Adam Mitchell [00:00:00]:
I think we can all agree that there's no shortage in the arts of the Takamatsu-den , as it's called often. There's no shortage of weak, poor, and even lazy and irresponsible demonstrations of this art throughout the Internet. Collectively, they the art for what it was meant to be. And, sadly, it dissolves the art for future generations. There's no preservation when it exists in an echo chamber of laughter and humiliation. In this episode, I wanna talk about the reasons behind that. I wanna talk about 4 specific things. And in this episode, I'm going to zoom into 1.
Adam Mitchell [00:00:37]:
They are leadership, teaching, discipline, and scrutiny. This episode, we're going to talk about the leadership of our art collectively, how it came to be what it is and how it's looked at throughout the martial arts community. And, again, this is just my own opinion, but I think I've got enough experience in this art to be able to sit on the bleachers and watch what's going on and to have a good opinion. Budo, as well, I want to offer some insights as to how we can think and how we can move forward and how we can collectively change the art. It's going to take courage. It's also going to take responsible people. It's going to take some work and, most importantly, your willingness to train and to do the work. I hope you enjoy this episode, and I hope that this not only inspires you to think about this art, but I also hope it serves as a call to arms for those of us, regardless of organization, regardless of teacher affiliation, to no longer accept laziness and the weak demonstration of such a powerful and historical art that we have the privilege to study and call our own.
Adam Mitchell [00:01:46]:
Welcome to Shugyo, reflections on the path to self mastery and forging the way. My name is Adam Mitchell. I'm your host fellow student along this path. There's no shortage of videos or content on the Internet that shows the martial arts that have come down from Takamatsu sensei that are anything but strong. So much of the videos, of that martial art, it's just saturated with weak training and an almost and oftentimes comical display of what's called or considered martial arts. And I really wanna talk to that. And I wanna talk about the damage that I feel it has created in our collective art. I really wanna speak to the effort that so many great people, so many incredible martial artists have put into this art and how all of that content that's out there front facing the Internet for the whole world to see really dissolves the work of many great people.
Adam Mitchell [00:02:44]:
Since 19 seventies and even before, it has just really broken down the work, the commitment, the preservation, and in even many ways, the the dignity of the art. I've never been one to stand for that, but I also am not one who shames other people publicly. So you're not gonna get any names in this episode. We're not even gonna talk about any organization. I'd like more than anything in this conversation for you to consider you. That conversation only happens between your own two ears. And I'd like you to really ask yourself, where do you fall in this spectrum of responsibility as a martial artist? And if you're someone who studies these arts, then I challenge you with this question. Now if you're somebody who studies a different martial art, then I hope to offer some points of reflection for your own self training and the role that you play, whether that be someone who's at a beginner level or someone who's quite experienced in the art that you study.
Adam Mitchell [00:03:39]:
Before we get started, though, I want to share with you that I've invited friend, colleague, and business arts, Peter Milano, into the conversation. Peter's been a martial artist for almost all of his life. Pete, you started when you were 10. Yep. And Peter has traveled probably about 20 times to Japan for a train.
Peter Milano [00:03:57]:
Probably. Yep.
Adam Mitchell [00:03:58]:
I wanna start off by last year. I was at a restaurant with my teacher, Manaka Sensei. And I asked him about his experience with Takamatsu Sensei, and his experience, and how it relates to the arts today. We had been sharing the dojo that week with some teachers and students from, fellow organization. What do you say, Pete? You were there too. It was almost a challenge to watch. It was a challenge to watch. Was it I mean, we'll just call it what it was.
Adam Mitchell [00:04:29]:
It really supported a later conversation with my teacher because I know that he had spent so much time committed and still to this day committed to his teacher. And while there's all this nonsense on the Internet about Manaka sensei breaking away, I mean, we know firsthand, Pete, we've had the conversations with Manaka Sensei. He is very, very respectful. Still to this day, shows a degree of dedication to his teacher. Absolutely. So when I had the conversation with Sensei sitting next to him and Nanzan, I asked him about his experience with Takamatsu. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have Peter on this, not just because I feel his, feedback is important and valuable, but also to validate what I'm saying, because he was there as well. And I certainly don't want to be someone who says something and get, you know, sort of alright.
