Tonight, while you sleep your deepest sleep, 100 black-clad figures gather in meditation. Their mantra fills the air around their clandestine mountain retreat and contrasts with the hiss of their controlled breathing.

They prepare for their upcoming mission by believing they are turning into tigers; by force of will, they drift into a different phase of being.

Their breathing becomes deeper, and they count backward from nine to one, mentally taking a step down an imaginary flight of stairs with each number. They control their inner voices and bring what they call their “five minds” into a single point of focus.

Their preparations complete, they arm themselves with shuriken, garrotes, knives, and crossbows.

Then they depart, their destination a guarded building nestled in a valley miles away. There, a dozen of them scale the walls meant to protect the inner compound. In silence, they make their way past sentry after sentry, finally coming to a small room guarded by still more sentries.

With those guardians looking almost directly at them, they steal documents of great value and return, completely undetected, to their retreat.

Is this a fantasy of Tibetan monks raiding a neighboring monastery in ancient times? Perhaps a script for a new martial arts thriller?

No, this drill actually takes place somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, and the participants are 100-percent American boys who once volunteered for the Green Berets.

But these hardy souls weren’t quite satisfied with the tortuous training they’d already received. They wanted more. They were aware that the art of guerrilla warfare had once again become the world’s most popular game, and they wanted to be the very best in a contest in which you either took first place or died.

So they volunteered — again — for this special school operated under the supervision of one Michael D. Echanis, a former Green Beret himself.

Not everyone who volunteered made it. In fact, nearly half quit within 24 hours. “I don’t have much time to get these men ready,” Echanis states, “so I push them right from the start. At the end of the first day, I sit them down and tell them they can get out if they want to.”

But few leave at that point; the ones who are going to quit have already been scared away. “By lunch, I will lose about 10 out of every 25 volunteers,” he says.

There’s a good reason for that.

Ancient Military Methods Become Modern

As you may have guessed, this is not a normal military training center. Echanis has been given permission by our military to instruct a portion of our fighting forces in the ancient ways of hwa rang do.

More precisely, he shows them the secrets of the sul sa, the “magical” technicians of hwa rang do whose prime counterparts in Asia long ago were the famed ninja of Japan.

The ninja and sul sa were regarded as almost superhuman. They could dislocate joints to slip out of knots. They could scale walls. They could walk on water — using special boat-like shoes. And it was said they could make themselves invisible. All these things, combined with supreme empty-hand and weapons techniques, made them invaluable to the warlords of the day.

The art originated in Korea when the Hwarang warriors came into being in the old kingdom of Silla, located at the southeast tip of the peninsula. Silla was being harassed by its larger neighbor to the north, the kingdom of Koguryo.

Koguryo had almost finished swallowing the kingdom of Paekche and was eyeing Silla. In response, Silla united internally and created one of the premier fighting forces of its day: the Hwarang. From 661 to 935, these warriors expanded Silla’s territory until it covered more than the current geographical area of Korea.

Later, martial arts fell into disrepute in Korea, leading to the banishment of warriors. Some of them took refuge in Buddhist temples, where the art was preserved.

In the past several decades, with a worldwide renaissance of the fighting arts and a heightened interest in guerrilla warfare, hwa rang do began to be publicly taught in Korea. It later found its way to the United States.

Search for a Warrior’s Art

One person to whom the teachings fell was Michael Echanis.

Today, he credits all his skills to his mentor Joo Bang Lee, who was instrumental in introducing the art to America and who periodically tutors Echanis on the “inside” aspects of it. Although Echanis has studied judo since the age of 4 and later got involved with taekwondo in Korea and Vietnam, he kept searching.

When he discovered hwa rang do five years ago, he was ecstatic. “I had finally found a martial art that combined everything necessary to make a man a modern-day warrior,” he says.

Echanis’ experiences in the 75th Ranger Battalion during the Vietnam War made him wish more than once for such a system. Although given the best military training available, our Special Forces still had much to learn.

Using the knowledge embodied within hwa rang do, Echanis developed a new concept of training that would ensure our men would know all they needed to know before going into action.

Naturally, American military leaders didn’t accept his theories the first moment he mentioned them. Teaching ancient Asian philosophy to combat soldiers is not the easiest idea to sell. Echanis had to prove the benefits of his system.

He did that by demonstrating the physical effects of the ki power he’d developed as a result of his own training. He let cars run over him. He hung 25 pounds from a needle piercing his neck. He moved a volunteer 15 feet with his 1-inch punch. He demonstrated his kicking, punching, and weapons skills.

The generals were impressed.

They gave him an assignment that involved teaching a series of three-week classes for the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The results were so impressive that Echanis was catapulted into military prominence.

