 If you don't cross train off the mat it may engender a kind of mindset of harmony but again what happens off the mat when you're a positive thinker and you don't like sparring and you just meditate your negative thoughts away and you don't deal with the emotional triggers that come up between egos and conflict. In order to make good on its truth claims aikido requires both cross training on and off the mat. If you don't meditate or have a mindfulness practice off the mat I would question what you're doing on the mat as moving meditation but the second thing is it would serve people to not just do spiritual practice but to engage in psychological forms of inquiry. When you don't know what you don't know in self-development just like learning some of the most basic things about mindsets and the victim mindset so little pieces like that coaching if you don't want to go to therapy try coaching that is the self-development methodology of our day so at least you begin to be more self-authoring about what your goals are and how to pursue them. Hey everyone so today we have another special video and I know I like to say they're all special but I really feel that way and this one I had a blast recording it was a really interesting conversation I had with Nathaniel Chalkin and now I know that maybe not everyone will be interested in this subject because we dove quite deep and looked at some theories but also some very practical stuff too so if you are interested in the subject of applied aikido philosophy you're definitely going to dig this talk. Now if you don't know who Nathaniel Chalkin is what makes our relationship very interesting is because first of all he went through a very very similar journey like I did just years ago before me he also was a devoted aikido practitioner for many years and eventually he started questioning it and left aikido and started training miss martial art Brazilian jiu-jitsu and also educated himself in various fields such as executive coaching and from what I understand he has a lot of expertise knowledge in various fields outside of martial arts and he what what makes again his particular story interesting is because he started to also take a look back at aikido and to ask himself and explore how it can be applied not only physically which he does as well in a practical way but also psychologically or you know an executive level and personal development and spirituality so so he's you know the person to talk to about this stuff personally one of the reasons why I was really thrilled to talk to Nathaniel about all of this is because as you may already know because I keep repeating myself I recently we discovered an interest to explore the aikido philosophy and what impact it may have but also to ask myself how would it look if it would be really practical how how should it be trained how it should be practiced and Nathaniel already has a lot of answers for that subject which we will explore and a lot of that is going to be about cross-training but not only physically but also mentally so one of the core ideas we touched which will look into deeper during this conversation is you know that aikido philosophy aikido gen tends to often present itself as you know kind of practice of meditation and personal development spirituality and one of the ideas we we spoke about which I found really inspiring is that if you want to teach meditation you have to go through a intensive course of understanding how meditation works if you want to coach people you need to go for a good course of coaching and and that may be one of the downsides to aikido is that you're just learning the techniques you're just learning the martial art some philosophy but you don't get specific training for all of those subjects and that's why potentially it makes it so difficult to really make the philosophy practical practical so I don't want to spoil too much all of that is going to be covered and much more in the conversation so if I got your interest do enjoy this talk it's good to see you again right not the first not the last time I hope and plenty of things I want to talk to you and because we've already covered we already spoke with each other quite a few times maybe one of one quick brief thing I would ask as the first question would be like a very kind of short and dense version of your background so just people would be familiar with what fields are educated at or or what expertise you have kind of a you know like a a short breakdown of what are you what are you about yeah happy to do it so going all the way back I was actually raised in a community that practices transcendental meditation so we were about 3000 people in a town of 10 000 and that meant consciousness-based education and studying principles of eastern spirituality in the midst of just college prep kind of high school so all the regular subjects and so on and went to university in the same way I also studied aikido like you did it started as a young teenager 13 years old and that was just my total love and passion and then also like you became muchi deshi long-term muchi deshi was about two years overall living in a dojo a couple different dojos a brief trip to japan in the midst of that but like you also had total you know disillusionment burnout I'm not actually sure if you got burnt out but I sure did I could say yeah yeah at least on the the disillusionment front really had an ego death in the midst of a sensei who also I did not get along with and felt very conflicted and let down by in terms of the promise of aikido so that same you know while I was still muchi deshi in the dojo I was devouring Gracie Jujitsu videos trained my first week at Hicks and Gracie's and ultimately left the dojo and I didn't realize it at the time but I really had quit aikido and I went to start training in mixed martial arts with Alan and Lily at SPG NorCal which is one of Matt Thornton's gyms and really great training great mindset in that gym felt really welcome and open there went on to get ranked in brazilian jujitsu blew out with Sergio Silva and purple belt with Phil Cardella who's a house and Gracie guy and wc fighter and all along the way as I was leaving Uchi deshi as well I did a coaching certification and a master's degree in integral psychology at the same time and that led me to founding integral martial arts I was trying to hold the best parts of east and west and traditional and modern and development on the mat and off the mat for martial artists so this kind of well-rounded holistic approach but not just holistic in the sense of the new age post-modern aikido version of holistic so really bridging east and west in that sense so that's been my back burner project you know having my own dojo along the way and I did get hired as an executive coach for a integral leadership program that was based in Dallas so I coached middle market executives through that program for about six and a half years and since then I've split out on my own wearing my own jersey uh polyester leadership uh and we do in-house coaching in-house coaching for leaders teams and organizations so really applying a lot of the martial arts philosophy um and the notion of having a gem or a dojo and coaching as a practice as a way of life so in-house means instead of going somewhere else to do a training that just starts and stops just like you can't learn jiu-jitsu in a weekend seminar you can't learn leadership either so we try to build the coaching in-house and we turn it into a practice so that through peer coaching just like you do a jiu-jitsu class you watch the sensei or professor demonstrate and then you partner up in practice so we're really committed to the practice of coaching and leadership inside of organizations so we help them build permanent structures to offer coaching in-house to everyone in the company so that's what I've been up to nice uh there's again plenty of things I will want to ask and I won't I'll do my best not to dwell on this part too much but there's something I just really wanted to ask I think we spoke about this briefly when we met uh before but you mentioned growing up uh and being educated about transcendental meditation and I guess spirituality from an early age and as through your kind of period of growing up uh now that you look back uh how how do you consider like how do you see that whole process was it uh a great one and it really shaped into into who you are or do you see some lax in it that you later try to fill up with what you learned on your own like is there anything you could say here yes and it's very likely the theme of what we were intending to talk about here today in general with meditation or spirituality as a practice it was a beautiful foundation to have that in my life so to say that first and foremost that you're interested in the development of consciousness and the development of higher states of consciousness or realizing there are levels of human potential beyond what we think of as normal and that through regular practice of meditation and considering universal principles in life whatever religion or uh philosophy they come from you can live a more fulfilled life so it is the process of self actualization universally like that's a good thing it's beautiful to have that kind of uh community structured around that it's like really unusual like they would meditate you know have group meditation uh before and after work so it wasn't such a materially focused or exclusively materially focused community they also tended to the balance um you can see this um on a national level in a country like Burma where they have gross domestic products but they also have gross domestic happiness so there's a balancing of the spiritual material life and it's not that we're that country is against progress they just say if progress comes at the expense of happiness or inner fulfillment and they question whether that's healthy so I think ultimately in the best sense of things in the business world we have conscious capitalism as well so you have the balance of like absolutely unapologetic free market capitalists who want to succeed who want to who don't want to do well um and you can be more conscious you can do good in the way that you organize your business and the kind of higher purpose that inspires why you exist so all of that to say yes to uh a meditation or spiritual community and uh there is a problem that can occur in spiritual communities as I think you and I both experienced firsthand with Aikido as well as the spiritual martial art and um often because spiritual communities are rooted they look very postmodern they look very new age but they're often tied to traditional hierarchies that have to do with dogmatic thinking or group think or top down hierarchies where you're not allowed to think critically or push back or question or spar so it's all kind of rolls together and the summary statement I have for that is called spiritual bypassing um of course I didn't coin that phrase it's been around I think John Wellman owned it you can look that up later um there's a book by Robert Augustus Masters called spiritual bypassing and what it says is if you're only spirituality and not psychology then you will use spirituality to bypass the things that matter most and you can be you can have a as Carl Jung would say you can have