Adam Mitchell [00:05:20]:
Well, hey, prove it. You know, we weren't there. We didn't hear it. I wanted to bring someone here. And because if I miss something about the conversation or if I color it differently, I'm gonna really ask Pete to lean in on that and and course correct here for all of you. Sensei's immediate point was he trusts Takamatsu. He trusted this man. He saw something in this man that was almost fatherly.
Adam Mitchell [00:05:44]:
There was a point that Sensei made that Takamatsu couldn't make it for reasons, that, you know, that were beyond his control into the military. There were physical reasons Sensei explained. As a result, he looked at Manaka Sensei, who was at the time a cadet, as sort of almost like in a in a fatherly manner, and hoping that he would fulfill what Takamatsu wanted in his own life. So there was sort of this vicariousness that he looked at Manaka Sensei with. And Sensei expressed that that was a unique relationship that he had that none of the other students had. Pete, would you say that's that's accurate and that's what you heard?
Peter Milano [00:06:22]:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Adam Mitchell [00:06:23]:
That doesn't necessarily mean that in any way Sensei suggested he was above anybody else. He was pointing out simply a feeling that he had in a relationship with the man. And as a result, it built a very unique sense of trust with, my teacher and his teacher's teacher. Maybe I shouldn't say fatherly. I mean, I shouldn't say, like, grandfatherly. That might be more accurate. I don't know. Those weren't those aren't certainly aren't Sensei's words.
Peter Milano [00:06:48]:
No. It was like, I I understand what you're trying to say. It's almost like a mentor to a mentee, that type of but deeper. He's fulfilling something that Takamatsu Sensei wasn't able to do, and he had admiration of that. So he approached Manaka sensei maybe a little bit differently than than the others because he saw that continuity, that vision still still having life with his budo.
Adam Mitchell [00:07:11]:
Yeah. He knew he felt secure that it would be fulfilled through him in in a military way. But I think that there was this sort of military thing that Takamatsu sensei the way that Manaka sensei at least explained it to us, what that meant to him. And as a result of that, that commitment has been carried forward in our organization, the Jinenkan. And it's why and we continue to call the art Jiseng kobudo. Where does this bring us in this conversation? It creates almost this recognition of differing points or methodologies of training and what does the outcome look like in the end. I wanna create a bit of a call to arts. And I wanna sort of challenge the community of our art to think just a little bit about what we are creating for the future, for the next generation of these artists.
Adam Mitchell [00:08:03]:
Because I feel, based on the hundreds of videos and all the content we see on the Internet, that not only has the art become a bit of a laughingstock, but as a result, it's going to completely disappear. It's going to morph into something that it was never meant to be. And not only do I feel a sense of responsibility to protect that, I feel a a bit of an offense to that. I don't want that taken. This is important to me. I don't wanna I'm not gonna get defensive and say I don't want this messed with. It's too important for us to let this happen. All of the instructors who go on to the Internet to put themselves out there, to position themselves with all these gold stripes on their belt and to give themselves the all the ranking and credentials so that they can capture the attention of the beginners and novices.
Adam Mitchell [00:08:55]:
You cannot lead if you cannot teach. So you can't be that leader if you don't have the capacity to teach. You cannot lead as a teacher if you cannot be willing to learn. Let me say that again. It's my firm belief that you cannot lead, So you cannot put yourself out there. You cannot be present. You cannot be trying to cultivate a community of followers for your dojo if you can't teach. And you cannot lead as a teacher if you aren't willing to actually keep learning and expanding.
Adam Mitchell [00:09:34]:
And you cannot learn without discipline. You cannot do that without discipline. And you cannot be disciplined without the scrutiny and guidance of another leader. I believe this is a pretty common sense life cycle of a teacher. But when we really rip it down to the most basic principles of your own self training. Are you doing the work? Are you actually working at this stuff? Pete, do you have anything before I go any further, though? Do you have anything to add there?
