth. He has taken the same movements used for signing and has developed them into pressure point self defense that he calls Martial Signing. Sign Language is a relatively new language and Matt Hayat has brought this information to the deaf and hard of hearing community to help them with defending themselves. He is a bit of a celebrity in that community for his work and research. It takes a lot of dedication, commitment, and love to be able to develop something like this and the first time I saw this I was amazed that he applied the ancient science of pressure points to the relatively new language of signing. Hats off to Matt for truly being an innovator, not only in the hearing impaired community, but anyone interested in self defense regardless of race, creed, color, or handicap. |