a very thick shadow you know there's a they don't call it the unconscious or nothing we all have blind spots and meditation does not allow you to take care of your emotional triggers your you know the things that come up when your ego gets involved the conflicts between people that requires psychology so often spirituality gives the promise of transcending those things you don't have to put your attention on those things just be positive or just get enlightened be spiritually awake awakened and then all that stuff goes away and it's actually very dehumanizing it's ironically very dehumanizing to have that kind of approach so that is the challenge with spirituality by itself that's that's really fascinating stuff and that concept of bypassing the what i what i see now uh young called the shadow self shadow side it's that's the shadow yeah you just call it the shadows it's i i bumped into this concept a few times lately and i was really fascinated because right away i felt kind of an intrinsic feeling like an intuitive feeling that i see there's truth in it it relates to my own experience so i'm really looking forward to dive into this subject one thing i do want to kind of bring to the table i do want us to focus as much as we can organically also around the subject of aikido how it relates to aikido and and obviously not only to it but then naturally i'm thinking about the subject of aikido and also uh well we have to share the experience for it and i i do want to do my best to talk these days i can kind of set to try to do my best to be on the positive side of aikido i can't refrain from sometimes bringing up the the dark side of it so so with all of that said what's on my mind is uh so i imagine that that's one of the explanations of why uh one of the things i was quite vocal about and critical is aikido is officially a spiritual or not necessarily officially a spiritual practice but it's tend to be like a spiritual martial arts philosophy martial art and it's often dubbed as the art of peace and it's supposed to be a practice which makes peaceful people and all that conflict resolution and everything is spoken about that but uh not only myself but also connected to so many people online i've heard i've experienced it and i've heard from many many people who would need a lot of arrogant people in aikido and not to say all of them are arrogant that's that would be untrue but arrogance is it's not uncommon in aikido also yoga comes to my mind too i've been a yoga instructor i've been around yoga circles and and i noticed that it would be often it would be like a subtle ego like a subtle arrogance but if if you or if you have your eyes wide enough wide open enough you're like oh my goodness you know this is this is horrible so uh i think it's it's too long but i imagine you see what i'm pointing out i'm just wondering so that arrogance in practices which are supposed to develop better human beings through spirituality like a keel like yoga like other practices uh that arrogance do you think would you say it's that a result of that bypassing of the shadow or is it a bit something else i think that's a very simple way of saying it yes because think about what arrogance is covering what is the shadow of arrogance it's insecurity and this is the thing we start to see specifically with aikido it's a really great physical metaphor to talk about the problem of bypassing because the promise of aikido is nonviolent conflict resolution the promise of aikido is spiritual awakening where you are actually feeling one with everything in harmony with all types of people that you can enter into conflict with a centered presence without having your ego triggered and you can transform whatever you meet into peace now that sounds beautiful by itself and to hold up aikido as one of if not the only example of a spiritual martial art would be to say that it gets a lot right and not just from a spiritual standpoint in its philosophy in its promise for example very easy to talk about the shadow with martial arts because you have a fight going on there's me and there's an opponent and the founder would say true victory is victory over oneself that's beautiful well that's shadow work that's realizing the enemy is within that's talking about love your enemy or love your neighbor as yourself and what i judge in you know that when you point the finger there's three fingers pointing back hmm that's the simplest way to understand the shadow is what i judge in you i might be guilty of myself so if i look at a conflict between two people um how can i see you clearly if i don't look in the mirror at myself first so that's shadow work that's what aikido is promising that you can transform who you are um by taking care of your own hypocrisy and then you can re-engage the conflict and the presence you bring to it will be transformative so that that's a full stop on that concept like look in the mirror at myself first if i think you're an angry aggressive person where am i an angry aggressive person and take care of that and come at it with a more assertive energy rather than an aggressive energy and that's a shift in mindset that's a shift in energy so aikido promises all of that but the the hypocrisy the problem starts to come in when you become so attached to non-violence that you don't even spar so you repress violence this is another great illustration of the shadow there's nothing healthy about it at all and so you push it down you deny it and you make it wrong and bad and then you project that out into the world and make an enemy of it what happens when you do that ironically is it's like cutting off your nose despite your face there's something about violence that if we're not in touch with it then we're not actually capable of attaining a non-violent outcome and that's the hypocrisy that's the performative contradiction of a lot of post-modern approaches i'm so attached to non-violence that i repress violence and so when i and then here's the other irony i'm a pacifist so when i actually meet with violence you can see that arrogance come out people become very who've never sparred what happens when they think they know and they start sparring they become aggressive so that so it's very clear actually with aikido like the promise is there it's beautiful in principle and you have to be able to fight in order to fight without fighting you have to turn towards the shadow and in find a healthy expression or integrate the experience your relationship with violence you have to come to terms with your anger you have to come to terms with your fear and of course sparring is how you do that then you know what so many quotes we've heard through our different interviews it's like would you rather be a gardener in a war or a warrior in a garden you know or only the warrior can choose pacifism everyone else is condemned to it so there's a way of integrating the yin yang is a beautiful symbol for that like when you're capable of both then you can choose that if you're capable if you're strong enough then you can choose mercy so that would that would be to um yeah just say a bit about it at the top and there's more of course well one thing I wanted to specifically ask you again about leading from what you said um you you know that recently I to my own surprise we discovered an interest in the aikido philosophy and realized the aikido philosophy did have impact on my life and there's a growing desire to better understand how it works but also recognition that what I consider that a lot of the aikido community fails to deliver the promise of aikido the one you described and I don't want to be judgmental I don't want to see everyone there's always exceptions there's always unique schools but the majority it doesn't seem like it's really delivering it especially at the martial aspect but that's like I already I don't want to be a broken record I'm talking about that so much but the philosophical aspect um that too it seems to be I do know some people who are who seem to be more or less like a potential embodiment of embodiment of the aikido philosophy but it's not like that common it's not I always like to kind of look at the results and to see if if this thing always or most of times creates this result it probably means this thing really works so in aikido it's hard to say that so again having said that what would you say is the um not necessarily the cure the cure but maybe like the solution to that shadow work side and um that whole dilemma with the aikido philosophy what would be a good way to go new european for the that's what I like to say apply aikido philosophy what would make make it uh test proof what would make it potentially efficient to a degree where obviously not everyone learns everything there's no way to make it 100 proof but it would make it much more effective yes so well let's look at aikido's truth claim on and off the mat it's simply put it's um certainly self-defense for starters and also protecting your opponent but let's keep it self-defense and self-development on and off the mat is that fair to say uh that's one of the claims right yeah okay so so let's look at that what does self-defense actually require on the mat it requires cross training it requires seeking universal truth I mean think about bruce lee talking about this like there is no japanese way korean way chinese way there's just the human body so there's what works and there's what doesn't and you engage in a process of continuous improvement and continuous growth and growth when you're willing to take on that mindset that more rational mindset because in other words you have to grow your own you know the delivery systems and different cultures martial arts are ultimately all the same so you find what works universally through cross training and then grow in your own approach same thing off the mat um and I think it is worth saying that it's just more it's not that there's right and wrong there there's good in what aikido is offering on the mat as um a martial yoga practice as moving meditation you know it can become part of a life practice just like studying any art would you know studying dance for example or how to drive your car on the track there's an art to master um so that's good um however if you don't cross train off the mat then the promise of aikido is no different from studying any other art it may engender a kind of mindset of harmony but again what happens off the mat when you're a positive thinker and you don't like sparring and you just meditate your negative thoughts away and you don't deal with the emotional triggers that come up between egos and conflict so my suggestion is that in order to make good on its truth claims aikido requires both cross training on and off the mat so for example if you don't meditate or have a mindfulness practice off the mat um then i would question what you're doing on the mat as moving meditation so that's that's one thing um but the second thing is it would serve people to um not just do spiritual practice but to engage in psychological forms of inquiry so that could just be psychotherapy which you know people think you have to be sick to go to therapy well we're all mentally ill in some sense and it's amazing that when you don't know what you don't know in self-development um just like learning some