Peter Milano [00:10:09]:
I think it comes down to kind of reexamining why people wanna be in a leadership role and being teachers. If they're just doing it to out of vanity, their laurels, they're actually being disloyal to what the essence of what is being taught from from their teachers. Because if you cannot capture and teach that, the the essence of of a technique or a a philosophy in its simplest form to student and you're just doing jinenkan, henka, henka, because it looks cool, you're really just doing everyone a disservice.
Adam Mitchell [00:10:42]:
Henka is variation for those of you who don't know. Yeah. Just a variation of the technique.
Peter Milano [00:10:46]:
Because we know that there's in real life, there's unlimited amounts of Henka. You you're doing a disservice. You're you're wasting your time and your students' time and your teachers' time because when that's the focus of your transmission, the the core of it, the foundation, the building block that is gonna take a student to the next level in, like, internally and externally physically, internally with mindset and external, through their technique is lost. Yeah. And it just it's it's not fair.
Adam Mitchell [00:11:16]:
You said something interesting about the vanity thing, and I I wanna unpack that. Before I go there, though, I really just I I gotta say, you look at this art, the collective, I'm going to say. I'm not gonna say the art of Manaka sensei, but the collective of the arts that have come down from Takamatsu sensei. And if you do a simple YouTube search and you look at what rises to the top, what are the first ones that come up? Knees are not tracking over feet. Arms are hyperextending. Imbalance is being applied on the spine. There's so many fundamental movement errors that are being displayed and taught to students. And we we're not even gonna go into will that work on the street conversation.
Adam Mitchell [00:11:56]:
I don't really care about that. Is that technique effective? I don't care about that. I put a comment up recently of, a female martial artist. She was demonstrating a technique in the whole bullshido world, who call out everybody on the Internet and they shit talk everybody. They were really talking down to her. I actually appreciated the movement because it was contextual to the audience of students that she was doing this technique to. We will look at a kata in our martial art. There's a sword kata called Kasumi no ken.
Adam Mitchell [00:12:26]:
And this technique makes no sense. This technique, when you learn it, you're like, why am I sitting here spinning the opponent's sword 3 times before I cut like, nobody ever never in any sword fight ever was that movement done. But when your teacher explains it to you and you're willing to actually get broken down and to be to to receive the leadership from a teacher and the scrutiny and then have the discipline to go forward and do the hard training, then suddenly, you realize what the technique is for. Unfortunately, people just go forward with, like you said, Pete, that vanity. And they're not willing to actually go deep into each one of the kata, which sequentially lead from new to another to another. Not only are they containers of movement and not and not just time capsules of history, but also of tactics of, I'm not gonna that this that's beyond the scope of this conversation.
Peter Milano [00:13:18]:
Right.
Adam Mitchell [00:13:18]:
However, so many of these martial artists who are putting this content out there representing our collective art can't even do a full squat. They wouldn't even be able to do 5 push ups. I mean elbows in. I mean proper push ups. And not to say that is the measurement of a martial arts, because you and I have known some some incredible martial artists with special needs, some incredible martial artists that, you know, maybe they're very on in their age york whatever the reason is. But they are always pushing their physical, mental, and emotional threshold at least 10% further in each every single training session. They're not sitting there showboating. They're not saying, well, when I was in Japan, this happened as some nonsense excuse.
Adam Mitchell [00:13:59]:
But they're actually pushing themselves forward.
Peter Milano [00:14:01]:
It's a physical art. It is. There there are the academics as well. But while they're brilliant, if they don't have physical fundamental knowledge of the movements, etcetera, they can study history as much as they want. There's no way for them to fully understand it. You have to practice physically, and you have to practice mentally.
Adam Mitchell [00:14:18]:
You know, Pete, there's a photo on the Internet that's been circulating for well over 10 years. It's a it's a very famous photo of a Western student just doing a lunge punch at Hatsumi Sensei. Hatsumi Sensei, of course, basically just vaporizes with the punch and then reappears somewhere in his own very unique way. There's so many thousands and thousands of likes of this beautiful black and white image of this guy. However, when you look at the direction of his fist, his knee inward, his foot in a completely different angle than the knee, the back foot coming off the the blade of the back foot coming off the ground, and the elbow completely locked out because he's overreaching. Now to someone who doesn't know basic body mechanics, that's gonna look like a really cool photo. To some people, it may look like, man, I think the excuse I heard was that Hatsumi sensei put him there. And I'm like, no.