Rangers, SEALs, and other commandos became interested in his teaching. He was asked to prepare a series of manuals on hand-to-hand combat, the first such texts to be produced since World War II.

“The first week is like hell week,” Echanis says. “The idea is to put these guys in the right frame of mind. We begin at 6 o’clock in the morning. I give them an introduction to the martial arts in relationship to each of them as a soldier, as a warrior. I don’t care if the men have had previous martial arts training or not. I start them all over again.”

Those who have studied the martial arts are shocked to learn how out of shape they still are. “They might have been in shape for normal living but not for combat,” Echanis says.

Civilian hwa rang do, like other martial arts, can be taken simply for physical and mental development. Echanis’ special version of sul sa training is different. The difference is not just in orientation; it’s also a difference in intensity.

Accelerated Learning

Echanis has only a few weeks to get his people in shape, so he’s created a martial arts boot camp. “It’s tough,” he says. “We do anywhere from 250 to 500 knuckle push-ups a day. Then we do another 100 on our wrists. We do somewhere between 250 and 500 sit-ups a day. I run them to tunnels with water, run them through those back and forth. We then do our basic techniques. Then we do the same till lunch. After lunch, back to the same.”

Some of his training methods are almost straight out of pro football. “I use a system of physical harassment,” Echanis says with a straight face. “I say, give me 30 push-ups, give me 50. Always give me more.”

Some of his methods are not so familiar. At the beginning of each session, Echanis does something very Eastern. He puts all his students into a frame of mind that will let them comprehend and retain all they’re about to be shown.

He won’t use the word “hypnotize,” but it does pop into one’s mind. In any event, it works. Shown a perfect technique once or twice, the student is so free of doubt that he can mimic that perfection with only a few tries. Then he retains it in permanent memory.

Obviously, all this is for more than just trophies for the dojo window. “We are not interested in the sport thing, tournaments and things like that,” Echanis says. “Our main concern is survival in combat. My goal is to develop a modern American warrior who can survive when he is called upon to protect his country.”

He goes on to talk about his manuals and his courses. “This will be the most sophisticated approach to hand-to-hand combat, knife fighting, sentry stalking, hypnosis for combat, defense against armed attack, riot control, mind control, breath control, acupressure massage, standard punching and kicking techniques, throwing, joint locks, choking and neck-breaking techniques…and the development of ki power for use in the field.”

To teach all the above in 21 days is quite a task, but Echanis has devised a way. “I’ve got this guy for three weeks, and I have to turn him into a fighter,” he begins. “I have to put him in a crash program, eliminate the nonessentials. Take an Olympic judo champion. He may know 50 takedowns, but he’ll use only two or three which relate to his body structure and mind.”

He continues: “I don’t teach the whole art. I take out what specifically applies to my situation.”

So Echanis simplifies, then adds intensity. “Sometimes by the second week, I have these men 24 hours a day,” he says. “We practice, eat, sleep and go out on operations together. Ours is a mountain-training situation. Isolated within my environment, I’m controlling the psychological aspects. I’m stimulating these men constantly, day in and day out.”

And though Echanis feels that empty-hand techniques are important, he stresses armed combat. “I can take a black-belt martial artist and a person with no previous training,” he says. “I could train the black belt for two weeks at unarmed hand-to-hand combat and the other guy two weeks at knife fighting. Put them together in a combat situation, and there’s no doubt about which man to choose. You’ll have to take the man with the knife. The weapon in a trained hand makes the difference.”

Life and Death

Up to this point, one gets the picture of a Marine Corps boot camp carried to body-breaking extremes.

Then comes the hint of more. After the first day, most dropouts are not quitters, Echanis says. They retire from injury. Try getting up at 2 a.m. and free-sparring full contact until breakfast — every night. Get used to not sleeping, for the predawn hours are when most people are least alert. Put on your fatigues after a night on the town, drunk and dead tired, and practice knife fighting for five hours. Try staying alive through the training. It is, put in the simplest terms, dangerous.

And, of course, you have the techniques of hwa rang do, which you thought only other ancient warriors like the ninja could perform. One of those demanding techniques is called un shin bop, the art of “invisibility” or concealment.

In ancient days, there were two reasons that warlords had their special forces study concealment. One was for gathering intelligence; the other was for eliminating key personnel. Echanis teaches un shin bop for both those reasons but has added guerrilla-warfare training as part of the overall operational skills his men must have.

Naturally, the ability to conceal oneself until the final moment is vital to the success of an operation — and vital to survival. Echanis stresses that in today’s military, the ultimate goal is survival, not the completion of an operation.

He wants his men to come back alive. Then they can succeed time after time, instead of wasting their lives on a one-shot chance at success. Mastery of the techniques of concealment help them accomplish this goal.