of the most basic things about mindsets and the victim mindset and family dynamics where one person's the persecutor to the victim and then a rescuer comes in that creates that's the drama triangle that creates all dramas in history so little pieces like that um coaching if you don't want to go to therapy try coaching that is the self-development methodology of our day so at least you begin to be more self-authoring about what your goals are and how to pursue them and a coach of course helps you pursue um your own hero's journey we could say in this context so that you're self-actualizing in that way um and then the the other thing that aikido does uniquely as a martial art and again you can do this in any martial art but i think aikido is built as a somatic practice and again to quote bruce lee ultimately all types of knowledge mean self-knowledge so when you're training physically on the mat what do we say you learn more about someone in 30 minutes of grappling with them then you're doing a week of conversation and why would that be because you feel how they are you feel their mindset some people like to push people over other people are the pushover so there's a way of working on yourself and a lot of integral coaches i have a friend who's a brown belt and jujitsu kevin snorff um and he's an integral coach as well and he helps martial artists uh they use metaphors and he he rolls with them and then he has said i've done this of course for years as well you assess how they're showing up and he told one guy you're kind of like a bulldozer you know that's that's your that's your game a is like you're a you bulldoze people and that's great but if you want to be more well-rounded as a martial artist you need to learn to surf you know and what's different about that so that's another example of using physical practice to hold the mirror up to your own mindset and then guess what how you show up on the mat is also how you show up off the mat do you bulldoze people at work do you bulldoze people in your personal relationships do you bulldoze your kids i bet you do and what would it mean to surf and that's again what a coach or therapist would help someone do so lastly um the notion of shadow work itself or i would say there's there's two dimensions you know shadow work itself looking at the things that trigger you emotionally so if it informs you versus it affects you that's the litmus test for shadow so if you're triggered by someone that's the opening for shadow work and i could talk about that separately and then the other thing is obviously the the judo move the iqido move is how do you resolve conflict through conscious communication so so these are all the things you can cross train in and you know you can simplify it through the interval model there's like work you do on yourself there's the communication and conflict related stuff and then there's your life in the world you know coaching towards your goals so that's that's as simply as i could say it well taking a bit of a look back into iqido um regarding the subject as you spoke it reminded me of this uh fresh story fresh experience i had uh a friend of mine sent me this questionnaire questionnaire of an iqido organization in one of the countries western countries where they started to recognize that maybe iqido needs to change and they were interested to see what directions the people would vote that iqido could go to or what they would expect from it and one of the options was that if iqido should become more should the meditational aspect of iqido should be more emphasized or kind of the coaching aspect of it i think i don't think they used the word coaching but kind of the mentality and so on and so forth and uh as i was discussing this about my friend uh with my friend about that uh my first direct thought was what i said to him i was like well if they would decide that they want to bring in more of the meditational aspect to their iqido classes what will they base that on you know how did iqido prepare them to be a meditation coach or mentor guide and i said to my friend i said well they would naturally like the real smart option as far as i can see would be for them to educate themselves and let's say at least in mindfulness some kind of mindfulness training or something now i don't know you know if that questionnaire will go to that direction and they will come to that decision i don't know if that's what they will do but to me like that that brings back the idea of what you presented the cross training aspect uh and i'm as in thinking about the philosophy of iqido it just seems that the tools that are given in iqido to live the iqido philosophy they just don't really seem to be enough that's one of the criticisms i had criticism i had out loud these days is that you know how do you really learn the philosophy that osensei was saying like what's the methodology to teach it and it doesn't seem like there's really a lot of substance there it would only make sense if an iqido person who wants to deliver the iqido philosophy would i guess cross train as you say which i like about that idea that concept learn the the ways which are already developed that support the the philosophy like you know and would bring it through the iqido platform so again a bit of a long-winded way to express my thoughts but but do you do you agree with that sense for that direction or would you say there's a different solution or just basically if an iqido instructor would want to deliver the iqido philosophy which would be applied is is it true then it's would you say it's correct to say that probably he would he have to go outside of iqido learn the existing tools which are already out there and only then look how they work together yeah it's a great question and again if the truth claim of iqido is just to be a moving meditation or a self-development practice then yeah it doesn't we don't have to talk about it being functional in a self-defense setting it's a worthy pursuit in and of itself but it still does beg the question of how do you create a functional outcome if that's your goal and again for me that requires cross training and it's worth mentioning again here in in the realm of worldviews that we have traditional martial artists many iqido ka are traditional martial artists and you have the modern traditional modern post-modern modernists are typically doing combat sports and then you have post-modern iqidoists who have really are into it because it's a form of self-development and you can tell the post-modern um iqidoists apart from the traditionalists because the traditionalists are very strict they're probably doing you know iwama style or yoshinkan or something like that whereas the post-modern kind of iqidoists really are into the spirituality the non-duality the non-violent conflict resolution that they have more value age worldview or spiritual worldview so that's why I say it depends on who the instructor is because an instructor who is more oriented to the post-modern kind of iqido maybe they do have a meditation practice maybe they do practice non-violent communication maybe they do study somatics and maybe the way they teach on the mat I mean you look at Richard Stroze Heckler he coined the phrase embodied leadership he coined the phrase somatic coaching he's coached Fortune 1000 companies for decades so he has a whole somatic coach training that brings embodiment principles how to center yourself physically and how to you know blend and redirect the energy of an attack so that whole physical metaphor of iqido they practice that but that's the point you are only going to get better at what you practice and I would be very concerned about taking people with a traditional hierarchical mindset a dogmatic mindset who have not practiced meditation like meditation is kind of a traditional practice it's just sitting still yeah that's the least of the worries the problem is again not the spiritual but the psychological what do you do when you're triggered emotionally and you're in your ego the stuff that doesn't come up on the meditation cushion what do you do when there's conflicts between people and you're used to being above them in the hierarchy it it just creates all kinds of potential for abuse and which is what spiritual bypassing does as well by itself so so that would be the problem and again Bruce Lee said six months of boxing and wrestling is worth 20 years of traditional martial arts so ironically you could be a better applied iqido philosophy person you know it doesn't matter what martial art you studied if you simply went and meditated for six months studied shadow work and did nonviolent communication you would be better equipped as someone who had cross-trained then someone who had simply been in a traditional iqido dojo for 20 years and you may have even more to offer than that person off the map yeah yeah again I really like what you're saying it's really kind of ironic and almost like a tough situation I think when you explain it that way to me it starts to show better and better why and again this may be my personal opinion but I think it's a fair one I like to consider that iqido is somewhat of in a crisis and I guess it's been it's spoken in the iqido circle as well as far as I can see at least from time to time so yeah let's see well let's see there's a tendency that iqido is in a crisis what you mentioned what you said it kind of explains why but there's but it also kind of begs to look at the possible solution but but also just the question and part of me especially since I feel positive towards the iqido philosophy these days I do want to kind of try to stay in that positive mindset and explore that positive out potential outcome uh I could easily go to the dark side and the negative and be like well let's just drop this and let's just leave it be but if we look at the positive side uh yeah it really sounds like a troublesome situation because the more I look at it the more I see that as you said like a person who is pursuing the the philosophy of iqido embodying it even more so for look at both the physical and the psychological aspect there's so much cross-training that that person basically has to do the the the iqido that is taught is unequipped to teach all of that through one class but then if we would look at let's say a positive prediction uh play with thought how would you imagine iqido evolving to become at least closer to what it's supposed to be what it claims to be uh how would what direction would you suggest to iqido as a global community force to go to to really deliver what iqido is promising yes um and there's a lot of good there that we can integrate and use as a base so the term dojo means place of the way and that has a great double meaning in english because it's you know even the pictograph of the kanji is a person walking along a path but it's the path of self-development and the way is also the way you do something so you're starting to look at yourself as a martial artist and so a dojo can become the place of the way um often we think of you know the old the old greek approach to human development was similar it's like they would wrestle in the polystra and then they'd have philosophical dialogues around the outside so that it's about having a more um integrated community center kind of dojo