Adam Mitchell [00:15:11]:
No. That's not true. He put himself there. Because if you know that basic white belt lunge punch, you know the mistakes that are happening in that photo. And this is a really good example of the point that I'm trying to bring up here and that the discussion I'm trying to inspire with this episode is that those are beginner mistakes that are being accepted by the most advanced level students of this art. What then happens?
Peter Milano [00:15:40]:
It degrades it.
Adam Mitchell [00:15:41]:
It degrades it.
Peter Milano [00:15:41]:
It degrades it. And then they end up blocking punches with their head. Yeah. That's only what it what it comes down to. And they travel very far distances and spend a lot of money to do that. That's that's a disservice.
Adam Mitchell [00:15:53]:
Yeah. The blocking punches with the head thing is is literally what we saw. Pete's not saying I know that's kind
Peter Milano [00:15:58]:
of what Yeah. That's alright. It's like, yeah, guns
Adam Mitchell [00:16:00]:
are punched in the face. No. Actually, what these people were doing is they were being shown some kata where you drop the body and you head butt the oncoming punch. And we were all sitting there, kind of with our mouths wide open. But you're right. It's it's really unfair. Pete, I wanna go to this thing that you talked about. You you mentioned the vanity and people seeking vanity because it's so easy to get multiple black belts so long as you have a checkbook on hand.
Adam Mitchell [00:16:24]:
Sorry. It is what it is. Prove prove me wrong. But there are 3 things in this leadership, topic that really stood out to me. The first is that nobody saw the Internet coming. If we go back to the beginning of this whole thing, if we go back, like, to the 19 seventies eighties, nobody saw the Internet coming. Everybody was able to stake their claim to some type of false narrative to get attention. Over the course of 20 years, the window to the past, though, has become much, much more clear with the advent of the Internet.
Adam Mitchell [00:16:56]:
Yeah. Prior to that, though, anybody could go into a used bookstore and find something like a picture of a guy running up a post. And if it was in some antique book, he could say, hey, this was my grandfather, and publish it. And then my students will say, this was my teacher's grandfather. And then only to find out later when people like Eric Shahan start publishing this stuff and make this information that was very, you know, only, what, only 15, 20 years ago, unavailable to the western world. Now everybody's reading it. All of a sudden, a whole new truth becomes clear. And sadly, a lot of the people that we're talking about, like you're talking about, who spend all this money, some time away from their family to learn, realized that they've been getting lied to to some degree.
Adam Mitchell [00:17:40]:
Mhmm. Not to suggest anybody's lying, but that's what they're feeling. That's what they're feeling. And
Peter Milano [00:17:45]:
Well, new, before, people just had an intrigue in in the mystique and then a a blanket trust where they weren't looking for that kind of stuff. It would be much later on that that kind of those narratives were were seen and they were questioned and you were able to prove them wrong with the Internet. And I think the evolution of things too where there was the whole ninja boom, that whole thing, that was that was there was a kind of a ride, you new, you you rode that wave for a bit. People came to expect that type of sensationalism inside of their training.
Adam Mitchell [00:18:17]:
We saw that even, like, with the kids' classes in the nineties. Parents would come in, and before MMA was a big thing, parents would wanna want their kids to get some mystical connection with the warriors of the orient, and that's what the whole thing was all about. And then there were 3 steps to the truth becoming very visible. The first was pay per view and ultimate fighting. Mhmm. Pay per view and ultimate fighting. People being able to look at all different types of fighters without rules. Anybody could step into the ring.
Adam Mitchell [00:18:50]:
Okay. You've got the greatest martial art. You're so battle ready. Okay. Here we are. Let's do this. And now suddenly, a question starts getting asked to all of these camouflage ninpo suit wearing people that are paying a lot of money to learn the ultimate martial art that's on the magazine covers and throughout the eighties and everything. Why aren't they there? And you start getting this nonsense of, well, they're a real they're an art for killing, not fighting.
