Blog #11 Self Preservation vs Self Perfection
Self-Preservation vs. Self-Perfection My teacher, Sifu Ralph Mitchell, used to speak about two primary components of the martial arts: self-preservation and self-perfection. I have carried those words with me for most of my adult life, and as I get older, I understand them differently than I did when I first heard them. Self-perfection is, obviously, the pursuit of perfecting oneself. I think of the old story of the Japanese woodworker and his apprentice. The master continually sends the apprentice back to sand the same piece of wood. Eventually the frustrated apprentice asks, “Master, we have sanded this for years. When will it finally be finished?” The master replies, “It will never be finished.” That is self-perfection. You take a technique and refine it over and over again—not simply to make it more effective, but to make it part of yourself. Eventually, the movement can become so refined that it hardly resembles an act of violence at all. There is no unnecessary tension, aggression, or malicious intent. There is simply movement. Yet underneath that refinement remains the ability to use the technique decisively should circumstances demand it. Self-Preservation Self-preservation is different. Self-preservation is concerned with keeping you alive and safe. It develops awareness of your surroundings. It teaches you to recognize danger, remain alert, protect yourself and continue functioning when confronted with violence or malicious intent. These techniques are often direct. They don’t necessarily require decades of refinement before they become useful. Their first responsibility is effectiveness. Someone trying to hurt you doesn’t particularly care how beautiful your technique is. Self-preservation asks a simpler question: Can you protect yourself? But within all good martial arts, I believe there are elements of both. An art such as Aikido can become highly oriented toward self-perfection, depending upon how it is practiced. Much of modern Tai Chi has also moved in this direction, although historically Tai Chi & Aikido contain very real elements of both preservation and perfection. On the other side are systems such as Krav Maga and other combat-oriented methods, where self-preservation is much more prominent. Depending on your goals and time in life will determine where you put your energy. In Chinese Medicine they say your” Yi leads your Chi” which translates to your intention leads your energy. So it is our choice where we put our intention. At different times in my life i have put my Yi towards one more heavily than the other. This is the beauty of martial art. Walking Into Sifu Ralph’s School I walked into Sifu Ralph Mitchell’s school when I was seventeen years old. What amazed me was how visceral both sides (self preservation & self perfection) were represented in that room. One day you might walk in and Sifu Ralph would be shadowboxing with his mouthpiece in. “Get your gear on.” You knew exactly what kind of night it was going to be. Then another day you might walk through the same door and find him practicing a subtle sensitivity or flow drill. He might show you a movement and explain that developing it could take the rest of your life. That contrast made an enormous impression on me. There was something there for the young man who needed to learn how to fight. But there was also something waiting for the older man he would eventually become. I don’t think I fully appreciated that at seventeen. I do now. When the Martial Artist Ages As martial artists close to 50 , hopefully we spend enough time in rooms that challenge our ability to preserve ourselves. We spar. We grapple. We get hit. We get thrown. We become exhausted and frightened and uncomfortable. We learn what happens when someone is genuinely trying to impose their will upon us. Those experiences are important. But if we are fortunate enough to continue practicing for decades, something begins to change. Age arrives. Athleticism changes. Strength changes. Injuries accumulate. Sometimes illness enters our lives. Things our bodies once did easily require more patience and intelligence. And suddenly the self-perfection side of the martial arts becomes increasingly meaningful. The question is no longer simply: Can I make this technique work? It becomes: How deeply can I understand this technique? Can I remove unnecessary effort? Can I feel rather than force? Can I become more precise? Can I continue refining something I have practiced thousands of times? Can my Ego handle this transition? The martial arts become less about adding and more about removing. Yet I still enjoy occasionally reaching back and touching that self-preservation side of myself. It feels good to flex that muscle. It reminds you that underneath the refinement there is still something very real to develop. The Dharma of the Warrior There is another way I have come to understand this. In the Indian tradition there is the concept of the Kshatriya, the warrior. Some people seem to be born with a natural inclination toward this path. They are drawn toward challenge, discipline, protection, physical practice and the testing of themselves. In that sense, I think many lifelong martial artists recognize something of the Kshatriya within themselves. This may help explain something that can appear strange to people outside the martial arts. Walk into almost any martial arts school and you will find people practicing pugilistic arts—striking each other, choking each other, throwing each other, practicing methods originally designed for combat. And somehow, through doing this, they become peaceful. They leave calmer than when they arrived. There is something beautiful about witnessing that. The Indian yogic tradition also gives us the concept of dharma—a word that can encompass duty, path, law and right action. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna teaches Arjuna, himself a warrior, about the necessity of living according to one’s dharma and performing one’s duty without attachment to the fruits of one’s actions. That teaching has always resonated deeply with me. I recognize this dharma in my teacher. I recognize it in myself. And I recognize it in training partners whom I have known for decades. Of course, martial arts are only one aspect of a person’s dharma. We may simultaneously have the dharma of a father, mother, teacher, mentor, student, caregiver or friend. But for some of us, the martial path remains present through all of those chapters. The Art Is Never Finished Perhaps this is ultimately what Sifu Ralph was showing me all those years ago. Self-preservation teaches us how to survive. Self-perfection teaches us what to do with the years we are fortunate enough to survive. When we are young, we may be fascinated with what works. As we grow older, we begin to become fascinated with why it works, how little effort it can require, and how deeply it can be understood. Eventually the two pursuits begin to inform one another. Self-preservation gives substance to self-perfection. Self-perfection gives depth to self-preservation. And neither is ever truly completed. Like the old craftsman sanding the same piece of wood, we return to the technique again and again. A little less force. A little more sensitivity. A little more understanding. And then we return tomorrow and begin again.