offering and this also can produce multiple streams of income for dojo cho for gym owners who want to help their people develop so it's that's why i came around to integral martial arts but even if we just keep it with iqido and the kind of offerings that iqido people would want to partake in why would every iqido dojo not also offer time for meditation many of them do but to be a community in that way let's be in the practice of meditation together you know before every class why not um and then what what few other classes would you need to offer for people to start to develop themselves that's why we offer peer coaching you could do a peer coaching class once a week or a couple times a week and get people into practicing nonviolent communication conflict resolution in that sense um and also uh coaching skills so that they're starting to make the connection between what am i working on and my technique on the mat what does that tell me about who i am off the mat and how do i personally develop myself in that exact same way so again the whole thing about if i'm the bulldozer what am i doing in my life to show up as that surfer who's a little more flow that would be one or two additional classes um and then you can also offer workshops on a more seasonal or monthly basis uh and just like you bring in you know the the sensei from hombu dojo and have a huge seminar with multiple dojos same thing like bring in the people um in each of these areas spiritually psychologically and somatically so body mind spirit is the thing we like to say then have those offerings in your dojo bring in the experts who can help people go deeper on a monthly or quarterly basis again i i keep saying this but i do feel like that i like what you're saying and what it makes me reflect about even about my own journey i was especially local about that in my recent videos on my new channel and of looking back at my my experiences and one of the videos i made i spoke in detail about me being abandoned by my initial students and it's it's a long story in its own but the whole point of that was that i grew up in anikido community or was developed into instructor in kato community where i was kind of led to believe that being anikido instructor is enough and there was a lot of meditation and spirituality in that community and so there was a lot of work to do but but still now that i look back to be fair i wasn't given that many tools especially evidence-based or long-term long-term tools tools they were more what i see often in spirituality is an instructor a head instructor or guru teacher having his own or her own personal experiences which kind of work for them emphasis on the kind of not always and then they start to teach others that that's the way to go that's the recipe and i think it's it's an unfair to do that's that's my my strong opinion that that's not the way to go to take your own experience and suddenly because it works for you kind of the tell it works for others but i think that that's kind of what i went through and when i was an anikido instructor myself just 22 years old it's crazy to look back but i remember i positioned myself in that position because i grew up in that community where i would be the deliverer of answers solutions and i remember actually the moment when i was asked by one of my older students about his marital problems and i was just like fresh 22 i i didn't have that many serious relationships definitely wasn't marrying by then and i remember my mind was blank i had no clue and i had no experience about that i think i was honest enough to realize that and and not to try to make up some answer but but it just shows me now to look back if i i considered if i if i would ever be in the position to give marital advice i would have to be a professional marriage therapist or something and then if i want to give advice on that area other area should be an expert of that and so on and so forth so it seems to me that that position does happen too often where a black belt i think happens outside of aikido as well a black belt considers himself to be a black belt at everything which is a false you know it's a false approach but but it also it seems like it's a tough path which personally i like tough i like challenge and when i think about that uh if i would you know let's bring you back to me at 19 when i was 19 i wanted to become an aikido instructor really bad and if somebody would have told me oh so then that means you will have to become you know a professional coach you'd have to go through you know right now on the top of mind is like cognitive behavioral therapy or psychology you know all those tools i probably would have went for it and i'd be like hell yeah this is a long and hard path but i can see how much i will bring back and but that wasn't out there that wasn't the the dominating idea but now the more i listen to you and i think about it it just seems like that almost seems like that's the only way to go if somebody's would really want to embody the entire nest of aikido philosophy and to deliver it so these are kind of my thoughts out loud but i don't know if that brings up something in you it really does i mean first of all that i also was uh made sense at 18 years old of my dojo and so i came up against that against that same problem pretty hard when i was teaching adults and kids and the whole thing and ultimately it fell apart i mean it didn't work out at that point even having been raised with meditation so there was a lot of growing that i still have to do um and i think again to speak in terms of worldviews that the traditional hierarchical worldview in any culture has this guru-disciple thing that goes on and there's something beautiful about that if the guru is actually meriting being put in that position in other words the difference between obviously the eastern approach to that and a more modern approach is um it's not a hierarchy of just position because then anyone can sit above you and it's like we sit in the dojo like everyone who joined the dojo after me sits to my left i'm better than them forever because there's never any sparring or pressure testing it's it's not a merit-based hierarchy you don't earn your way to the top of that kind of hierarchy traditionally you would inherit it by blood or you know by family if not lineage blood or just politics so to enter the western mindset where it's the hierarchy is based on competence it's based on merit and that comes through you know for lack of a better term sparring through contact with the world and taking responsibility for outcomes that's a whole different kind of culture that evolves around who's responsible or in charge and so if the promise again of something is self-development then yeah why not have a master's degree in self-development whatever that means and and and again the the difference between a democratic hierarchy and the traditional one is there are checks and balances on the executive there are checks and balances which means that the feedback flows out in fact if i go into a business to work with the ceo and their team if we're if we really want to have a more democratic kind of relationship to power dynamics then that ceo has to be willing to go first and hear the here the freedom of speech hear the direct feedback of every single team member they have to start sparring they have to hear that authentic feedback so it they get more feedback than everyone else if they're the leader think about your black belt and jujitsu like you've you've literally tapped out more times than everyone else in that room that's how you earned your belt so there is absolutely something that breaks down traditional hierarchy and if you want to kind of rest for yourself where someone is coming from whether they're a guru or whether they're more like a teacher or a president in a company or a country the difference will be how do they react under pressure when you spar with them what happens and are you really empowered to say what the truth as you see it are you empowered to speak truth to power and if you aren't then you know beware that's where the shadow is going to lie and you're gonna you're gonna find out the hard way about that there's a few questions that i have on my mind but like the biggest one want to make sure we tackle uh related to everything we spoke about so when we look at the aikido philosophy and potentially making it apply to aikido philosophy which from what i see you're already working on for years already and i'm sure you're capable of it um but there's there's a question which is interesting to ask and it does come out quite often i guess at least my explorations the question of the usb the unique selling product or or just kind of what's the thing which this particular practice offers which no one else offers i think it's a difficult question when aikido is spoken of i do have some answers there uh but especially if we would focus on the philosophy of it there's the argument that you know a way of peace is not something entirely brand new maybe it could be the aspect of martial arts plus the peaceful aspect also to what comes to my mind is the life getting stored the life taking forward not necessarily emphasized as much but so this guy i do have my own ideas but i'm really interested to hear what what what opinion do you have when the discussion comes about so so what's the place of aikido in the world like why why does why should have the right to exist versus like what is it that really delivers unique to compare to anything else would you have an answer for that yes um so even if it is what it is on the map aikido is a conscious martial art now i realize other martial arts kind of have the nage uke relationship but not with the same mindset that aikido is bringing to it so aikido is about the cultivation of presence in the midst of an attack and the mindset the intention is not to attack not to be in one's ego but to meet another's ego and to blend with that attack to redirect it and ideally to control that person without inflicting injury without hurting them now even if we look at physically other traditional martial arts you don't really have the same kind of setup where the whole purpose of the art is to remove one's ego and to blend to become one with that attack even physically again and how we set up to train and aikido there's always the attack and the response and you are blending with it and then pinning them and controlling them without hurting them so physically you're in the practice of harmonizing over and over and over again and i know a lot of traditional aikido is say like oh it's 90 of temi and it's like look in jujitsu the first ufc is proved that you don't have to hit anyone at all to control them without hurting them so i think that still is the unique value proposition of aikido if you want to be part of a practice that um asks of you that you be a conscious human being and not react out of your ego violently and you want to practice resolving conflict non-violently over and over again and have that be your mindset when you enter into conflict which means you're de-escalating you're consciously communicating and you're studying yourself you're looking in the mirror at yourself first before you engage with another that is the value proposition it's the shadow work part