Adam Mitchell [00:19:17]:
Okay. Alright. Well, let's go to the second one then. AOL chat groups and message boards. Here, we have, like, the early 2000. We go from the nineties to the early 2000 where you have open dialogue on such incredible platforms like budo. No longer does the visible accelerate, and the question starts being asked, what is this hold on a second. How come what's what's going on here? But now the actual learning begins to accelerate.
Adam Mitchell [00:19:41]:
And people can now question. They now have access to knowledge. They can read very experienced people from other types of arts and styles. And they can see that, hey, the camp that I'm actually in, that I've been sold a bag of goods, actually is considered pretty bogus among other people. And now you start to see these dialogues, and you can sit on the sidelines and watch these dialogues among very educated people, people with a lot of experience. Even though you're learning, you're questioning again. And you're saying to yourself, have I been lied to about this the whole time? The 3rd phase is what I'm gonna call Internet ubiquitousness. Everybody now has a hockey puck in their pocket and can talk to anybody or look at anything in the world and get any information anytime.
Adam Mitchell [00:20:27]:
Anybody has access to the learning. Now it becomes open source. Right? Now we have things like Gutenberg. We have people doing work like, you know, like him or hate him, I don't care, But Antony Cummins, you have Eric Shahan's work, and you have more and more people like that where and now we start to see the advent of AI where all of this stuff that was only available in Chinese or Japanese in these ancient texts is now open and available to everybody. And suddenly, this bullshit that was being written in books in the 19 seventies, the truth can is now available to everybody. That has a good and a bad to it. If you're feeling and if you have been feeling this sense of I've been getting lied to, how far are you willing to go with that? And I think that this comes this is why I put this under that bracket of leadership.
Peter Milano [00:21:17]:
How do
Adam Mitchell [00:21:17]:
you feel about that?
Peter Milano [00:21:17]:
Well, I mean, I agree with you on the evolution of everything. I think that you have to ask yourself, do you want to train and learn and be dedicated? Or do you want to LARP? And realize that there's a very clear difference. People
Adam Mitchell [00:21:33]:
Live live action role play.
Peter Milano [00:21:34]:
Live action role play. They they're playing at being a martial artist.
Adam Mitchell [00:21:37]:
Yeah.
Peter Milano [00:21:37]:
Yeah. They're not taking it to the next level, which is hard. You wanna quit many times during the life cycle, but you keep going. You you there's times where it's the most intriguing and invigorating thing when you're training in the middle of in Japan in August sweating like buckets, and you take your gear off for a break after you just trained for for 4 hours and you go put it back on and it's heavier somehow. Yeah. But you keep going and it's it's that's not LARPing. And I'm speaking from I only know budo. I have never personally wanted to pursue other martial traditions, whether, it's it's Thai boxing or things like that.
Peter Milano [00:22:18]:
It's the same.
Adam Mitchell [00:22:19]:
And respect.
Peter Milano [00:22:20]:
Absolutely. It's it's but it's the same. It requires work and that that kind of switch where it's like you just you just do it. You just keep going. And they should be different. Sadly, it gets confusing for the person that in their heart, they wanna pursue this.
Adam Mitchell [00:22:34]:
In this episode, I'm talking about, like, what's getting the what's getting the leaders to display what they're doing and then thus creating this image york the collective arts poor, that's laughable. This is the leadership. These are the top Dons. These are the people who've written the books. But only new, the information is so available, those books are highly questionable. They're being called out, and they should be. They should be. But when we go back to when we talk about this leadership and how does Manaka sensei refer to his leadership when he was young in his training, I remember him talking about the caged dogs where Sensei said that he didn't that that Hatsumi Sensei didn't really let him know the his the other young men in that small community of students.
Peter Milano [00:23:24]:
They trained.
Adam Mitchell [00:23:24]:
They trained. And they were like cage dogs, he said. They would stay in their cage. They wouldn't learn about each other's family. They wouldn't learn about each other's lives. He really didn't know any of these men. That way, he didn't create this emotional connection with them as a friend, that they were techie, that they were opponents. Does it speak to the culture of the times? Does it speak to the culture of the art as it was meant to be retained? Does it speak to the teaching processes of the old ways? And in the Western social structure, that may not work.