Blog#10 Circles and Squares
Circles and squares are two shapes that have made a huge impact on my life. A circle represents smoothness, completness, togetherness, an infinite dance of continuous motion. In Japanese zen Buddhism it is known as a Enso. While at first glance, the enso symbol appears no more than a misshapen circle, it symbolizes many things: the beauty in imperfection, the art of letting go of expectations, the circle of life, and connection. The enso is a manifestation of the artist at the moment of creation and the acceptance of our innermost self. It symbolizes strength, elegance, and one-mindedness.
In Chinese thought this is the beginning of yin yang theory . A square on the other hand has a different feel , it is angular , sharp and defined. Some days I have more circle in me than square and other days have a truncated feel where i feel all the sharp angles of that life has to offer and teach. Im continually striving to find the circle and not the square. Be it on the Jiu Jitsu mats or in daily interactions within life. .
Blog#9 The art of Martial
Martial is defined as war, suited for war, war like, military acts. Art has many definitions, my favorite being an expression of the souls outward manifestation in this material world. So when I look at the words together “martial art” I see two words that are so beautifully suited to be next to each other. In Martial arts we can see the first word meaning war or warlike, when combined with the second word of art at first glance looks as if they do not belong together. But for a martial artist it is so clear that they must. If we look at martial art as a martial expression of ones uniqueness then it truly is an art form no different than music, painting or poetry. The medium for expression has just shifted from a canvas or instrument to where one is painting or creating music to a mat where you are working out and expressing your own uniqueness through some kind of combat scenario. Bruce Lee had an idea for martial art that was to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself. Meaning if you had a more aggressive nature, your martial art would express itself through that emotion. If you have a more passive personality then maybe your expression of your art will be more through a deeper understanding of the more philosophical aspects of Martial art. In BJJ you can feel someones personally as soon as you start rolling with them. You can feel what kind of day they are having if you consistently train with them. This is why sometimes BJJ practitioners will refer to the art as the “Truth” Non different from someone who wants to express their-self through music which has so many different genres. One of my teachers of yoga was a part of hardcore band and they expressed their version of spirituality through that medium of music which was fast and aggressive by many peoples musical standards. They were primarily singing about deep spiritual truths from a tradition that was thousands of years old. They were expressing themselves through in their own way and had something to create. In Martial arts we can express ourselves just like a musician, A famous Martial artist and fighter Huey Cambelin said “ eventually you start to realize that after years and years of throwing kicks and. punches, that you are no longer just throwing kicks and punches that you are really working out your spirt, this because its the spirts energy, everything is energy”
Blog#7 Mutual Wellbeing and Benefit
Jigoro Kano, the founder of the amazing Martial Art Judo, had two primary pillars that he rest his teachings on, one was maximum efficiency, minimal effort, and the other was on mutual well being and benefit. Both these concepts were revolutionary at the time and are still so important to the growth of the practitioner to help grow not just through martial skill but also as a human being. Mutual well being and benefit is such a powerful statement. It tells us how training should under the right circumstances be good for everyone involved. There can be this brotherhood/sisterhood that gets forged on the mats through a intense physical battle between two people trying to best one another on the mats through martial technique. Jiu Jitsu is often referred to as physical chess due to the strategic nature of the art. At a certain point in judos development jigoro Kano saw that people were getting boastful after winning a match and feeling deflated after loosing. I often reference his famous quote “ Do not let victory enthrall you, do not let defeat defeat you.. This sentiment is also echoed in the ancient yoga text the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna teachers Arjuna the concepts of the varied paths within the yoga tradition. there is a number of times in the GIta where this concept is put forth. In 2.14 and 2.15 we see that Krishna is giving Arjuna tools to see that to neither be too attacher to happiness or distress. 