of it ironically and if you want to be that kind of human being off the mat then again you're going to have to do some of your own cross-training but you know that may also be another thing to touch on before we i have time here and it may really be worth touching on what are the best practices or the simplest practices that someone can do off the mat whether they do aikido or not what does it mean to be a conscious martial artist what does it mean to engage in your own self-development so that you're effectively not just engaged in the physical art but you're growing as a person and i think that's important also because i like to use the analogy for more you know people with a more of a modern mindset it's like if if your goal is to be the best physically why would you not upgrade your operating system mentally how much of the game is mental yeah so if you tune the software in a car you get tons more horsepower out of that same engine so you know i think that's also what aikido is pointing to is you know it's not just about fighting how often have you been in a fight anyway so why are you doing this why are you training martial arts what is it what's the deeper message what are the the principles that you could use to inform your life and that can make you a better human a better father or mother a better manager at work if you want upward mobility with your job you're not going to make a very good manager of people let alone a leader like an executive if you don't start engaging your personal development so yeah that's definitely i want to extend uh down for looking at the best practices but just very quickly before we head there uh something i'm super curious to ask your opinion about so i'm with you very much on the on the same page of seeing the uniqueness of aikido in the martial aspect but just purely out of curiosity i'm curious to ask would you say if we if we removed the martial aspect uh the physical aspect out of aikido entirely uh and we would leave just the idea a lot ideology of aikido just to say philosophy would you still say it's as unique or would you say it's the it's the martial aspect which makes it so unique well i think that's tough right because as martial artists it is a physical philosophy um and the way you train reflects the mindset that that philosophy is teaching so if you're if you're kickboxing there's nothing wrong with that but that's the mindset you'll be in when you get in a fight it's punching and kicking so for me the somatic the body-mind connection just like with yoga it's so important i think to be in a physical practice because think about what in jujitsu what tapping out does that that's what is literally tenderizing your ego and i think with aikido it's the same there's a practice of blending or flowing that and even just if you want to embody a kind of centeredness or groundedness or presence that's how you're that's where traditional martial arts came from to begin with they were temple practices like you'd sit for a long time in meditation and then how did you integrate that into your day-to-day life so you weren't just sitting all day you would do moving meditation so there's something about the kind of presence or the kind of embodiment you have from a physical practice that does carry with you off of the mat you could attempt to make it a non physical thing um but i it would take away from of course what it has to offer as a physical practice and again the challenge with that is if you're not sparring then that's the same problem as doing spirituality without psychology though that's another disconnect to speak to the negative side of it is if you only train aikido as it is without ever sparring um you know you're only going to be so functionally capable of uh creating a nonviolent outcome or of confronting all the parts of yourself that come up when you spar so you're only going to develop so far in any one thing i think would be another way of saying that so best practices you mentioned there's something to see there yeah so just like on the mat um let's say we have stand-up clinch ground and self-defense uh and it really helps to cross train in all four of those um if you want to be well-rounded as a martial artist and actually that's the quickest way to go to the next level as a martial artist not as someone who's good at a particular sport um the same thing is true off the mat and i i said body mind spirit before i think that would be a pretty quick way of going through it but um first and foremost um what is needed in the world today that would be another question to ask why what is the value proposition of aikido in the world today and if you go all the way back again to ancient greece and those philosophical dialogues that were going on alongside the wrestling and pancreation that was based on the Socratic method and uh Plato's dialectic well what is that well it's quite a lot um like shadow work in the sense that you're asked to argue both sides of an argument so that you can see uh from a higher order perspective so what is aikido teaching us when we meet force with force we get into an argument and i think you've spoken about this online even in the whole notion of blending with taking someone's perspective first before you offer your own that's all that aikido is teaching is and judo is teaching that too when you're pulled you push and when you're pushed and pull so that principle of blending so there's a trend that's going on called um straw man versus steel man if you straw man someone else's argument um you are portraying their argument in the worst possible light and even putting words in their mouth to make the argument sound stupid so that you can one-up them or manipulate people to join your side but a steel man on the other side is can you mirror back to someone else their argument so well that they wish they'd said it themselves so you've truly taken their perspective you can see this in the sam harris jordan peterson debates that happened last year that's an aikido principle and again it's it's about harmonizing opposites and it's about reconciliation of conflict because again when you're in a debate or a conflict the purpose of a debate is actually not to win your side it's to pressure test and see what's true and evolve what's true from a third person perspective so you can even see um in some of the postings where people post two opposing videos and ask people to comment like here's one perspective here's the opposite the comment section is much more harmonious because they're forced into that third person objective perspective and to evaluate two opposites so that would be the first best practice i call it hashtag let's play catch which means i have to catch your argument before i get to throw it back so what that sounds like is what i hear you saying is did i get that right and then if you say no it's like this then i have to say okay what i hear you saying is did i get that right until they say yes yes you are hearing me you actually hear me and it's as simple as bringing in the element of inquiry with advocacy we're so good at saying what we think but we don't go into a receptive mode to inquire ask questions in other words or to receive and so of course we remain bullheaded and closed-minded and in group think non-critical thinking so that's that's first thing steelman and it would be fun to practice these with you at some point we offer these in our integral leadership coaching academy so again if you just study to be a coach then you don't know how to debate well or do this practice it's a totally different toolkit it's like doing boxing versus wrestling so we teach our leaders and leadership coaches to do this practice of debate so that's one very simple if at any point during that debate or any team meeting or any interpersonal interaction you feel triggered emotionally and you get angry or afraid or want to fight flight freeze or please as we say you can communicate differently so learning different feedback formulas but what the research has shown is it does not matter if you just teach people how to give feedback the harvard negotiation project after 20 years all their research they found out something else which is that they it was so important that they wrote a whole other book about it called thanks for the feedback which again is to say if you don't it doesn't matter if you teach people to give feedback if you don't also teach them how to receive it so imagine you and I boxing and only having been taught how to punch without being learned how to cover up or defend so that's the same thing that happens in organizations you give people offense and there's no defense so guess what giving and receiving feedback is a lot like it's a lot like a keto it's a lot like verbal judo you actually have to take their perspective first which means you mirror it back to them which is a basic mirroring which is can you even repeat what someone said but then you get into empathizing how does that impact them what emotions come up in them and what do they value what's important to them so being able to connect to why it matters to them and that's that whole move about you know connecting to their core and I keto the core is your core value it's your heart also in latin and then regardless how do you redirect that towards something constructive because we could sit here and blame each other all day and spin our wheels or once I actually hear that you're upset and it's because actually you value integrity and I didn't keep my commitment well what would you have me do differently what would what would you suggest and then I can hear that as your perspective and we're redirecting that energy towards a constructive outcome so it's not just the giving the feedback but it's also learning how to receive it and that is what conflict resolution is and there are many approaches to that nonviolent communication works well I've adapted it I call it values based communication for the business work that I do so that's full stop on the second one like interpersonal conflict and communication and you can again study that in a lot of different a lot of marriage and family therapy approaches have to do with protective taking as well in that sense and then the third one is back to mindset how do I deal with my ego in the first place when I feel triggered by you maybe I feel angry but maybe I feel hurt and this comes back to well yeah how do you deal with the ego does it inform me or does it affect me okay it affects me that's what shadow work is that's what inquiry is self inquiry is and again you can I think the first level practice would be to study mindsets and personality types and start to understand yourself a little better why do you get triggered by certain things and not others so there's any number of personality typing systems but there's disk there's Myers-Briggs there's anyogram depending on how scientific you care about that but they all start to get it the same thing is your ego you know what do you think you ought to be to be okay and what do you not allow yourself to be and that's your persona versus your shadow the parts of yourself that you haven't integrated for that are unconscious in you and you know then to actually get into doing shadow work that is the most important practice of all because it starts you know leadership