 Aikido is teaching people a way to protect yourself that is not about beating up anyone else, right? So it's not the goal. It's just how do I protect myself when confrontation goes awry and ideally through that process, I will learn to keep confrontation from, from getting worse. And what ideally Aikido wants to do is find a good result for that, right? And I would like to do it verbally. And so Aikido doesn't do a ton of training in this because that's not it's being focused. But through the training, I kind of learned this way to like understand where you're coming from, right? Get an idea of you, right? So the idea of a subi to tie your energy and my energy together. And that sounds like hippie stuff, you know, but, but in truth, like what it's about is you have an intent, you have an idea, you have a way you see the world. I have an intent, I have an idea, I have a way I see the world. Is there a way that both of those can come together that's good and beneficial for you and me both, right? And then Aikido teaches a system that falls down from there, right? So, so you can't be reasoned with. So you come to attack me. And so I try to keep distance. When you try to attack me, I try to suppress your attack, right? So I try to in some way keep your attack from harming me. And I try to remove myself from the line of your attack. And then if it can't be resolved in the other way, I will do the most limited amount of struggle I can to get out of there. That's what I want to do is to escape the situation. Now, if it got deeper than that, right? It was impossible for me to escape the situation. I believe Aikido is done as a system at that point. That's when you need to know jiu-jitsu or you need to know other things, right? But so Aikido, that's where Aikido spectrum lies. It lies everywhere from your intent. Mine differ all the way down to you're actually got a hold of me. And then at that point, it's like Aikido is not training that anymore. And it's the same as if I went to a boxing gym and I said to the boxing coach, Hey, teach me how to do headlocks. He would say, I don't teach that. I'm a boxing instructor, right? And so that's what I think Aikido instructors say when people come and say, teach me jiu-jitsu. It's like, well, I don't teach jiu-jitsu. I teach Aikido, right? Which is not the same kind of thing. Hey, everyone. So if you're following the journey or this new channel for some time now, you probably already are inquired and you know that for the past couple of months, I became interested again to look back at the Aikido world or even more so, especially the Aikido philosophy. And one level to ask myself, is there something I can salvage? And basically just recognizing that you know, there are reasons why I became passionate about Aikido in the first place. And it did do me some good. You know, I obviously, yes, I bashed the martial aspect and so on, but that's a whole other story. But there are good things there as well. And for a while, I was super negative about the whole thing. And it's not a time I'm super proud of either. And these days, I feel not only inspired to revisit and ask myself the question and inquire on how the Aikido philosophy could be applied in the most practical way, even if we are for a moment leading the martial arts aspect on the side. And another intention I have is I feel I'm at a stage where I don't want to be at war with the Aikido world anymore. I don't feel I am at war, but I know quite a few people in the Aikido world hate me, literally. And many misunderstand my intentions. But long story short, I feel like if we are to make any change at anywhere, one way or another, we have to find some kind of communication or some kind of peaceful way, Aikido philosophy, but basically a peaceful way to discuss about it. And even if our opinions are different, to find a way where we can work together. So this new series of rediscovering Aikido is somewhat about that. And the very last aspect that I just feel like I have to put in here is also one of my main parts of my personal philosophy is that life or my life is a lot about bringing unique value, as much value as I can to the world, but also as unique as it can be at the more valuable it is. And given my background and my journey, it's natural that I can have these conversations and bring some things to the table. Nonetheless, this journey, this story is not about me. And it's always best to go to the best to seek for answers. And that's why I'm always so inspired to talk to various experts. And in this case, I will be talking to Christopher Hine. Interesting story is that Christopher Hine has a similar journey to mine, similar martial arts journey. He also was a devoted Aikido student instructor. And then for a while, he pushed that away. He trained mixed martial arts and became an MMA coach. And eventually he started to look back at Aikido as well. So he kind of went through the path, which I went through and already he went through stages, which I am currently examining. So it's always great to look at those people who, you know, climbed the mountain ahead of you. And they can tell you, oh, look, there's this and that. So this is one of those amazing chances and talks. And the way I learned about Chris, it was, it was interesting because for the past couple of months ever since I brought up the rediscovering Aikido subject to the table online on my channel, numerous people kept writing me a comment like, oh, do you know Christopher Hine? And another person like, oh, do you know Christopher Hine? And those were, from as far as I know, I'm connected people to each other. And just like in periods of a few weeks, like there would be another and another person who would just ask me that. And usually I take that as a sign that I should, there's something there, you know, there wouldn't be, there's a reason why people are recommending it. And so I just have to take a look at it. And I looked at Chris's stuff and I liked it. And I realized I had a feeling like, okay, we're going to have something interesting to talk to it. And I was not disappointed at all. Not only that the whole talk is great, but also I was very impressed by how Christopher has really a well developed perspective and kind of clarified intention of what's Aikido. And also he gave a brilliant answer quite different from anything that I heard before. There's some similarities, but it was a fairly unique answer that I heard when I asked the question, what is the unique part of Aikido in the world? Like what can Aikido give that nothing else can? And I loved his answer. So, you know, stay tuned for the whole of it. But just everything he said, it's evident that he puts so much thought and intention into it. He knows this stuff, you know, he knows both worlds, martial arts, I mean, Aikido, combat sports. And yeah, his mind is really working in a very well defined way. And there's another aspect that I love that I don't want to spoil too much spoiler alert, I guess. But he spoke about the idea, the concept that Aikido is actually in its infancy stage, especially with only more or less the fur generation, you know, working things through. And that as much as it makes just pure sense, I realized I never thought about it that way because Aikido kind of establishes, it's funny to say Aikido does, you know, Aikido is a concept. But in the Aikido world, I feel there's more of a sense like, okay, it's already this thing. But when you take a look and take the perspective of what if it's actually just very well, very much about still being just to be discovered, what if Aikido is still in a stage where it needs a lot of work to really make it adaptable to the current world and relevant. So I don't want to make this whole talk about the intro, so I will let you to listen to the whole talk from here on. But those are a couple points that really stuck out to me and trust me, there will be even more great points. And even these, whatever I said, will be elaborated and expanded upon. So stay tuned, enjoy. And I'll be looking forward to see what you have to say about the talk in the comments. So I'll make it official and say thank you again for finding the time. There's an interesting moment for me that a number of people, since I started a new channel, which this video is going to go on, were part of the subject is rediscovering Aikido, me looking back at Aikido and trying to salvage and see what good things happened for me learning it. There's a number of people who directly recommended to check your material out because I saw you have to tell them thank you. Yeah, and I was like, I got interested from the very first comment, but I have this kind of, per se, a rule in my mind that if a few people say the same thing and connected to each other, usually that means there's something to it. And so that was, you know, the case with you. So I'm really looking forward to figure out what it's all about. Awesome, sounds great. So the first question or topic I wanted to bring up is pretty much your journey. I was told it's quite similar to my story. I guess there's some similarities, but I'm sure there's also a lot of different things. So if I'm just super interested. So how would you describe your journey? Where does it start? I'm going to try not to ramble on too long because a lot of these Aikido things tend to go with the teacher talking forever about their legacy of how they became who they are. But, you know, just some overviews of what's going on like. So I like a lot of people. I was a kid. I thought martial arts were super cool. I wanted to learn them. And of course, like everyone I wanted to learn the best one, whatever the best one was, that's the one I wanted to learn the most, you know, and I looked at a bunch of different ones and studied with different teachers and I did some kung fu and some nijitsu and different stuff, you know. And then I came across Aikido and I came across Aikido in an odd way. Actually, I was talking with a totally unrelated thing. And this guy told me this awesome story about how this Aikido teacher would blindfold himself and his students would try and hit him with sticks and he would get out of the way and this sounded awesome. You know, I was like, well, that's powerful