Adam Mitchell [00:24:01]:
There's something to be said about that leadership when you're taking on the role of teaching budo. And this is, in this conversation, this is what I'm trying to encourage. You know, for me personally, sparring should be part of every class. We have a lot of different ways, a lot of different types of sparring. That's one of the big questions about this collective art. Well, you guys don't do any sparring. You don't do any ground fighting. You don't do, you know, anything that you know, there's never a shortage of comments of that wouldn't work on the street.
Adam Mitchell [00:24:29]:
I struggle with that because I know firsthand what my teacher has taught me and the way that I have conducted my teaching as a leader and my own training as a student is absolutely hard. I'm in my fifties. This is not any type of bragging here. This is me pursuing quality leadership, and it's my teacher training me to be a certain way in a specific way. Maybe I'll give myself kudos for listening and following the path. But it's certainly the art has created someone who can do a squat, who can touch his toes, who can do push ups because the art demands that level of physicality. And if you are not participating in it at that level of physicality, then you're not doing the arts. Because, I mean, Pete, you new, the kata are arts hard.
Adam Mitchell [00:25:19]:
Right. The bojutsu kata, the kenjutsu kata, they're brutally, brutally hard. In many ways, as you go deeper into these kata, you discover that these forms are meant to filter people out. I firmly believe that in the tradition of the Takagi Yoshin Ryu, if you don't do those kata correctly, then your knees are gonna blow, that your hips are gonna blow, that your arms are gonna get hyperextended, and you shouldn't make it to the okuden. So to stand there and read a couple things from some books or some go on to some website and download some stuff and play Budo. Meanwhile, you can't do 5 burpees. And and not to say that's the measurement of a martial arts. I'm just saying, like, some very, very basic, basic workouts.
Adam Mitchell [00:26:04]:
You can't do that? You will get broken. You'll get destroyed. Right? I mean, think about the title kata Pete. Like, someone who who doesn't have good ukemi, someone who stands at the front of the class and just demonstrates techniques and shows things and talks about these esoteric concepts that were spoken by Hatsumi sensei, they're gonna get slaughtered in the real kata, in the real forms. They're gonna get physically broken and hurt. And I feel, in many ways, the authors of these traditions meant for that to happen. I know that's kind of a dark concept, but I know these techniques enough to have that sort of reflection and say, you know what? Maybe that's there for a reason. And maybe we're at that point right now in this arts where if we collectively keep pushing forward to demand more of one another as leaders to no longer allow just the flagrant letting go and stealing from Takamatsu Sensei and calling it something that it's not in the name of art, in the name of my variation, my expression.
Adam Mitchell [00:27:09]:
Well, there's 2 things that can japanese. The art disappears or the art pushes forward and becomes stronger. And I think that that comes down to a decision that the leaders need to make. Very frankly, we need to get some courage here and to be able to say not not to necessarily call people out. You remember that that one instructor that LARPer and then said that Duncan Stewart. I never met the man, only have the highest respect. But Right. This one instructor was talking about, a colleague from New Zealand.
Adam Mitchell [00:27:39]:
And then he came and he taught a seminar here in in New York, calling me a larper. Never met the guy. I didn't know. What did I do? I got in the car. I drove down to Queen's, walked right into his seminar, and I said, let's roll. Like, let's let's spar. I'm not a LARPer. And I'm not saying that you have to do, like, a yabooty like that.
Adam Mitchell [00:27:55]:
Like, you have to do some type of challenge. But this is Japanese budo. That is a thing in the fabric of Japanese budo. Yeah. And if you cannot accept honor and if you don't look at your art through a lens of honor, you're not doing Japanese budo. You're doing something else.
Peter Milano [00:28:14]:
Well, that's I think the that's the the mindset to begin with. You're not doing budo. You're doing it disservice. It's insanity. You're serving
Adam Mitchell [00:28:22]:
It's vanity.
Peter Milano [00:28:23]:
You're serving your own view of it. So call it whatever you want. Call it your own thing, but don't say it's one thing and deliver another because it's a disservice. Japanese martial arts requires the physical aspect as well because it's like Sensei has said and Minako Sensei has said, it's to create a better person.