starts from the inside out if you can't shift your yourself into a more conscious mindset how can you shift anyone else in the conflict or in a debate it's impossible so you have to look in the mirror at yourself first as a leader especially you can't say who hired all these idiots or how come this business isn't performing it's like that's a mirror for you there's something inside of you that you're not conscious of so I'll pause there and I think it would be worth going into a brief example of how to do shadow work as well if that's of interest but I'll just stop there as kind of the one two three well if you do you have time still I do have time I'm not in a rush let me double check then yeah I have I have yeah I have time sure thing so I I'm interested if that's a possibility for you to continue elaborating about the shadow self yes so and this is really the answer to the question in a world that is so hyperpolarized right now where everyone has um an inherent bias about the other side and they really only see the healthy side of their own perspective and they only see the unhealthy side of someone else's perspective how do you cut through that polarity this is a martial arts problem I'm the hero you're the villain I'm right you're wrong we're in a fight but as the old pogo quote goes we have discovered the enemy and he is us this is the whole thing that you see in the hero's journey the hero sets out on a journey that way as soon as he accepts the call to adventure and he confronts an enemy but the enemy actually shows him something about himself and of course star wars is great for this because you see you know luke I am your father there's a lot of funny videos these days of people showing that moment to their kids on youtube like they're watching that oh my god and this their reaction how they how they are so amazed like oh my god the bad guy is luke's father um but that that's what shadow work is so so to talk about it in this way the shadow is all of the parts of yourself that you've disowned or denied that are now unconscious and it goes back to your the way your personality forms in childhood so certain things are good and bring you love and approval and appreciation and other things that you demonstrated inside of yourself got you punished or got you wounded or yelled at in some way and so you adopt a personality a persona very quickly which says look at boys and girls for example boys are tough boys don't cry girls are sweet girls aren't bossy and so you immediately you split yourself in half and you start trying not to for if you're a boy you start trying not to show when you feel sensitive or sad and you keep suppressing it and suppressing it which means trying not to feel it because it got you yelled at remember you try not to feel it until it becomes unavailable to consciousness it becomes totally repressed now what this means is just because it's um unconscious doesn't mean it isn't present it's just pushed down and so the only way you tend to experience your own unconscious is through projection now this alone sets us up to do self actualization work because when we as Carl Jung said um projection turns the world into one's unknown self or as Osensei would say the enemy is within so when you get emotionally triggered by something that again is the litmus test that you're looking in the mirror at an unconscious part of yourself and you're making it an enemy and you think the enemy is out there but it's really something in here so take for ex let's be let's put it to work for a second um can you find that you don't like aggressive people can you find that myself yeah um I definitely was not one of them in the past like especially my Aikido days active Aikido days uh not that I find a time when you were with someone who was aggressive and you didn't like it sorry can you find just an example of one time like in your mind where someone was aggressive and it may be a triggered you I think I find multiple ones but I think the one which is on the front of my mind um I'm thinking if that if this example applies and the beginning days of my jiu jitsu and I still study in my home in my hometown on the day in Lithuania uh I was upset about people who would be you know too aggressive and rolling it's like I can picture like that's one specific role in my mind where I was like what the fuck are you doing yeah uh so yeah I don't know if that's an example yeah and just for everyone listening it's like find your own example and we'll just use it as an abstract example in principle and if you can walk through it with your own example then you'll make it more personal but um the simplest way is when I'm triggered by someone outside of me who is aggressive again I'm believing a thought that emotion says aggressive people are dangerous or being aggressive is bad and when I believe that then I have that reaction to that person but they're really just a mirror for something inside of me that I'm believing is bad so you can use simple four quadrants where bottom quadrants are unhealthy and the top quadrants are healthy and you can take any polarity like we started with aggressive and we're going to walk it through on that basis so let's say aggressive is a negative quality and we don't like that in them doing shadow work would be to look at maybe in that situation they weren't being aggressive maybe I'm just seeing it that way and so why would that be and what's the what's the positive side of being aggressive what's the upside of being aggressive what's the word for that maybe assert it oh okay does that work maybe a more conscious version of being aggressive would be to be asserted yeah or to take care of myself someone who takes care of themselves first is more assertive so then you look at examples can you see how that might be true about that other person and maybe it is maybe it isn't but regardless if if they're aggressive where and this is where you can start to look at the projection now where am I aggressive towards them that's the look in the mirror the finger pointing right I'm aggressive to aggressive people I get triggered about that and can I find an example or three examples of that where am I aggressive towards them and then you you go to the self so it's kind of three two one first third person they're not aggressive second person where am I aggressive to them and then first person I'm aggressive to myself I'm aggressive with myself what does that mean maybe I'm aggressive towards my own aggression maybe that's what causes me to repress my own assertiveness and when you can see it that way then you can see that maybe you think of yourself as a what would be the opposite of aggressive maybe you're a kind person and and what's the downside of being a kind person should answer what if you're too nice yeah well uh people can take advantage of you or that's probably the first thing yeah so you become passive which is also the opposite of aggressive isn't it so seen through that lens the enemy becomes the friend the person who I thought was being aggressive to me is actually showing me where I repress that aggression in myself and it becomes the very thing that I need to be more of an assertive person myself so the shadow is that I think you're being aggressive when really I'm being aggressive I'm being aggressive to you because I hate that aggression in you and I hate that part of myself and so how do I find a healthy expression for that aggression within me so that I can become more assertive and that's the making peace the reconciliation with the opposite that enemy becomes a friend inside of me so that I can call upon that part of myself when I need it so that's a lot of deep thoughts but it's three two one you know maybe it's not what I think it isn't aggression maybe I'm aggressive to that person who is aggressive maybe I'm aggressive to aggression in general and I'm aggressive with myself nice people are aggressive with themselves if you think about it yeah like I don't matter if I'm always taking care of everyone else so this is where this goes you see you find the aggression within yourself and you transmute it into something helpful and it because it's actually the thing you need the most it can save your life and this is what self-actualization is in that sense too you integrate all these different parts of yourself so that you're more self-actualized more autonomous as a human being so what question that that's a lot this is a very deep process it's like concentrated psychotherapy so what does that make sense or do any questions come up yeah no it does make sense it does it does uh I guess one of the things I wanted to ask in relation to this is the part of partly out of just curiosity uh so we spoke about before about the physical aspect of it and I'm wondering in your own way that you coach or or you mentor people I don't know which is the right term but when you work with people uh do you implement the physical aspect in this process as well or when you work with shadow it's and you work with your clients it's primarily through this process yeah so the I mean ideally um anyone who would come to the dojo it would be great that they it's like I want people to have coaches on and off the mat so that they are engaged in both but as far as my professional work the embodied leadership I do use it quite often for executive team off-sites or um CEO forum retreats and we have very powerful very transformative results from that so we do a clinch wrestling and we use that clinch wrestling to talk about the redirecting energy move and then we do perspective taking and they have tensions with each other they have conflict with each other and so we use that perspective taking process which is literally verbal aikido verbal judo whichever you prefer and they they say things they've been holding on to for months or a year maybe years and so they it provides a safe structure we joke follow the form to prevent injury just like on the mat so um it provides a structure for them to do conflict um safely it's almost like an isolation drill in jiu-jitsu or something um so that's been very transformative and the physical stuff gets people bonded and connected really quickly and then they also learn about how to breathe and be centered and relaxed so it goes well with the meditation that we do in that context um if someone wants to do a embodied leadership coaching engagement with me then yes that would involve regular practice in martial arts because again i love to see how people show up i've definitely done that over the years and then that pairs with whatever coaching work we do off the mat and it really is a pretty high octane accelerator for people especially if they're kind of plateaued or stuck in their development as a as a leader and otherwise the shadow work is more advanced but how powerful to have again teams um who are doing i mean think about a thought like you know he doesn't listen to me it's like to do shadow work on that thought what do you think you see in the mirror like well actually maybe he does listen to you it's not all the time that he doesn't listen to you have you ever considered that maybe you don't listen to him and then where are you not listening to yourself where do you not take your own advice so this is this is leadership how can you lead if you're not