2.15 Arjun, noblest amongst men, that person who is not affected by happiness and distress, and remains steady in both, becomes eligible for liberation. In 2.14 he says the happiness and distress come and go like the winter and summer seasons and one must learn to tolerate them. This is the same sentiment that is echoed by Jigoro Kano. This is where mutual well being and benefit are so important. If I shift my perspective from winning or loosing to one of that my hope in this individual training session is to refine and hone my craft as well as my partners craft. How would that change my mindset every time I came to jiu jitsu? it may actually get me to train more frequently as if I train from a place of I always want to win and dominate then on days that i am injured or just tired i will pass on training because i will not be at my best. This subtle shift of perspective is one of the things that Jigoro Kano said about competition that saddened him in regards to Judo. He saw that there was a culture around the winning that he tried to change by effecting the people through his philosophical concept of Mutual Wellbeing and benefit.
Blog#6 Belts
The ranking system in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is very unique. In most arts your average practitioner will take 3 to 5 years to receive their belt. In BJJ the ten year mark seems to be the average, some will get it before and some will take a little longer but on the average one decade of consistent training in the art and you will achieve that goal. Rener Gracie is known for saying that 10% of people who start Jiu Jitsu will stay till blue belt and 1% of the 10 percent will stay for Black Belt. As of 2022 there were around 8,000 registered black belts. Now many of us are not registered so that number is significantly higher. When I look and I see someone wearing a black belt I really see someone who has a aptitude for discipline. Meaning that life is continually dropping pebbles in our pond and sometime they are rocks and on other occasions it is a boulder and the stress and anxiety waves that then come are distracting and powerful, because in the ten years it takes to receive that rank you, got the girlfriend/boyfriend, lost the GF/BF , you got married / divorced (or both) , you had a baby, lost a loved one, got the job, lost the job, got injured, ect…… the list goes on and on. So many things happen over the course of a decade, but this person kept coming through all of it. In Yoga we call this abyasa and viragya. Two things that are required for the practice. abyasa meaning prolonged uninterrupted practice and viragya meaning dispassion (meaning coming to work at something even when you dont want to). My father is a black belt in Judo. He received his black belt from the Kodakan in Tokyo Japan in 1966. He had trained for about 4 years under Mr. Shina in NY. When i received my brown belt in jiu jitsu my father called Mr.Shina and told him and Mr. Shina’s responce was “oh very good, that is like Ni Dan (second degree black belt) in Judo. I never forgot that because he was correct in relation to time and skill acquired. In any endeavor I undertake im always comparing myself in the bjj ranking system. One of my first martial arts teachers had a great saying he would always say to the white belts, “the only difference between a white belt and a black belt is the black belt kept coming to class”
Blog#5 Hammers and Nails
One of my students sent me a video with Jocko (former navy seal and Bjj expert). He was finishing up rolling and he said a very worn but truthful statement in the Bjj community, ‘sometimes your the hammer and sometimes you are the nail, today I was the nail, Both are needed for building'“. that last little bit I had not heard before and to me took the statement from a negative and added a powerful positive spin on it.. Similarly I have recently heard the full saying of William Shakespeare, “jack of all trades master of none, but sometimes is better than a master of one”. Both of these are statements that had a perceived negative component but when looked at holistically feel very different to me. With Jocko’s statement of both the hammer and the nail needed for building, it left me feeling extremely optimistic about the days in training where you are struggling to express your best Jiu Jitsu, there are just some days on the mat where nothing is going right, and things are breaking down fast, after practicing this art for 23 years I realize that no one roll will dictate my worth within my overall journey through this art, and even the days that are a struggle those days may actually be helping me build the foundation that my future game will rest on , similarly when two pieces of wood are joined together by a nail you now have a structure that can hold weight like in framing a wall . This understanding can then penetrate into my life where perceived difficult times where one feels like the hammer is coming down on you may at the time feel incredibly opressive may be the very thing that creates the joint and provide the stucture to move forward through a difficult situation.