How to Be a Tree

He starts by teaching the basics: “Concealment. Use what you’ve got. Look for depth and density of shadow. If you’re looking below a building offset from the ground, it looks like you’re looking into a cave at night. That is where I would conceal myself.”

He thinks a moment. “Try to complement light shadows instead of contrasting them. If you have to be by a wall with horizontal brickwork, don’t stand vertically. In a tree, try to look like a tree. In open spaces, fold up like a rock. Between buildings, look like a connecting pipe.”

More than simple body posture, there are the elements of clothing and disguise. If one of his warriors needs to pose alongside a featureless white wall, he does not present himself as a black-garbed man. He uses a reversible piece of cloth he has brought with him and holds up a white square in front of him as he moves.

No man-like silhouette, no man.

Yet if that were all it took to become a guerrilla, we would all be hiding in trees tomorrow. The most important part is more difficult, Echanis says. It’s the part that the meditation and the mantras are about. It teaches men how to control their own thoughts — as well as the thoughts of others.

First, there is mind conditioning. Echanis’ approach is a mixture of modern psychological principles and ancient Zen Buddhist concepts. In many ways, his teaching resembles the traditional training of samurai warriors.

“The samurai was taught to focus his mind on the activity to be done,” Echanis says. “He learned to be dispassionate about the operation, to coldly analyze the job and proceed in logical fashion to get it done.” So Echanis teaches his people to have control over their inner being.

“Clear your mind with a black image,” he commands his soldier/warriors. “Think black. That is the nothingness. If a man is just firing a handgun without thinking about it, he’s just doing it. But the moment he thinks, ‘I might miss,’ he’s lost his focus of concentration. He’s listening to a little voice that’s saying, ‘Can I or can’t I?’ And the answer will be, ‘I can’t.’”

Eyes Are the Mirror of the Mind

Yet there is more reason for inner control than simply the improvement of performance.

Echanis believes in the concept of “one mind,” which holds that all people share a sort of psychic oneness. In action, that translates into the fact that the sentry you are stalking can — if you are in a normal state of mind — feel you before he sees you.

It’s like when you stare at the back of a person’s neck and they turn around. They’ve felt something.

“There’s the thing of emotional projection,” Echanis says. “I come into this room, and I don’t feel good. You’ll get bad vibes as soon as you feel me. What I tell my people is to freeze the feeling point, which we say is at the tip of the sternum. When I freeze myself, I keep you from getting any vibration. It’s a feeling like my entire body is ice.”

In addition to keeping one’s emotional content inside, Echanis says it’s important not to look at the “centers” of an opponent’s awareness — like his head, back or the center of his body. “Look at your target’s arms or leg. Don’t look at his eyes — even from the side — until the last second.”

The eyes play another role in Echanis’ training: “You can create a freeze in a person by locking onto him with your eyes for a split second. You walk up to a person, not looking at him. Suddenly, you look up intently at him. As [your] eyes make contact, he looks at [you]. At that split second, as he is looking at [you] and his body is frozen, that is when [you should] hit him.”

Adding the power of suggestion, you gain even more control over him. “You can talk smoothly, go into a monotone,” Echanis says. “Use body language — the way you stand, little gestures — to appear relaxed. And use the eyes. The eyes are the mirrors of the mind. [You] can project with [your] eyes: ‘No, I’m not going to stab or attack you.’ Then do it. If you’re totally relaxed in eyes, body and voice, it will not occur to the other person that you are ready to move on him.”

Physical and Mental

After reading the details of Echanis’ training methods, you might think the people who volunteer for such an assignment would be true gorillas — strong backs and weak minds.

But the reverse is true.

Only the most intelligent, most sensitive people can make the mind-control methods actually work. So there is the problem of desensitizing the volunteers so they can use their skills without hesitation.

One exercise for this sounds like something straight out of Tim Leary’s commune textbook. “We do alpha exercises,” Echanis says. “A person relaxes until he is in what we call a good alpha. We then have him read a paper that suggests he put himself into the frame of mind of a tiger day after day. In time, he is no longer in the frame of mind of a man. He will actually visualize himself as a tiger.” And with other exercises, he also learns to think of his opponent as something other than a man, he adds.

Yet desensitization is less of a problem once Echanis’ troops hit the beach. “Americans are probably the most violent when it comes to combat,” he says. “Take you out of this environment and put you into a war with your intelligence and your old pioneer spirit, and you will become desensitized in a very short time. Your ingenuity will come out. This is what makes the American soldier so unique — his ability to adapt.”

Michael Echanis has certainly proved that last point. The American soldier is perfectly capable of taking an ancient Korean fighting style and turning it into the most effective system of combat in the modern world.

If the Hwarang had known what would become of their art in the centuries ahead, they no doubt would have been pleased.

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