stuff. Can you ask quickly how old were you or what year that was? So this is probably, I mean, I think I would just start at high school. So I was probably like 13, something 14, you know, whatever age you are in high school. And yeah, so I don't know what year that was. I'm curious though, it was not a big thing here, but Steven Seagal at the top of his prime at the moment because I know a lot of people were influenced by him in there. So yeah, that was starting to come along, you know. And so I didn't really follow that Steven Seagal out myself, although a lot of the people that I trained with early on, that was what drove them to Aikido. And to me, the stories is what drove me to Aikido more. And I read Aikido in anemic sphere and that really made Aikido seem magical and amazing. And that's why I wanted to study it. So luckily for me, there was a school here in town and it had a really reputable Aikido teacher. He had been to Japan and done all this stuff. And so I joined the dojo and then really took to it. I really liked it and did a bunch of Aikido and becoming Uchideshi. So I was a living student for about a year and I did it two different times. And I got my showed on and all that stuff and was really into it and was great. And you know, when I was a kid, I had kind of a hard upbringing and I got a lot of fights. So fighting wasn't weird to me at all. However, I got in a fight after I was showed on and the fight was whatever it was. But what shocked me was I didn't do Aikido, right? So like, look, I've been training all this time in Aikido. Why? Why was there no Aikido? It was weird, right? So that made me think like, oh, you know, I need to start looking at other stuff. Right? Well, in different stuff. So, you know, like, and this is like, you know, probably 19, I don't know, it's probably 2000, 2001 about now, about that time. And so there wasn't like, you know, UFC was around, but it wasn't a big deal. No one really cared. You know, it wasn't super huge deal. There was a local school that did Brazilian jiu-jitsu. There was a local boxing gym. There were some hardcore, like 1970s karate guys, you know, like they really were into it. So I went and visited all those different places. And my thought was originally what I thought was, okay, look, I've been doing Aikido, but in this like, kind of peaceful form based way. And so like, if I go train with these dudes, then they're going to really try and hit me and I'm going to do Aikido, you know, like I figured I would just learn to do Aikido. That's what I would do. So that went on for a while, and it wasn't working. And then I, through doing a bunch of research, I found Tim Cartmell, who's a Chinese internal martial artist. He's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. He's into competing and into doing MMA. And so I looked at his school and his school looked like what I wanted, right? So I saw him doing traditional stuff, which I was like, okay, I'm very familiar with that world. And his school doing tons of sparring and boxing and grappling and stuff. And so I was like, what, here's the perfect school where we'll marry those worlds that I want to marry. And under the guidance of someone like this, who's probably been through a very similar path that I've been through, he'll show me how to marry these two, you know? So I moved to Southern California and I started training in all that. And I was training in Xinyi, his hybridized style, which is called Shinwu, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission wrestling, some different stuff. And I discovered probably in the first like six months that there was no need to worry about Aikido because all this other stuff I was learning worked better. It just worked better. And so I wasn't pulling off Aikido stuff, but I was learning to pass someone's guard really well, which was highly effective. I was learning to strike on the ground, which was highly effective. I was learning to box, which was highly effective, right? So I was learning all the skill sets that were really, really good for doing that. And so I was like, why did I waste all this time studying Aikido? And I said to Tim, I was like, I wasted a bunch of time. And it's funny, you know, he's got a really good view of the world. And he said, you didn't waste that time, you learned to use your body and you learned a lot of good stuff. And there's stuff you got from it. It's just, you didn't learn how to fight. And that's okay. And I was upset. So if you look at early records of me on the internet, they're basically me going around to websites saying like, Aikido people don't know what you're talking about, right? You guys are dumb. It's not working. And at that time, there was no reception to that. Every Aikido person was just like, you're dumb. You don't know if Aikido, if you knew more Aikido, then you would be better at this and it would work out for you. But that wasn't what was, I knew for a fact because I went and did it. And I would tell people, I was like, we'll go wrestle people and see how it turns out for you. And everyone's off. We know how it will turn out. We're great at Aikido, you know? So that went on for a long time. And kind of my thought at that point, and I knew I was going to be a martial arts teacher already. And so I thought, I'll teach MMA is probably what I'll teach because I like that. And a friend of mine suggested that I go fight with the dog brothers. The dog brothers are full contact stick fighting group. So I didn't want to do it because I figured I was going to get beat up, right? Because I did all this Aikido and the unarmed stuff, the Taijitsu I learned in Aikido was useless in MMA. So why would I assume the stick stuff would work, you know? But through a series of events, I ended up at this tournament and I was fighting or it's not a tournament, it's like a meeting. And I did really well, like shockingly well. And with the guy who was there was a full fledged dog brother, a really good stick fighter. And I did very, very well. And it made me go, oh, Aikido does work at some stuff, you know? And maybe kind of like you said, you know, you're revisiting Aikido now, that's kind of where my head went, which is like, how can I revisit? Because maybe there's some good stuff in there I missed, you know? And I want to, if there's good stuff, I want to get it out, you know? Because I spent a lot of time doing it. So I couldn't keep training MMA. It just my heart wasn't in it in the same way because I saw that Aikido could do something and it made me start thinking in different ways. And I was like, maybe this is not what I need to be doing now, you know? So I moved back home. I got, I first I started teaching in the park. I was teaching Aikido in the park and it was this, no one would really recognize it like, you know, because it was this rough and tumble, ridiculous thing. That eventually led to me getting a house and we trained in the garage and I built a garage dojo where we literally just beat each other against the walls all the time. That's what we did, you know? And it was my process of trying to figure out what is Aikido, what is not Aikido, what's Aikido good for, what are other things good for, what is all that, you know? And so through that process, I kind of discovered a few important things. One that Aikido's techniques are based around weapon stuff, right? Which should have been a no-brainer because one of the cliches you hear about Aikido is Aikido comes from sword work, right? He was obsessed with weapons. I mean, most of the videos of him or him moving around with a stick or swinging a bow can or something, he really likes that stuff. So clearly that was important. And that also made wrist grabbing make sense to me. It made Shomen and Yokomon make sense to me because like if I'm swinging a stick or swinging a club or swinging a sword, those are the kinds of strikes I would have. So all that stuff started to make sense. And so I started to tie it together that it's like, Aikido has something to do with weapons. Then as I started, you know, in these garage days where we're really getting each other all the time, I'm trying to do multiple attacker stuff and it's impossible because I can't shoot a double leg on one guy and then deal with the next guy who's on my back, you know? And I can't like get into a clinch, set up a guy for a throw and not be getting beat by the other guy behind me. So I realized that Aikido can't be about like this little one engagement here, one engagement here, because you can't move fast enough from this guy to this guy to this guy, right? So I started to realize there must be something else involved in that. And then that led me to understanding that Aikido is not which, and this should not be surprising, Aikido is not about fighting, right? And I started to see that like if, and if we change the word fighting to struggle, Aikido is I don't want to struggle with people. You can't struggle with three people attacking you. It's impossible. What can I do? Well, I can learn the original lessons of Aikido. I can have my eye can keep good distance from them. And if they can't get to me physically, then they probably can't hurt me. I can make good blends so I can move cleverly off the way to keep them from getting a hold of me. If they do get a hold of me, I can try mostly to escape. And there's other stuff in Aikido, but I think that the main emphasis of Aikido is we look at Aikido wrong, right? So like my Aikido, I don't think it's really different from a lot of other people's. It's just my focus is not on what we call kumiyuchi, the struggle methods, right? And so that's like hens or the kyo waza, ikyo through rōkyō, or the nage waza, or any of this other stuff that's about fighting someone. That's not what it's about. Now, it's in the system because sometimes we can't avoid that struggle, but we want to struggle as little as possible. And in truth, we want to make an accord, you know? And so that's what kind of started to change my thought process. And in this meantime, Aikido Fresno, the school that I currently have, became available so I took it over. That further changed my ideas because it went from me throwing other dudes at my age who are athletic around and against the walls to now I've