Just Train
M
Blog#4 Sempie / SiHing
In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu we tend not to talk about certain things that are stressed in other martial arts, BJJ tends to be more progressive and looks down on traditional martial arts culture. I do see that the benefit in letting some of the old ways die off as BJJ has a unique culture on to itself, but for me i feel a strong connection to the traditional arts. There is the concept of Sempie in Japanese or Si Hing in cantonese, these essentially mean the same thing, meaning older training brother or senior person, I didn’t really appreciate this until I got into my 40s and I had people around me who started before me and approach martial arts in a similar way as I do.. For me this person is Nardu Debrah. He is both SI hing. and Sempie haha. We have had a deep connection through various martial arts for the past 25 years. In many ways Nardu is also one of my teachers, the impact that he has had on me as a practitioner is up their with any of my long time teachers. In many ways to have a senior who is always refining grants you greater access to technique that may not be available to you otherwise. Its also does something wonderful for the ego which is when you put them in a position of honor and not in a position of envy or competition you learn lessons in humility and let go of a self induced battle with your own ego. You open the flood gates to knowledge because that respect will flow both ways. There is nuance here that the si hing must be of good moral character and understand their role. The senior person when they step into this role must be secure enough to hold that space for the junior man without it effecting their ego. Si hing, sempie, or senior it is all the same, as my time in the arts continues I have had the pleasure to be both the senior man and the junior man, these rolls continue today. Its not that one day you stop having access to them, their teachings continue even after you are not around them as much.. I know that whenever I have a question Nardu is their for me, sometimes you need the teacher to provide the information but the Si Hing to give you the depth of knowledge to process it
Blog #3 Training Through Injury
Training through injury can be the most difficulty thing one can do. You finally find a solid groove in your training and then with the injury coming about we feel derailed, sometimes even questioning if we should continue Brazilian jiu jitsu. This is natural and quite common. I know personally my mind want to go to the extreme and think that this injury is forever. When I was a white belt I read an article by Royler Gracie in which he recommended finding what you could do with your body in regards to BJJ. So if you injure your neck, doing leg lock drills would be something you could work on, If your arm is injured, roll with one arm. I know once i injured my right knee pretty bad and for the next six weeks I repped gi chokes only as my knee healed. Now what came from this was very interesting, I thought that once my knee was better i would be gi choking everyone. This was not the case. Two years later though the gi chokes became a huge part of my game. I have always attributed the time in which i spent repping the gi chokes while my knee was healing the very thing that made the gi chokes come alive for me. Every time i have had an injury i follow Royler’s methodology and it always seems to eventually make a huge shift in my game. Even if it doesn’t directly impact my game in the short term, what it does for my mental health is huge.
Blog #2 More Yoga Than Yoga
Jiu Jitsu is more yoga than yoga. This is something I say often, the reason why this is a deep truth for me is because there is a deep philosophy found in all yoga traditions known as Viragya. Viragya means dispassion. I always thought it was weird that to practice yoga you needed dispassion, I thought you would need the oposite of that, passion. My teacher explained to me that passion fades, so if you are relying on passion eventually you will get bored with your endeavor and eventually loose interest and stop. The concept of dispassion is a more long term commitment to your chosen craft. You will endure even when the novelty of your newly found path fades. You can find this concept in all of the various traditions of yoga. Yoga like martial arts has many styles. In each of these systems there is a weight placed on two specific words, Abyasa meaning prolonged uninterrupted practice and Viragya. Within Brazilian Jiu Jitsu you have so many practitioners in every school who train multiple times a week for decades at a time. Sometimes people go through periods where they train multiple times in one day. At each belt rank you receive it is a showing of both your abyasa and viragya. When you see a black belt what i see is a person who understands the depths of abyasa and viragya.
Blog #1 Just Train
It all begins with an idea.
Just Train! This is a mantra I use often. It is something that is said a lot in some of the circles I travel in amongst people who derive benefit from training in the martial arts. If in your head you have this simple mantra of “just train” it takes away the 100 excuses your brain will give you to not train. Now some of these excuses may be sound and have validity. Many of them will not though, and this is where this will come in to help you get out there and train when you may not have. I always feel better after I have given time to this craft, my mind and body more unified and settled. So when life gets hard just train, when you break up with the love of your life, just train. When you are injured, just train (safely haha). When your mind wont and cant shut off, Just Train. This simple mantra has got me on the mats so many times when i probably would not have. I hope this gets you out there and improving yourself during the tough times.