Francesco Pandolfi is a Wing Chun Master and a Self-Defense trainer with more than a 20 years long experience. In 2010 he was invited to a talk show, broadcasted by a regional network in Sardinia, Italy, where he lives and teaches in several courses. This experience originally was intended to share his thoughts about violence against women, gender inequalities, and bullying. Very soon the clip has been ripped, dubbed and re-edited in a plethora of versions, all posted on YouTube. Some of those clips are funny, some other are offensive. In any case, Francesco turned out to be a kind of YouTuber, with more than 40M visualizations.
Master Pandolfi recently published a book “Uscire dalla violenza si può” (“You can get out from violence”). It is an interesting contribution to the macro-topic of the self-defense and helps to appreciate the qualities of the Author.
The book ends with a touching autobiographic chapter in which Francesco tells how he felt when he realized to be famous on the social networks, just because people laughed at him. How he felt powerless -he, the master- against a subtle, pervasive kind of cyber-bullying. How this affected his practice, risking to expose to the same mockery his students, especially younger ones.
But the chapter reveals the inner force that a sincere practice can provide when needed. So Francesco tells how he transformed this pain into a greater opportunity. Do the people want to laugh? Ok, I, the Master, will be the first to give people something they want. So Francesco became able to laugh about himself. A great demonstration of the capability of flexibility that is the core of Martial Arts.
The result is that today Francesco Pandolfi is again the main character of a very humouristic clip on YouTube.
The book offers a rich amount of different perspective on the topic of the violence against women: psychologists, investigators, prosecutors, lawyers, interviews with victims… All these contributions help to form a mosaic that reveals how rich is the experience of the Author.
A wide section of self-defense techniques explained with pictures is provided too.
Balancing, relaxation, grounding, timing…All these principles that are familiar to any Aikidoka (any Martial Artist) are well explained.
A book that stresses how the violence against women is unfortunately still a problem in our society and how self-defense, as an ultimate resource, may help but, as the Author clearly states, an accurate prevention could remove, starting teaching strong values beginning from the kids classes, through Martial Arts.
So, good job, Master and thank you!