got to deal with some 80 year olds and now I have some little kids and now I have people that are not going to get slammed against the walls, you know? So I had to change my way of thinking about it and change my approach to what do people want out of martial arts? Not what do I want out of martial arts, but what do people as a whole want out of martial arts? And then once I started to change my perspective of what is everyone else want? What are they looking for? Then it's like, oh, I see, I see where this meeting of the two is as opposed to me going like, I want to be the toughest guy. You know, my journey started with Chris wants to be the toughest, awesomest guy that you could never beat up, right? And then that became like, no, what am I studying to help the rest of the world? You know, that's kind of the idea, the change in me in yours. I guess you kind of answered a number of questions I wanted to ask, but I think there's just so much more in them. So let's see, let's let's see, let's go with this one. So if you would have to define what is the place of Aikido in the world? And I'll just expand the elaborate a little bit. That's a question that does come up quite a bit, especially in the discussion about Aikido. And there are some arguments and counter arguments. And some of them are, if somebody is like, do Aikido because it's like moving meditation, but you know, then some other people would say do yoga, or do contact improv, or other type of dancing. If in terms of martial arts, efficient, it's not very efficient. I think we're on the same page here, or at least not the way it's trained in most places. Yes, yes, I agree. Right. So, so there's that difficult question of so, so what, and this is not to say that I'm, you know, I'm invested and I have, I'm saying like it doesn't have a place in the world, but it's something I want, I enjoy always exploring. So let's say if somebody asks you, so why does Aikido deserve to be or what's its place unique value in the world? What would be your answer? There's a ton of answers to that, you know? So my personal answer, like what I think Aikido is doing is Aikido is teaching people a way to protect yourself that is not about beating up anyone else, right? So it's not the goal. It's just how do I protect myself when confrontation goes awry and ideally through that process, I will learn to keep confrontation from, from getting worse, right? And so what I mean by that is your confrontations anytime you and someone else has a problem and both of your problems can't be resolved mutually easily, right? So, you know, like you hate my sweater and I don't want to take my sweater off. We now are in conflict, right? And so you could berate me and go that sweater stupid because of this and this and this, and I could tell you why my sweater is beautiful and I like it, right? So we're in confrontation and what ideally Aikido wants to do is find a good result for that, right? And I would like to do it verbally, right? And so Aikido doesn't do a ton of training in this because that's not its main focus, but through the training, I kind of learn this way to like understand where you're coming from, right? Get an idea of you, right? So the idea of a subi to tie your energy and my energy together and that sounds like hippy stuff, you know? But in truth, like what it's about is you have an intent. You have an idea. You have a way you see the world. I have an intent. I have an idea. I have a way I see the world. Is there a way that both of those can come together that's good and beneficial for you and me both, right? And then Aikido teaches a system that falls down from there, right? So you can't be reasoned with. So you come to attack me. And so I try to keep distance, right? You're like, I'm on a plane right now, Chris. I'm flying over there. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to be here when you get here. I want to keep distance between us, you know? And, but then you get here and you find out where I am and start to get close to me. And like when you try to attack me, I try to suppress your attack, right? So I try to in some way keep your attack from harming me. And I try to remove myself from the line of your attack, right? And so that's, that's basically what I believe the idea of Aikido is and what I believe the idea of Tainohinko is, right? So I'm trying to do that. And then if it can't be resolved in the other way, I will do the most limited amount of struggle I can to get out of there. That's what I want to do is to escape the situation. Now, if it got deeper than that, right? It was impossible for me to escape the situation. I believe Aikido is done as a system at that point. That's when you need to know Jiu Jitsu or you need to know other things, right? But so Aikido, that's where Aikido spectrum lies. It lies everywhere from your intent mind differ all the way down to you're actually got a hold of me. And then at that point, it's like, Aikido is not training that anymore. And it's the same as if I went to a boxing gym and I said to the boxing coach, hey, teach me how to do headlocks. He would say, I don't teach that I'm a boxing instructor, right? And so that's what I think Aikido instructors say when people come and say, teach me Jiu Jitsu, it's like, well, I don't teach Jiu Jitsu, I teach Aikido, right? Which is not, not the same kind of thing, you know, that was a long way to get to the answer to that. No, actually, no, that was the perfect amount. So what you're saying, that absolutely makes sense. And those principles sound like legit and appropriate, especially like for both self defense and kind of the mentality. One thing that comes to my mind is when I was exploring what is self defense, I came to a conclusion that what I like to say is self defense is 90% prevention. You know, people are too much about what happens when you're grabbed versus how did you get there? All the stuff that happened before, that's exactly right. So what you're saying really makes sense. Now, I'm curious though to ask, so when you're teaching a, like an Aikido class, so how similar does your curriculum look to a regular, I understand it's a troublesome thing to say, regular Aikido class because there's so many styles in schools, but there are certain tendencies like what we could say like our general Aikido. So if it's possible to compare what changes did you make in the methodology, how you teach and train those principles in an Aikido class? I got you. So the beginning of the Aikido training at my school is very similar to where it would be anywhere else. Ninth Q is where we start students and the focus of ninth Q is Tai Sabaki, right? So, and that's Koki Ryoku, how do I make force? Ashi Sabaki, how do I move myself around and Ukemi, how do I receive force, right? So those are the fundamental things. And I kind of look at that as like getting us all on the same athletic page, right? So can we all use our bodies in roughly the same way? Because until we can, we really can't train together much. So the focus of someone new coming into my school is the same as it would be in a lot of schools, which is how do you use your body? Okay. The second part when we get into eighth Q, we start immediately beginning with the strategy of Aikido as I teach it, right? So my approach to Aikido. And to me, that's something that's really lacking in a lot of Aikido schools is because, you know, you say like, how is Aikido going to help me? People say, oh, well, if people try and fight you, they won't be able to. Oh, well, well, how won't they be able to? Oh, well, we know these sweet wrist twists. Oh, well, how do wrist twists stop people from attacking me? Oh, well, it hurts real bad. You know, like it's this weird contrived like set of things. And instead, you know, at my school, like it all starts with, are you aware of what's going on? Right? And so that to us is Koku. Koku means the idea of being calm and ready and my calm and ready to receive the world, right? How can I get myself in a mental mindset that is calm and ready to receive the world? Cause if I'm freaked out, then I can't pay attention to what's going on. So the first stage is to be able to do that. And this is what I expect my eighth Q is to be able to say, right? Is to be able to understand this. So that's the first stage, second stage, someone wants to attack me. Can I keep distance from them? What is the minimum distance I want them to be to me? Right? So at what distance does it actually become scary? And at what distance is very unlikely that they're going to launch an attack. Okay. If that distance breaks down, how do I keep them from attacking me in that close space, right? Which is basically the idea of Ikkyo. And you know, we use the word Ikkyo much more liberally than I think a lot of Ikkyo schools. We don't use Ikkyo to just mean grabbing someone by the elbow and pushing them down. We mean controlling the arm at the elbow. So it's hard for them to grab me or get a hold of me or use a weapon on me or whatever. Then from that Ikkyo, how do I change the line? And that's Taino Hinko. How do I position myself in a way that it's so hard for them to hurt me? Right? So this is the strategic order we use at my school. And at eighth Q, I built, I expect people to be able to say this order, right? And I don't think it's sunk in very deep at this point, but they start to get the idea, right? And this is really good for when you're teaching kids, for example, right? So if you think you're going to teach an eight-year-old how to do Kota Geish. And then if someone tries to hurt that eight-year-old, they're going to Kota Geish him, you're a fool. It's never ever going to happen, right? However, it is possible for that kid to learn to pay attention when they're nervous. Oh, stuff's going on. I need to look at what's going on around me. Hey, that's a scary adult. Can I keep myself away from him? Either by putting obstacles in between us or by keeping a physical distance between the two of us, right? If you were to try and get me, I don't want to grab him and Kota Geish him. What I want to do is get to a good position and escape this guy, right? So that's the methodology we're using. The IQ to the way I teach it is the idea is always that we're on the