conscious of your shadow you're a hypocrite so again like you're pointing the finger at the people who report to you if you're the CEO so there's something inherent about leadership itself with shadow work because you have to be willing to you know in the it's like remove the thing from your own eye before you point out the thing in someone else's eye so you can see clearly and that i think again is the idea of move of blending so when you have teams who are willing to admit to each other uh and make amends for the places they have been in denial of what they're doing wrong it's the most powerful and most transformative thing you can do to build trust and connectedness on that team because again you're rolling it's like you're rolling together you go into the conflict you look at where you're open and you make amends for where you're open you tap out and when people see that you're willing to do that then everyone starts learning and growing together and that's the kind of spirit i try to bring to organizations as well is when we really grow ourselves we grow together which means we're more authentic we're tapping out where we have a growth mindset um you're perfect just the way you are but you could use a little work so when everyone's working on themselves and we're doing that together it does create that same feeling as in jujitsu um or whatever martial art you're doing where you're you're that in that that's your tribe you know that's your band of brothers and sisters um i i think that's the interesting thing is when you people don't like to do conflict because they think it will ruin their relationships but there's a there's a whole other level of trust on the other side of conflict and that's again the metaphor of being on the mat and rolling around bringing that aliveness to the engagement so that everyone's working on themselves everyone's growing but that we're using each other as the mirror you know to work on ourselves there's only a couple last questions i wanted to ask and one is more or less a continuation to what you just said uh which i was actually very intrigued about to ask uh something you just slightly mentioned today and i think you might have mentioned that in one of the our previous talks and meetings uh but i don't know exactly the answer so uh you mentioned about leaders taking feedback i guess it's again a an impression from a collection of the talks we have so just want to clarify so would you in your in your work would you take a leader and present him with the kind of challenge or or see exercise to meet up with his uh what's the right word employees and receive feedback from them would that be like a an active process that you would engage a leader in through your work yes and actually this is it's worth tying back to the whole thing about being spiritual or even being conscious in that sense it is just like the problem with aikido because business leaders um can have conscious businesses that are based on having a higher purpose like doing some good for the world like you buy one pair of our shoes we buy a pair for a person in need that's beautiful and they have core values that reflect that like you know open-mindedness and harmony and you know personal growth and all this really lovely stuff and they can still have uh the kind of organization where people just feel good and they give them bonuses and benefits um but they don't actually spar they don't actually bring the aliveness the feedback doesn't actually flow up so this is what i mean when it's it's a disruption it's something that is different that the approach that we use is is based on robert keegan at harvard and it's to do specifically with adult development and he called it actually the book is here and everyone culture but it's the deliberately developmental organization what would it mean for business to be a place that you go to grow as a person and how many people would say the place they go to work makes them better as a person so that requires sparring that and ray dalio's company bridgewater in his book principles came out uh the last couple years that's a lot closer to what we're talking about like yes leaders receive feedback they ask for it first it flows up but we're constantly pressure testing our ideas with each other and we're if we have feedback for each other we take care of that first personal feedback comes first so that we can get really aligned and coherent and high performing as a team and then we take on the problems the tensions in the business and you know dalio ray dalio talks about the idea meritocracy you want the best ideas to win not the biggest egos that's what we're doing in jujitsu or in mixed martial arts yeah you know you you want to be in a process of continuous improvement bruce lee again it's a process of continuing growth self actualization self actualization where you're constantly iterating and pressure testing to see what ideas are the best ideas and the companies who do that tend to outperform the ones that just have you know best places to work you know i've walked into companies that literally have won the best place to work in san diego for example and when you assess the team there's assessments you can do on teamwork like patlon chioni's assessment it's the whole pyramid trust conflict commitment accountability results the whole thing is red in the red like way below average so how can that happen that you're a best place to work but people don't trust each other you know they don't do conflict well no one's aligned on the strategy you don't hold each other you don't call each other out and you're you're more oriented to your own personal success than you are to the collective success of the team how does that happen well spiritual bypassing it's the same thing so feedback is the mechanism mechanism of evolution and growth that's what aliveness is that's the beauty of that philosophy of aliveness is the way nature evolves it's like you get bumped and then you adapt you get bumped and then you adapt it's a play it doesn't have to be a fight it's just aliveness there's there's movement there's freedom of speech and the way that we do that which again um is not unlike an aikido philosophy principle is perspective it's not even we have to upgrade the notion of feedback to perspective because feedback is the noise that the mic makes when it's you know like that's where the word feedback came from it's not very pleasant and it often does involve people telling you how you are putting you down but what if that feedback was just a perspective it's just the truth as I see it it's data interpreted nothing more nothing less hopefully that would allow us to have a more perspective rich environment where we're able to give and receive perspectives and it's not like carol dweck's research you don't have to be in such a fixed mindset like thinking you're a stupid person when you make a mistake there's more of a growth mindset where making mistakes doesn't mean I'm stupid it's part of how you learn I'm not a stupid person I might have done something that didn't work but that's such a huge developmental shift whether people are in shame and blame and they think of themselves as smart or stupid or there's just what worked and what didn't and what can we do differently so we keep growing and that's um that's what feedback or perspective being in a relationship to perspectives is all about and I find that um empowers people both it's just like coming into sparring when you've never sparred before you're empowered to actually attack me I want you to speak your truth to me because that makes me better and then when it's my turn I'm going to do that for you too and we're both going to get better and that's that's the beauty of the aliveness and we can do that in a way that we don't have to trigger each other or have our egos be a part of it and if they did if our egos do become a part of it um then that's where we go to work on ourselves off of the mat so that we can still um grow our trust through this this messy human experience that we're having now you know of course we're going to trigger each other and piss each other off um when we're sparring or when we're debating or when there's real results on the on the line in the business but the beauty is when we get triggered that's happening for us when we have the tools to work on ourselves it's happening for us it's not happening to us because those show us our blind spots those show us um where we're stuck and it it puts us back into our process of continuous self transformation yeah it makes me think yet again about comparing it obviously to my martial arts experience and the think of traditional martial arts which is a term I try to avoid but I think it makes sense and let's see even more so Aikido which as you mentioned before it's a hierarchy based where the sensei is not usually questioned it's not encouraged no one encourages to question sensei and the feedback as well from what I experienced is usually quite tough it's top to bottom usually like the higher person tells you what you're doing wrong and that's usually just reinforcing what the sensei said versus an actual feedback when I look at the positive side of combat sports let's see percentage of boxing let's see percentage of so there's um there's the direct feedback where you tap and if you do the wrong move you'll quickly learn about that and you'll constantly be showing your mistakes and when I look and compare the leaders and it's a thing I'd like to bring up quite often in discussions or even in my personal expressions in that traditional model uh the sensei in a way it's a very fragile place to be it's it's it's like if you question the sensei usually the sensei gets upset about that or or shuts you down somehow and and and there's a lot of force and energy and it needs to be invested to maintain the the sitting position on the throne the respect and everything there's a whole complicated system to support it and but it's kind of superficial uh on the other hand what I'm transitioning from that to to combat sports I was very impressed by the other side of the model where you have the coach you have the coach exactly not the sensei right exactly master right right and what's interesting is that usually like everybody respects and loves the coach especially in the healthy place in a healthy gym or academy and it's not because the coach tries to enforce it not by any means but it's a natural respect because everybody's aware that that person kind of like similar to what he said that could be one of the points like he failed more than all of us all together he tapped out he could probably beat me very quickly and even if a fighter surpasses the coach there's still a tremendous amount of respect nonetheless he's not based he's not you know respected just because he's better but there's a whole sense of just an awe at that other aspects of of something that is just naturally proved to others without forcing it so it almost seems like those are two different models which could be applied on the executive level as well which which is yes we're very well said I mean to talk about the yin and yang again something which is rigid has a shadow of fragility and you see that in traditional martial arts it's too much static masculine repetition of form there's not enough