Adam Mitchell [00:28:44]:
Yeah.
Peter Milano [00:28:44]:
And you cannot do that if you don't push your physical limits, whatever they may be. If you don't have an excuse, your excuse is just laziness.
Adam Mitchell [00:28:53]:
Yeah. And you're mental too. Because like you said a little while, you wanna quit. You'll you'll wanna quit.
Peter Milano [00:28:57]:
Of course. Budo you can't have one without the other. They go hand they go hand in hand. Yeah. And there's I think that there's a natural progression from when you're younger to middle age to older. All of those things work in sequence. You're you're not studying the art if you're not doing that, if you're not pushing physically, if you're not pushing mentally, if you're not pushing spiritually.
Adam Mitchell [00:29:18]:
Yeah. So you're saying that it's in all of our best interests if we're gonna consider ourselves in a leadership role of this collective arts, that we do do some self inventory and we do work towards a higher sense of self awareness that has alignment with what the outcome, the collective outcome of the art is. What does the training look like? What are the demands of the art? And look, I'm not here. I'm not trying to call out people who may be overweight, people who may have, you know, may not have a high physical strength level. But what I am doing is I am calling out the people who are indeed faking, the people who are not pushing themselves forward and then are going out there and playing leader in a space where they really shouldn't be. And the problem with the leaders of this art is that that is being allowed. I ask, why is it being allowed? Is it being allowed because of money? Are degrees being sold for, you know, $500 for some guy who brushed something in Japan in a language you probably don't new. And what does that mean? And you're that means you can go out on YouTube and do videos of some ancient tradition that, to some people, it's sacred.
Adam Mitchell [00:30:29]:
I mean, it's I mean, some of these traditions to me, Pete, I've been training them for 30 years. They're very, very they're a very important part
Peter Milano [00:30:37]:
of my life. New trains children for 25 years. We had a student who had cerebral palsy. He wasn't doing the same thing that the other students were doing. He had to do something very different. But the effect, the the fulfilling that, making a better person through what we were studying for sure. Achieved in multiple ways. Not only did it did we push him physically where he was able to do something his family, his doctors said he would never ever be able to do, but the people who witnessed it collectively were changed as well through that same spirit.
Peter Milano [00:31:10]:
It and that's that's the authenticness. That's that's what we're trying to achieve. He did something I never could
Adam Mitchell [00:31:17]:
Yeah.
Peter Milano [00:31:17]:
That little boy, just by raising his head. I wouldn't I I've never had that impact on people.
Adam Mitchell [00:31:22]:
Yeah.
Peter Milano [00:31:23]:
Yeah. And that's the essence of why we're being so protective of it.
Adam Mitchell [00:31:26]:
Yeah. Pete's referencing an experience we had with a young man, who was in a wheelchair, and he couldn't even speak. And his grandparents brought him to the dojo. And the only thing that I had that little boy try to do was just to lift his head up so his arms would unlock. He was told that he couldn't hold his head up for more than 3 seconds. And by the time I was looking, we were nose to nose. And I was counting by the time I was at the number 30, and that little boy was staring me in the eyes with his back straight, there was not a dry eye in the dojo. It was really, really something to see that young man push himself forward.
Adam Mitchell [00:32:02]:
And Pete's referencing something that our teacher said back in 2009 when someone asked him, why do we study this art? And without even thinking, he said, to make a better person. And I wanna leave this episode on that thought. Are we making better people by making believe? Are we making better people by just allowing the leadership of our collective community to put stuff out there that's weak, that doesn't follow the articles of our art, that doesn't have elements of good, solid, foundational self defense that don't push people to their physical limits so that they can become stronger when they reach their limit and a new one opens up. Are we allowing ourselves to preserve the art in a stronger way for the next generation? Or are we, through our own greed, allowing this incredible martial art to dissolve into an echo chamber of laughter and humiliation? And what can we do together as a collective community to make sure that we are no longer stealing from the Mongolian tiger, but together, we're making this art stronger, better, and just as effective as it was meant to be. Peter, thank you for your time today. Thank you. It's appreciated.