weak end, right? So there's either more of them. They're armed. They're stronger. They're better trained than us. These are the things we're dealing with. So to confront directly, that kind of person is foolish. You will die. You will lose. So how do I not directly confront them, right? That's the idea. And then we don't get to, see, I believe the most IQ to schools really work a lot on forms training in one way or another. We don't get to forms training seriously until you're a fourth cube, right? So it's very far down the line for us. And then my expectations of that is that you start to learn the traditional form so you can pass those along and you understand where those would actually come into play as opposed to thinking that Kota Geish or Niki or something is what you're going to do when someone attacks you. That's a bad way to think of it. However, understanding the process that would lead you to having to do a Niko and why Niko would actually be useful, right? Niko is good for disarming. It's good for getting someone to let go of me. It's good to quickly move someone away from me, right? So things like that are good, but it's not something I'm going to dominate with. It's not an awesome powerful I'm the toughest guy kind of thing. And I think that's where IQ really rubs people wrong. And I believe that my interpretation is historically pretty correct. Now that's arguable. But nonetheless, it's my interpretation. And I believe that's historically where we went wrong is we got a bunch of young people saying, I'm going to be the toughest guy and Aikido must be that because that's what I'm interested in. Instead of saying maybe it's from an old guy who is trying to tell us how to not have bombs dropped on our country and hate towards other people, right? And when you read what he has to say, those are more the kinds of things he has to say than become the toughest guy, you know, become real strong. Like he's not someone like Masayama who's something saying like go punch a rock all day and get hard hands, right? He's saying a different kind of thing. And this is where I believe we get a skewed. And so the focus in my school is on that stuff, right? What I would call IQ, which is the ability to make harmonious interaction with someone else. How do I fit with someone else or they fit with me? How do we make that happen? Yeah, it makes sense. It absolutely makes sense. And I'm obviously digesting everything as you're saying and reflecting. And I do remember there is a point which I think it's quite often made that the people that were drawn to Morhio Shiba that day, his core students were young guys who were already training mostly in other martial arts. They revered him as the master. So they wanted to learn from the best to be the best kind of as he said, the toughest guy. And also it was a time when in the way I perceive it, it was a time when Japan lost the Second World War and the guys wanted to kind of bring back that pride of Japan. Like there's so many things which fell into place where I don't know if you heard the story. I heard Bob Nado telling this one that when he was studying with Morhio Shiba, he would go on rants, long rants sometimes, just rants. Maybe well long lectures instead of doing the class just about sharing his philosophy. And apparently there was a moment where two senior students were standing at the door and they saw someone coming into the dojo and they showed them like don't come, the old guy is ranting. And that story struck me because I presume it's true and kind of makes sense. And also I read like the Remembering Orsensi. I really like that book especially back in the day. A lot of stories where people who were in close contact with Morhio Shiba, they mentioned stories where he would reflect on Satan that actually I feel like no one is getting me. Or there's one quote where he said, I see people following me but no one, when I look back no one is really behind me and stuff like that. So did you get that vibe as well as you were exploring? So I really think and actually my original tip to this probably comes from Bob Nado too, which is like him kind of saying that this guy was saying a bunch of esoteric, weird things that was very hard for people to understand what he was saying. And especially you get a bunch of high school or guys in their 20s who are into fighting and got this guy talking about in and yo and the balancing of the harmonies and how the truth of the universe is already complete and victory is instantaneous because it already is and all this stuff. It's really hard for them to understand what he's saying. And so to me I think most of them just looked at what he could do. And then from that said, okay, I want to be powerful like him. So I'll do whatever he does. Although the stuff he's saying is kind of not that important. And I think in lots of ways it's the opposite. And I think Yoshiba said as much that it's like the stuff I'm doing really isn't that important, but the spirit in which I'm doing it and the way in which I make my practice is what's important. And I think that there's real truth to that. And it's hard because that's not concrete, right? It's not something we can really sink our teeth into. But Shomenuchii Ikyomote Waza is something we can set our teeth into, right? So it's like, I know what that is and I can practice that. The problem is that form is not the essence of what Aikido is. It's just a little piece of Aikido, you know? It's like pulling a spark plug out of your car and saying, this is the car. And it's like, no, that's just a piece of your car. I mean, it's an important piece. Your car won't work right without it, but it's just a piece of your car. So when we look at Aikido the way you teach it, who would you say is an ideal client per se? That's a term that I like to use, like ideal client. Or who is the perfect person for that type of Aikido? How would you describe that person? So I think there are two people who would really benefit from the kind of teaching that I do. And they're on two extreme ends of the spectrum. One person is a regular person who maybe they saw some violence or someone gave them some shit and they're feeling scared inside. And so the kind of person who looked, they're not going to devote their life to martial arts training, but at the same time, they want to feel a little better inside. And they're like, what steps could I take? What are the basic steps I could take to protect myself if someone were to hurt me? So that kind of person is really great. And then the other end of the spectrum is a person who has done a lot of fighting and is really well trained. And they realize that they can't always be the toughest person because look, it doesn't matter how much training you get. So let's say you're the UFC champ of the world. And then the second best and third best guy decided to team up and beat you. All your physicality is useless now because second and third are still going to beat first when they unify together and try to attack you. Or you could say, okay, take that UFC guy and drop him in the middle of a battlefield. How well is he going to do? There's a whole other kind of training that guy had to get. And he doesn't have that training. So even though he's a tough guy in one context, drop him into another situation. He's not a tough guy anymore, right? So it doesn't matter how tough you become. You always have weakness. And so what I believe Ikea does is find ways to work with that weakness. So instead of learn to overcome the weakness, right, which is the way of a lot of training, you know, oh, so you're physically weak, let's lift weights or you're going to hit rocks all day, or we're going to twist on each other or we're going to grapple and build mental fortitude or whatever stuff, right? That's cool. But there are certain things you can never get away from. So yeah, just, you know, you asked me essentially what kind of people would benefit from the way that I perceive Ikea. And I think either a, the regular person who's not going to try to become Billy badass, they just want to know what they should do if someone attacks them, right? What are the basic steps you should take? And then the other side of that is someone who is very comfortable and very tough. Yet they realize that the truth of the world is they can never prepare for every situation. So there will be situations where they're not the best, the greatest, right? And on that side of it, Ikea is a system that helps you learn to deal with those kinds of situations, right? And not by dominating, by having a totally different mental mindset towards the situation. So one more thing I wanted to ask and reflect about together with you. When I look at Ikea globally as a practice and I consider what are the challenges it's facing. One of the challenges I'm personally recognizing is that Ikea promises a number of things, including like, it depends on the school and the teacher, but generally they're sense of meditation, conflict resolution, maybe some type of philosophy. And one of the ideas I came up recently with is that you have to be good at what you want to teach. So this is where I feel personally, I feel like it sometimes struggles because some schools do feel like they are presenting Ikea as a means of self-defense, but the instructor rarely has a background in any self-defense discipline. Same can be said about meditation or philosophy. You definitely seem like you went out of Ikea to develop the skill set you preferably need to introduce all those subjects. So it seems like you are familiar with that journey. So how does that all thing sound to you? Do you agree with that idea that extra training needs to be there to teach Ikea the way it's supposed to be and did you have to go through that process specifically yourself? So it really depends on what you want to do, right? So I think there are a ton of people right now practicing Ikea. That Ikea for them is when they go to the dojo and they train Ikea and then they get whatever they get from it and then they go home and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, right? Perfectly great. I do a martial art and it's Ikea and I go do it you know two days a week and this is this is what I do. That's no different