dynamism there's no sparring and um so when you ironically when you go to sparring people think oh that's going to be violent if you're into aikido but actually what's what happens is you become softer and you become more powerful so the yin and yang start to mean integration and of course if your objective is to control someone without hurting them well then you're all the better at that um but it does require um breaking through the the top-down hierarchy and we call that a dictatorship in government you know monarchy maybe but one way or another functionally it is an absolute power and just the word coach is so brilliant because what is the purpose of a coach like a coach in his identity is satisfied because he makes his athlete better than he is whereas when you're in a top-down hierarchy oh you're never going to be better than the person above you that is you know off with their heads if you do that and so when I enter into a business culture you know I ask executive teams how many people who would say that the companies that they've been a part of actually um are democracies actually you're empowered to free speech you can say anything you want to the CEO and he'll say thank you tell me more why do you see it that way how many people actually have been to work in places like that so again my job if we're interested in culture transformation is to turn you know sometimes you have the benevolent dictatorship and that's okay the good king but it's again to break down that that power over dynamic so that a person is not a dictator it's like they learn to empower people the freedom of speech and that's what brings more aliveness to the team and that that also is the same thing as um what happens in martial arts it's like guess what not only am I not better than you in every single possible way um there there are a multitude of things like maybe I'm better in one dimension but you're better in another so you know you're great with boxing because you did that for 20 years but I have the jujitsu so you start to just have a more like egalitarian relationship to um it's a team as a team amongst equals and as they say in martial arts you know it's any puncher's chance when you really go for it it's like you don't know what's going to happen in a fight if you're all training the same kinds of things so that's that's what allows a team to be in a more interdependent relationship and that's where you get to a lot of the stuff that's so great with Phil Jackson and the Chicago Bulls you see zen basketball they brought mindfulness to the most winning team in the history of the NBA and they studied mindfulness and they studied team flow and it's like something else flows through that team it's like the navy seals that act like the amoeba like any person takes a lead and a former on that person so there's this amazing collective intelligence that happens um when you're able to set your ego to the side and form the network in that sense that kind of that kind of teamwork so the question before the last one and i i hope this will be one that can be answered in a short way but when you teach i'm sure it can be answered go short and long but just the basic concept of it when you work with a team i see that it should be such a huge challenge for a leader to to go into such a model because it's threatening for to in many degrees especially to if that structure was already there so i presume that there is a need for like a project for requisite of the leader to be interested in the process but i also guess that there's a i just try to imagine the way you do that work and i'm guessing that you're you're probably teaching both sides the leader to receive feedback like the right the correct methods and the team to give feedback in the right way or is it more than focusing on the leader or the feedback or or or both mm-hmm yeah great point i mean for those who watched jocco willink the other night on joe rogan he says something that i've said all along as well which is that leadership skills can be practiced like jujitsu techniques and if you practice them you get better mm so that is our whole approach it's it's not a two-day training it's a practice so feedback there's a form just like there is for doing an arm bar on a plot of triangle there's a form that you use to script your feedback and we agree that that's the way we want to communicate together because it's more effective and it prevents fights so yes you practice that you practice looking in the mirror at yourself and we do it together it is a community of practice um and the to keep with the theme of of interdependence of like how do you get to that team flow um there's a famous buddhist teacher ticknaut han and he said the next buddha will be a sangha which for those who don't know those terms like the next enlightened person the next buddha will be the community that's a brilliant phrase because in a leadership context it it's dispells the myth of the heroic rugged individualist like what if we can get more out of this business if we attempt to get more out of the team so that's how even if people ask me do i coach executives i would say mm i coach executive teams and up leveling the team dynamic is the best way to up level any individual executive yeah so if you don't have the team practicing together if you don't have the team giving and receiving feedback as equals imagine how far can you go as an individual on that team so that's the medium answer yeah all right that that was perfect that was great and i'm thinking you know this there's always i think we have so much to talk about uh that it's it's endless but but since it's on record it's always also good to kind of keep it in a certain frame uh so i think for for this one uh i'd like to ask the the final question which uh in the latest series of my podcasts i like to ask this question a lot so uh what would be your summary of this conversation great question well we started at the top talking about applied aikido philosophy and i would say to all martial artists that the value proposition of aikido is um nonviolent self-defense and self-development so um if you're interested in um practicing that on the mat then um obviously you need to practice in a way that deals with um nage uke like responding to attacks and like spar that way have someone attack you mma and try to take them down and submit them without hurting them and you watch the old gracey jiu jitsu videos and that's a lot of what that valetudo stuff is like so um if you are also interested in self-development off the mat you also have to cross train and i would do that um with the three core practices we talked about do it so i we it do shadow work study mindsets personality types work on yourself that or get a coach or therapist who can help you so the we space is the communication space study um perspective taking and conscious communication you could check out nonviolent communication or or sbi is another thing i'm also happy to share some resources of people want around how we do um communication and conflict and then third i we it when you're in a uh a debate whether it's at work or just politically these days practice you know hashtag let's play catch or steel man challenge practice mirroring back in fact set it up almost as if there's a moderator set it up so that you start practicing taking perspectives inquiring before you advocate and those three things alone um can change your life change your relationships um and put you on your own hero's journey and actually you just reminded uh the last bit where can people find you yes and i forgot to mention meditation as well but um i think that's a good good thing regardless that scientific research does show ecological development does um occur or is more likely to occur through the practice of meditation necessary they say meditation is necessary but not sufficient for psychological development but it creates the conditions where you're more aware so that of course is my foundation growing up as well thanks um so yes you can find me at integral martial arts on facebook um you can find uh polyester leadership is the polystra.com t-h-e-p-a-l-a-e-s-t-r-a.com if you are a professional like a leader and executive an l-n-d person or a coach we have an online coaching academy it's an online peer coaching academy so that is our virtual dojo of coaching yeah so you're welcome to join us on fridays and be uh in a dojo a membership based community of practice where we practice these tools so we practice coaching and inquiry um but we also practice the communication and um and the debate stuff too so that's our our mixed martial arts of of coaching academy and um uh yeah otherwise you can follow me on all the usuals youtube instagram and so on just by typing your name it's our name yes exactly uh integral martial arts we're on um instagram and youtube as well nice cool well thank you matamiel i really appreciate your your time and uh everything you shared here a lot of it really made me connect some dots and probably not everything was evident on video but there's a lot of things i'm thinking about these days and a lot of things you mentioned were like okay that makes sense that makes sense and these connect that's connect that connects i'm sure a lot of the things you've spoken about will come up in me as i will continue my journey and i'll probably quote you quite a bit glad and as a coach i have to ask you how would you summarize what we talked about what are what are your takeaways um i have i feel i'm inclined right now to kind of um look at what i personally gained i could look at the general structure and narrative of the conversation but i'm quite inspired about quite a few things you mentioned and relating to my own personal journey the emphasis of cross training uh on lothamatt and um the idea that especially if we look at the akito philosophy that it's not enough to just train akito to really embody it and that the cross training should happen not only physically but also on the mental level and trying different things uh also the idea of pressure testing applied at the executive level that's just how that whole aspect can be applied and the working environment i'm sure outside of it too but to be a very inspiring concept and what was the last thing i wanted to bring up um and yes the shadow side the the idea of bypassing the shadow side the importance of recognizing that it exists and that the regular spiritual practice may not be enough to to work with it and it's it almost seems like it's our own partly our own responsibility to to be aware of that and to make sure that we engage ourselves on that level as well not only on the spiritual level so those those were the free things that are at the top of my mind but there were plenty of things that resonated with me so thank you great summary yeah thank you great so yes i think as i said at the beginning of the conversation this is not the first but i also hope not the last talk i'm sure we'll have plenty of things to look at in the future and i'm very open to it anytime thank you thank you i was about to say there's still plenty of more things though i will one task i think it will be good to digest these things and take a look at them but but i'll be looking forward to connect up again in the future so thank you thank you rogues yeah