than someone who you know like I'm a hobbyist gym collector and I like to go out in the woods and look for gyms and then sometimes I polish them up and make a ring out of them, right? Now that person's not a jeweler, right? That person is a rock collector who hobbyists does that. And same thing with Ikea or any martial art. Now if you want to be a martial arts instructor your job to me is to get a big idea of the field, right? So you have to train in a lot of different things to understand you know what where your martial art sits on the paradigm. So there's the first part of it which is mastering your own art, right? How do I do my own art? Do I know what my own art consists of? And then there is what is everything around the art so I actually know where the art sits in the world because without that you have no context for understanding where your system ends and where your system begins. And you also have a tendency to make the art personal in the sense that you think that well because I want to learn to fight then Ikea is about fighting because I want to learn to meditate. Ikea is about meditating because I want to learn whatever horseback riding. Ikea is about horseback riding, right? And you see that kind of stuff a lot in Ikea where a teacher is interested in something else and they're like oh this is Ikea rock polishing or this is Ikea dance or this is Ikea whatever, right? So and that's because they're trying to put the context of their martial art in with the rest of the world which is what you should do but in order to do that as a martial arts instructor you have to understand other martial arts, right? So I mean the list of things I've done is huge since after I was already a black belt in Ikea because I wouldn't understand certain aspects and so it's like oh I want to learn sword fighting so I understand what that really is and so I go do historical European martial arts so I can understand more about sword fighting, right? Or I want to learn what is grappling really so I go do Brazilian jujitsu, you know? You have to understand these things and that doesn't mean you put them in Aikido. Aikido is already fine all by itself you don't hybridize Aikido but you need that understanding as a person so when you talk to your students you can say oh that's not Aikido or this is Aikido and here's why I believe that's not Aikido or this is Aikido, right? So you need to as a teacher complete your personal studies so you can come back and teach Aikido well. Yeah it does make sense and I like that thought of line and it makes me think about academic studies and to make it official on record I did not study so it's just what I personally gathered but when I think about even my friends, let's say a friend of mine who's a doctor now after like I don't know 12 years of studying, he had to study everything like and from what I gather it was not only just medicine it was like so many things around that and even in medicine there was the general medicine and only maybe after seven years or so he was starting to dig into a specific subject and I think that that seems to be true in pretty much any studies they're they're not just teaching one day particular field but they're teaching me everything so that you would have that versatility and better understanding of the whole picture so so yeah it makes sense to do that with an Aikido as well. One more thing to bring up and this came up before we went on record we spoke about being hated in the Aikido community I mentioned that I went through that and I experienced that and you said that it's a familiar thing to you too so can you expand on that? Sure so you know after I had the the meeting of the pack of the dog brothers and I had a realization that Aikido revolved around weapons-centric stuff you know and to me that was a huge realization because I had been trying it for years in Brazilian jiu-jitsu sparring and MMA situations and it didn't work and then all of a sudden this dog brothers fight all this stuff starts working and it's like this is miraculous you know so I told the Aikido community and what I really expect is going to happen is they're going to go oh wow that that was that's we had never thought of it that way and that's really smart and instead what I got was oh you don't understand Aikido and and I was like well but wait so let me explain my background so I explained what I did and they're all yeah yeah yeah your Aikido just sucks is what it is and so then I was like oh well I'm going to make videos then and show you guys what we do and if you do something more intense than this let me know so I have all these videos from back in the day of us slamming each other around and I put that up and they're like oh yeah just proves our point your Aikido sucks and so there was this long period of like just you suck and everything you think sucks and that's just the way it is and it honestly was very good for me because it forced me to look at what I was saying and make sure that I was right about something before I said it and I always would have the grain of I could be wrong and so if you're making a convincing argument I need to listen to it and I need to try and go that way because if you can't have the openness then you know it's the cliche your cups are already full you can't put anything else in it right and I want to keep learning and growing so if I have this closed down mind that I'm right and that's all there's to it but I also learned in that how to stick to my guns and go like I know what I I mean these truths are evident and I will show you why I believe these truths and if you have different proof then I would love to look at it but if you don't have different proof then I don't know where else we can go from here you know so so I faced a lot of that in the beginning where it was like you know you're stupid and everything you do is dumb and it was good for me actually you know at the time it didn't feel good it was a lot of me being grumpy but um but but the truth is it was good because it forced me to look at what was actually going on how is it now because your your a kiddo the way you teach it is not like the very regular traditional like you know uh do you get any negative comments people saying that this is not a kiddo or anything like that sure I mean I get lots of uh comments from people who are historians and pseudo historians who are like this is not a correct reading right and um that's problematic for many reasons you know and and mostly the way I try to address that now is that it's like this comes from me and I did all these things aikido being a big thing that I did and I had these realizations through training in aikido but this is my approach to aikido so I don't want to have a long historical debate which I think I would win anyways but I don't want to have that debate because it's not what matters what matters is you know what's the zeitgeist of aikido right now and how do we push that zeitgeist forward right because that is what informs people as to whether they want to do aikido or not and to me the aikido zeitgeist is simply um I want to learn something that resolves conflict ideally without having to do a lot of fighting you know if you asked you know you just picked a regular person off the street who knew what aikido was you said what's it about you know oh it's that art where you you don't have a lot of fighting with people and you use energy against if someone attacks you and it's defensive only or stuff like that's the stuff you would hear so it's like that's what people think aikido is so that's what it is um I also get a lot of um because now you know uh my tip is I I I don't believe aikido is about fighting so a lot of times when I show stuff and I'm like and here's where you could escape people are like Chris what you should do is crush the enemy there you know and it's like well I don't think we should crush the enemy and I honestly don't think that's the way you deal with life you know the landlord doesn't come over and go hey I'm increasing your rent and I crush him in the hallway you know perfectly capable of crushing the landlord but that would be stupid right I would then go to jail I'd be a bad person all kinds of problems come from that so the way I deal with the world is not to shoot a double leg and mount and and dominate right that's not the way I deal with the world I deal with it by making accords all the time I'm constantly making accords and aikido I see as a martial art to help you figure out how to make accords and so if it can do that that's what I want right so I need more accords in my life now that's not to say that the other side's not important and I've spent a lot of time doing other martial arts so I can learn to do that if I need to if I need to fight and struggle I train to do that and I still train to do that now but it's not the focus of my training and so I get a lot of haters who are like oh you don't know how powerful Nikio really is and it's like all right I'm glad you like Nikio but but I think it's about much more than that you know those are the two most you know historical arguments a lot of people like you're wrong and then people like you don't punish people enough hmm well you kind of brought up the the point yourself of the the mentality of aikido applying to everyday life and I'm curious to ask how much do you put emphasis of trying to make sure that that mentality is translated to your students and that that translates into their daily life and another part of that question is how how much of it is done by directly trying to explain it to them or or some other way and versus just teaching what you teach and knowing that those principles will get translated naturally so so how do you work through that apply the aikido philosophy so a big part of that I feel is after class conversation I'm available after class to talk about things and so usually we have talks often about aikido but a lot of times not about aikido as well you know like someone will bring up some situation that they had in life and we just talk about it you know and sometimes we'll talk about aikido philosophy applies to that directly like oh and I kiddo we learned this concept you know distancing like oh your mom likes to leech all your time and talk to you ad nauseam about she hates her new husband well maybe you could distance a little bit you know like so maybe we talk like that but also just like kind of talking about like thinking about the overall situation and how they play out and what I believe is important about aikido study is because it's a martial art a lot of times no matter what's said about it when you go into studying it you're like oh it's about decisively beating someone else and then the way I teach aikido is not about decisively beating someone else and so I think that also indirectly has an effect on people you know where it's like oh there's another way to look at the situation like instead of running at that guy who's looking at me mean can I keep space from him or can I smile and wave to him or how can I change the situation from being a direct conflict you know if you look at you wish you but people always say like oh you know he was so powerful a sumo wrestler couldn't push him over and it's like no read the story and it's like they wanted them to do sumo and you wish he but twisted it around to something that he could do well at right so he found a way that he could fit with the guy or like you know he gets in a fight with Abe sensei on in a bus and like instead of getting within a fight with him he said can you break my pinky right like that's not a fight but he twisted the situation into a way that was beneficial for him right and ended up being beneficial for both of them and so that kind of philosophy that is in everything we do um talking with the students after and trying to be as good of a representative of that as I can be right and so you know we all have our failings but as much as I can I try to exemplify those those attitudes and and not be a jerk and not directly attack people and like look at overall and give people the benefit of the doubt that's what I'm hoping comes out overall you know so I do believe that aikido training is mostly about the aikido which is how do I deal with a situation that's starting to get bad before it has gotten really bad but then there's all the other life stuff that goes into that that's like myself trying to be a good person being a good example for people and like giving praise to people who I see are being a good example you know if one of my senior students is like look at you know they did this nice thing and they were careful here and oh this guy attacked him but he didn't do that you know so giving those kinds of cues all the time is part of how that comes out and when you look at the aikido world yourself and maybe to give a few insights of my own I can I consider personally that aikido is more or less in a crisis and that subject does come out I don't know if things change or not I haven't been in touch with it as much but I remember like a couple years ago I think in the aikido journal Josh Gold pushed that subject as well and there's there's talks of aikido memberships declining or becoming older and younger and losing that kind of mid-range range of age also it does seem to have a bad reputation among other martial arts especially combat sports so those are my impressions I don't know if you will agree with that or not but but just when you look at the aikido world the community it's itself what are your thoughts when you think about aikido in general so I do believe you know I don't know if I'd say the word crisis or not like aikido is not what it once was and I think it feels like crisis to a big generation of teachers and here's why so you had Ueshiba then you had what I call the first generation of teachers which is a really huge group you know it's you know over whatever 40 years but all those people who were direct students of Ueshiba and they were teaching aikido and all those people I feel like reading their stuff now were trying to understand what Ueshiba was telling them that was the big push of that generation like let's understand what he was teaching and let's make organizations do that and let's spread the word and let's really figure it out then you have the second generation of teachers who inherited the system who I really feel like took advantage of the situation because you had Steven Seagal coming along and making aikido look cool so all of a sudden there's a ton of public interest towards aikido aikido is not sorted out yet honestly I believe it's not sorted out to this day and so like because of that you had this generation that could really kind of milk aikido and I think that's what they did and so I think they took a lot of advantage of what was available to them and they said like oh yes we have figured out aikido it's this great amazing martial art and could do all these wonderful things and if you pay me this much and I will be a guru on a mountain and and I believe they have this real experience with aikido that was cool for them personally but not great for the art and so by the time we have UFC appearing in the you know mid 90s-ish then and aikido is super popular you're seeing these questions risen that no one has answers for well so how would aikido do with Brazilian jiu-jitsu no one in the aikido community thought about that very few people in the aikido community are actual grapplers very few people have an idea of any kind of conflict outside of what happens in a dojo in this stage situation so very few people can answer that now the first generation of teachers after yoshi but they did go do with some of that stuff you know like they did go to foreign countries or they're challenged by boxers and different things and they did have to kind of make their way through the world and understand what that meant but the second generation had it really cushy and so when the challenge came to that generation they all just kind of collapsed they didn't have a good answer for it and so they pulled back more and they went into more movement stuff or more meditation stuff or more retreats or how can we I'm being a little cynical here but how can we squeeze a little more money out of it and and you know and go that route with it but that's what happened and so now the generation I'm in and you're in which I believe is the third generation of aikido teachers we're left holding the back and so now our job is like whoa what the hell do we do with this is should I just leave you know like I mean you certainly had the feeling and I had the feeling that's like maybe I should just jump ship because like this isn't working like what's working I'll go over there where it's working but then it dug into me and it sounds like right now you're having the idea did it dig into you too and it's like it dug into me and so it's like is there something there that I actually really value that's not MMA or not Brazilian shit too and what is that something and is it real and valid because if it's not real and valid I'm not gonna do it right but if it is real and valid I want to check it out and I want to I want to live up to the potential that that has right and so how can I do that you know and so I believe right now the crisis we're having is the third generation a accepting the fact that you're not going to be a rich aikido teacher right so that went with our teachers our teachers got to be that we don't get to be that you're not going to be unchallenged you're going to be challenged the whole entire time everyone's going to tell you you're stupid and dumb you don't know what you're talking about and you need to prove what you're doing and then we third have to figure out the system completely for ourselves for myself I need to tell you what my interpretation of aikido is clearly so you can understand it and so we can practice this thing that I'm professing and so that's what this generation has to do right the generation you and I are in that's what we're figuring out and sussing out for everybody and we have a lot of work because the second generation kind of sat on their laurels of Steven Seagal and amazing movies and new age mysticism and all the stuff that happened there right so that's how I feel and that maybe sounds a little cynical and dark but it's truly how I feel about it and it's like so to me it's now like if you want to be an aikido teacher right now we'll step up you got a lot of work to do you know like that's what's going on so let's do it let's get this work done because I do care about aikido I do think it's offering something interesting and unique and different to the world and I want to see that prosper yeah I like a lot the way you describe it and to be honest they didn't hear someone else breaking it down in that specific way I I can see the parallels of some of the common thought of lines but the way you structured it it's it's quite unique from what I hear but but really sounds really true so so I appreciate you bringing it up that way and and also the next question I want to ask maybe a bit controversial so you tell me if you want to answer that or not but so regarding aikido again when you look at it and the general way it's training if I mean I hate using that term but it's the best you can come up with um the would would you say uh that it's do you see it like it's a good thing and those traditional dojos can continue training that way and everything is going to be fine or do you see that it's not really good and it has to change and I'll just add a quick couple of thoughts of where I'm standing there I see some good in it I do like I do try my best to be more positive about it these days but some of the things I am upset about is kind of the delusions that is that it potentially creates and I went through that myself like even like the stories the legendary stories of more yeshiba it makes you believe that you know there's these all these supernatural things and and and there's the hierarchy which can make you somewhat submissive it depends on where which place you're training at but I know cases where that happens and kind of it it turns off the critical thinking at times because you're expected to just believe so there's there's quite a few dark things that I personally see and I think it sprouts I personally think it's a lot of it is systematic I think it's it happens because of the delivery system and so I'm not a huge fan of the way it's delivered although of course there are some good things there too but having said all of that where would you say do you stand when when you would have to again not a very fair question that if you would have to say good or bad where where do the scales go for you yeah I understand so to me if you can be completely honest whatever you teach is fine right so so meaning I think there's a lot of good stuff in the forms like me tearing the part of the forms apart for myself is what showed me a lot of techniques that I didn't understand were there and then in tearing one part I was like oh that's actually doing all of these things and I ignored that for a long time right so I believe you could get the the formatic you know I believe I could generally as you're saying it's hard to come up with the word for this but generally teaches like you know through forms training right so we're gonna do all these forms I believe the forms are an awesome old transmission method that can give you the system as as a way to use it right if you want to dig through it and get that out so I don't believe there's anything wrong with that but the teacher teaching that needs to say look I know I kiddo forms I've done them with all these different people over all these years and that's what I know is forms I have never been in a fight in my life I've never done any competitions I've never if that's where you're at then just be honest about that and there's nothing wrong with that you know it's like going to a little league baseball coach and and him telling you like I'll teach you to be a pro it's like well you've never been to the pros you don't know what it's like you don't you know so so just stay in your lane that's a that's a colloquial saying you know but like stay in what you're good at doing right so what you're good at doing say that if you have done a bunch of other stuff be fair and honest about that right so I have grappled I have yet not understood how grappling and aikido come together that's fair to say right I don't understand how that would play out I've never had someone shoot at me with a gun I've never had someone stab me with a knife right so be fair and be honest with with your actual life experience and teach it on your terms instead of always reaching like you know like oh well trust me this system is deadly well have you killed someone well no but um my teacher did once it's like well but you don't know what it's like so be fair and be honest about what's going on you know so I believe that it can be transmitted in a million ways but you have to be fair about what it is and I would say that what we all have to do right now and people really don't want to do this is admit we're figuring it out right that's what this generation's doing we're figuring it out and be honest with that this is how I see it I see it this way and here's why I see it that way and then look if enough of us do it in this generation we will kind of start to get a consensus of what how we feel about it you know this is my perspective and it kind of fits in with these guys' perspectives and this is a group who trains aikido in this way and if you want to do aikido do it in this way you know so we just have to be honest so I'm not down on anyone you know like I see like you know classic aikikai stuff like that's cool is it is it making life good for those people are those people enjoying doing it or are those people thinking they're becoming super soldiers because if you think you're becoming a super soldier that's a delusion quit quit that right now but if you think you're like wearing cool outfits and hanging out in a cool dojo with tatami and flipping people that's awesome and having a good time right like it would be like being an actor and thinking you really are a super sweet soldier you can you know kill in a battlefield it's like no you're an actor man that's what you do and that's cool and it's fun it's awesome and we like actors right I would rather watch Arnold Schwarzenegger film than some real soldier talk about stuff a lot of times because it's more interesting he's Arnold Schwarzenegger he's good at that and so if you're good at flipping people around in a cool looking room cool there's nothing wrong with that but don't think that that makes you super awesome at fighting right it's different things and so just be fair stay in your lane stay stay in the side of what you're good at or expand your horizons to do that thing you actually want to do. What you just said inspired me to ask specifically one more question and it's somewhat related to a story I do like to bring up sometimes I think one of the final crises I had in my personal journey as an Aikidoca as a person who identified himself as an Aikido person I was still a professional Aikido instructor at the day and the I was having a conversation with a friend and was a very good photographer and I asked him what do you who do you look up to like in the photographer realm and he told me like oh there's this guy and this guy and this guy he just said there's so many and without me actually expecting him to ask the question back he said so who are you looking up to yourself in Aikido and I was like that kind of shocked me because I realized I don't have an answer and I and I thought a lot about that and I realized there are people I respect like you see I guess you know and then some maybe Japanese guys like I there's I respect them but but even as an Aikidoca there weren't anyone like like if I per se if I train in Przenjutsu or MMA I'm like there's these guys where I'm like oh my god you know I they're so good and not to make them godlike not to make them you know legendary but there's like I wish I I look up to them and that pushes me forward and I realized I didn't have any more of those aspects in Aikido after maybe I don't know 15 years of training so that's kind of one part of the question but the the more important part is just mentioned the the generations the third generation who's trying to figure it out are is there anyone you're looking looking up to maybe is is a big statement but you you you respect in that kind of terms like saying like oh I like what the way that guy is trying to figure out Aikido or this guy or is there anyone you look up to in Aikido directly what's your situation about that yeah so the first part of that question I believe that because of what I say the second generation of Aikido teachers did I feel that we kind of have a shallow breadth of study or something right so when you talk about looking up to teachers right so I had a friend who was a professional bicyclist and he went to a physical therapist to do some kind of thing and he works the physical therapist worked on all kinds of athletes and he said the physical therapist said something to him you know like oh oh you're a professional bicyclist and he said yeah and he said oh yeah you know it's kind of a shallow step study a field or something like that like it's it's a it's a small study and and he was like what do you mean he's like well you know football players are a lot better than than bicyclists and he was like how do you compare those and he's like well to see football players there there's a lot of people putting a lot of money and a lot of people studying and so there's all kinds of people working on football all the time so we know a lot about football and we know a lot about the injuries they have and training ways to keep them from getting hurt and we know a lot about them because so much effort's been spent into it bicycling isn't really that big a deal you know he's like so not that many people actually work on it well it seems like when you're in the field it's a huge deal like in truth you're not you're not nearly as as deep of a field of study as football is right and so that made me think that it's like there are you know different areas because humankind spend a lot of of time in this area we're better at that so you can compare essentially apples to oranges two things that seem different but it's like no and so I believe iqido is really shallow right now right and I believe the promise is really big and so a part of the problem with who do I look up to is like well we're still just figuring it out you know like we're honestly just figuring it out and you know some people like oh it's been around so long well it hasn't been around that long you know it's it's really only been along since after world war two and it started spreading around here so there's a lot to figure out now we have a cool um oh my god plug this hate thing in we uh hey you grabbed me in my charger um sorry but uh so we have this cool idea that that we're working towards but we haven't got there yet and so so it's hard to look up to people now I do have lots of people who I look up to what they did right so for example um for example I really look up to like Saito-sensei I think Saito-sensei did a great job of organizing iqido as he saw it that's cool and that's what I respect him for you look at people like Shioda who really tried to push forward the idea of iqido what to the world right or Kishmara Yoshiba push forward the idea of iqido the world they did awesome things and I go like man that had to be hard and that's awesome you know um but as far as the technical abilities of iqido we're still all growing right now right we're growing a lot and so I think that kind of answers both your questions both in the big scope and the small scope I think we don't have enough experience yet to really have long-lasting icons so you saying 15 years of iqido I don't have anyone I really look up to anymore it's because we're still pushing you know like give it you know and there's there's no Isaac Newton's in iqido you know what I mean there's no you know like famous people who've been around for a long time who really did something totally mind-blowing right other than the founder it's been like degrees of things so so I think we're still working towards that so there's lots of people I look up to for little things like oh you did that well or you made a good group there or your students all seem cool I get that a lot where I walk into iqido Joe and every guy in the dojo is cool and I'm like good job with your dojo everyone here's awesome right like these are good friendly people and so like little victories like that but I don't have anyone that I'm like whoa you're so amazing you know but I'm not really good at that in general like kind of generally in the world I'm like oh we all screw up you know like and we all do good stuff too so that's a great answer uh speaking though of that kind of let's say contemporary iqido or pushing that that edge of trying to adapt it and make it reasonable and effective for modern society is there anyone not necessarily looking up that you're looking up to but but that is in your mind really cold I like what that guy is doing really I like what that guy is doing kind of pushing that those boundaries in iqido you're talking about yeah um so to me it's like I really kind of feel like a lot of what I'm saying about iqido is different than what other people are saying about iqido so so like I said you know I I am uh I am optimistically excited about some stuff that Josh Gold's doing I hope that he pushes iqido journal forward into the future and I hope it doesn't just become a commercial venture right and so I'm optimistically hopeful about that kind of stuff um there's a lot of guys doing cool little stuff it's like oh that's awesome um but honestly there's a lot of people in iqido right now and I'm not going to talk about them but there's a lot of people in iqido right now who I think are kind of doing the opposite and they're they're doing what what the generation before us did which is like sensationalizing and trying to market iqido but it's like that shit's done you know like we can't do that anymore iqido will just die because there's nothing to sell anymore right like let's talk about the truth and let's push iqido forward from where we're at now instead of going like oh I've got this awesome thing why don't you guys come get it from me like we're gonna go sit into bed on a mountain like all that's over in my opinion you know um so so like I'm excited about anyone who's doing some grassroots stuff there's there's an awesome group of people going like um uh looking at uh women's rights in iqido and how women have kind of been squished down for a long time and not been appreciated by iqido communities I think that's awesome that's some grassroots stuff that's like hey we we're valuable and useful people like why have we not been given equal credit in these organizations you know there's a lot of stuff I I think it's starting to happen in the iqido communities that's fantastic right um but it's like we're not there yet you know we're still working you know it'd be like being at the very beginning of the civil rights movement and saying like you know like like uh oh these are all my idols it's like no you're figuring out who your idols are right now you know so and I don't need to compare iqido to the civil rights movement as a terrible comparison but but what I do mean is we're in our infancy and so we're still trying to figure it out right um right towards my last questions and one of them is uh you have a youtube channel and uh I think there's many reasons why people can start a youtube channel but usually there is like a reason and I'm curious like what drove you to start a youtube channel and what's on it if you we can also make this into a plug yeah so I've had a youtube channel since 2007 so we've been around for a long time um and it really started out as like I said in the beginning of this interview as me going like here's what we do at my school what do you guys do at your school you know so people telling me I don't know what I'm saying and then it's like well this is how we train do you train like this do you know what training like this is like you know so that's where it began and then over the years like if you look at the channel there's different times where I'm kind of getting different stuff right so some stuff literally is just in my dojo we were working on Sawari waza and my students wanted to know how to practice those things at home so I made videos that they could go to and look at me doing them at home right so there's some of that stuff there's stuff where I feel like this is a good idea I want to put it out in the world and see what kind of feedback I get sometimes I put it out and people go that's stupid and I'm like okay let me think about it is that stupid right or people say hey that's great and we do this kind of thing so getting feedback is another thing I use for that most recently and we have a bunch of videos up right now it's because all the coronavirus stuff happened and so it's like my students couldn't come into the dojo and I want them to have aikido every day so like for the first month you know it was every day I put up a video so it's like it's kind of like training at least you're thinking about it and working on it and letting it process you know so that's what the most recent push was you know and now I'm kind of starting to feel like I have ideas that are worth hearing and so now I'm starting also to try and put out the ideas that I think are worth hearing right so how do people find you online there's lots of ways uh so I have a school website aikidofresno.com you can check that out and that's just our school if you're in the area or you want to stop by everyone's welcome to come here and train we have a podcast which is aikido discussed podcast you can find that on whatever podcast then you'd like to subscribe to we have aikidostudent.com which actually I just started revamping about a year ago it's got a lot of information about stuff articles I write and stuff like that about aikido so those are probably the main ways that you can check this I know the world is crazy these days especially with COVID and the states is not there yet we're traveling around this big but but do you also teach seminars like uh did your journey reach that stage where people are so interested to learn the way you work and invite you or I'm sure that's going to happen sooner or later if it didn't but but is that somewhat around the ready I usually teach this year I couldn't but I have been teaching for the last four years at a big thing in Vegas called combat con which is a meeting of different styles of martial arts so historical european martial arts and all kinds of different stuff so I've been teaching that I teach some but um mostly a lot of stuff I say is radical and like I said I went through such a period of like uh well you're dumb that I think I you know some bridges got burnt and things so uh I don't teach outside of my school all that much um but uh I do have seminars at my school pretty regularly um and now with the podcast you know so we've had a podcast now for uh over a couple years and and we've started building a following so I think some stuff's starting to come out of that but um yeah and and it's not you know like like I said you know I've got to make a living and so like everyone you know I do need to promote myself to a degree to make money um to to support my lifestyle but at the same time like I I'm I'm so turned off by all the like money grubbing that I feel like went on before that it's like as often as I can do things for cheap or free I do it and you know like to everyone's chagrin around me who's like why don't you charge more for that but it's like I I love like you know and I can't help but love it and so I I like to do it that no matter what right well that finishes my official list of questions but just the the last reflections I wanted to make uh first like the thing which probably stood out for me most which I really appreciate you bringing to the table is that idea of Aikido being in a stage of infancy I I never as as simple and in my language have a saying the genius lies in the simple and as simple as it sounds I kind of never thought about it that way and I think it's part of that is because of again my personal opinion but there's a bit of a in my experience there's a bit of an elitist kind of vibe coming from Aikido where you know we're that kind of I'm the sensei and so on and maybe that whole culture creates that sense of we already figured everything out and you know it's just others they don't understand us we're doing a good job and maybe I got into that illusion even myself to some degree but now that you said it just makes absolute sense that this is the generation which has to figure it all out and that it's it's a process it's just my hopes and expectation my hopes I guess is that uh more people will start to look at it that way because unless we recognize I think I like a saying that the first uh the first big part of solving anything is admitting a problem or identifying a problem and I think here it's kind of identifying that it's an infancy stage just opens up so many possibilities and ideas and so many pathways versus oh it's all done maybe we'll just tweak a few things but we're all good that just cuts any evolution so so really like I really appreciate you bringing that to the to the table awesome is there anything else you want to kind of summarize and reflect about or say to the audience whoever's watching before we finish up oh no that's that's a that's not a big question um no uh you know I I really just think you know if you're into Aikido be open to what it is and don't think it's already you know all summed up and also like you just said a second ago we kind of have to stop this guru mentality you know like I'm a regular dude right I'm totally a regular dude and I've said I keep a long time and I have a lot of opinions about it and I like it but I am in no way a perfect immaculate human and and neither is anyone else and you know maybe there is one but I haven't met him if there is so so it's like that's the that's the the way we have to make it a little more grassroots and a little more blue collar and a little more like we're all working together and we're trying to figure this out because the promise of the system is great right which is like this system that helps you become a better person through not creating more conflict not attacking other people but just being a good person and like that sounds great to me I love that and so um let's let's develop that you know and let's let's just accept where we are right now and move forward right