 Is a joke now and then, or a little lightheartedness, allowed when appropriate? Now, I'm assuming they mean in a classroom setting, is it joking around in the classroom setting appropriate? And I think it really depends on, well, who's doing the joke? Is it the instructor or is it the student? But when you did your Wing Chun classes, what was the formality like when you guys were on the mat? Yeah, I mean, it was an adult class only. And when we did it, it was a lot of humor, a lot of joking, a lot of, you know, when the instructor is talking, he would be very humorous and joke and fighting. But, you know, it was a very rowdy bunch of guys, actually, you know, fighting. So, you know, it would be one of those things where you would kick each other, trying to see if you can make each other fart louder. So, you know, kind of one of those things, you know, or, you know, hitting each other, whoever, you know, if you got your other opponent to throw up, you're the winner, you know, so it was a lot of fun, a lot of, a lot of joking. So, but, you know, if you're, you know, if you're a kid going, you know, if you're more traditional school where, you know, there's, you know, 50, 50 other kids and stuff, you know, that's where I believe that, you know, you should be a lot more serious. Maybe joke if you're separated to just, you know, spar off and one-on-one to just lighten the mood. So, not so intense, especially if you're trying to teach, if you're doing one-on-one and you're trying to teach someone a technique and they're getting frustrated. I think that's when a little humor, a little, a little humor to the situation to relieve them of their frustration will actually help. And I find that, that actually is where the good thing of joking in front of the whole class to distract them. I don't, I don't like that unless consumers, it's so hard to pop. I would only do it. I would basically, my thing with joking is more one-on-one. You're trying to teach someone a technique and they're getting frustrated or even, even sometimes, even when you're getting frustrated, that's a big thing. If you're starting to get frustrated with the technique and, and you just can't get it and you're start building up, sometimes, you know, stop, do a joke to make them laugh, you laugh, get that extra second in of calming down because you don't want to get frustrated out of somebody who's trying to teach you and help you, that's the worst because you're mad at yourself. No, that's actually a great point. So adding levity into a stressful situation can be beneficial. I think it really depends on the school because, I mean, you've got some traditional schools, especially, you know, if they've got a Japanese or Okinawan background where it's serious, like, you don't crack a joke. It's considered disrespectful. I mean, there's a lot of schools where you don't even ask questions. So if you're in that type of environment, I wouldn't start using humor out of, out of turn, but it can go the other way too. I mean, my personal experience, my first instructor, our classes, it was a bunch of teenagers, things were kept kind of on a lighter tone. I mean, it was a serious class. We couldn't goof around, but our instructor would, would crack a joke every once in a while. Or if we got, like you said, you try to like throw a little bit of humor in whether you want to raise levity or add some levity, that works too. But it can go the other extreme because I had another instructor who spent a lot of time starting off with humor and it started to get inappropriate. And the next thing we know, half the class became a stand up for criticizing and the humor started being directed at other practitioners. It was kind of getting uncomfortable. So there's definitely a line to cross. I don't think it should be allowed to the point where it becomes detracting from the class or the listen at hand. No, that's true too, because sometimes, you know, you go to class and there's some people that go to class and they're just doing to get out, especially adult classes, some guys, they're just they're getting out just to get away from their, you know, their families for a moment or even girls, imagine to, you know, just to get out and get away from their husbands or their families or whoever it is. And just, you know, they're using it as a social happy hour, not really that serious about it. There's a lot of people like that. And then it becomes and it can drop the whole whole class participation down drastically. Like, so if you use humor in the right way, I think it's beneficial. Like, actually, there's another incident I was thinking about. I had another guy take one with the actually, you know, very well. His action name is Dan, too. But we would do basically a technique and one of those things where if we drop our hand, drop our gate, you know, you're supposed to go and get, get punched. Well, instead of punching him is that, well, actually, he was doing it to me. Instead of punching me, he would give me a nipple twist. You would grab my nipples and twist it. And it's funny. It laughs. But let me tell you, you do it, you know, three or four times. You don't drop your hand. It's not just funny. It's also one of those things where, you know, you laugh, but you're like, OK, OK, OK. No, no, no. You know, it's one thing to get popped six times. There's another thing in front of everyone laughing as your nipples getting twisted. So yeah. So humor can be used as a great lesson to remember things if you do it. Oh, yeah. You know, great, a great joke, great, you know. So if you're trying to teach someone, you know, oh, keep your hands up. You know, if you just get slapped in the face ten times, they might not remember as much as if you, you know, if you poke them and, you know, pretend to poke them in the eye, you know, don't really poke people in the eyes, but, you know, give them the three stooches, poke them in the eye, hit them with that. It's one of those things where it just ingrains it in a different part of their brain that helps them to be like, oh, yeah, all right. When I keep my hands up, keep my hands low when you're doing when you're doing this drill, you know, move from here to here, watch this side. So humor is very useful in that aspect. Agreed. And Michael's agreeing with you, too. He goes, I like to know why students are taking the art because you have a zack of saying that some people are not there for self-defense so much, but discipline or just for the friends in the workout. Knowing that allows you to know when to push them to progress. So, yeah, so knowing why they're there is a good indicator of where that line is drawn. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, yeah, that's I mean, it's, it's, it's, yeah, that's it's hard because everyone's there for different reasons, you know, exactly. And I like we didn't do the nipple twisting class, but when I was teaching the kids, the kids are so forgetful. I mean, you talk about young kids five, six, seven, eight, you know, they're learning the coordination still. So for them to always have the social to keep with their hands up, it has to be repeated, repeated, repeated. And the one thing I would just do is walk around the class like if we're doing drills or doing punches in the air, they're short. I'm tall. If they if one of the kids dropped their hands, my hand was at the level. I just I just grabbed their face and took a step with them and made them take a step back. And they're like, it throws them for a second. I'm like, you should hand should have been up. And I just bring it up and I just grab it. Like if I can grab your face, can imagine what, you know, your opponent's going to be able to do. Oh, yeah, you just you just take them one step out of their comfort zone. They kind of like you've taken up by it. But yeah, it's it's a conditioning aspect. Yeah, I mean, you've taught kids way more than I have ever have taught kids. So I mean, I ask it. Let me ask you the question. Did did you find humor as a as a good tool to teach kids? In certain situations, yes. In certain situations, yes. Because there's times to when you're when you're doing an instruction and that's one thing you got to balance out because there's drills you could teach and I'll sit them down and talk to them. But if you're going to sit them down and talk to them for about a minute or two, that's fine. If it's going to be 10 minutes, you're going to lose their attention. So sometimes humor can break it up. Or if there's a kid that's struggling in the class, one of the things I would like to do is if he was kind of struggling or didn't have the full attention, I would actually call them up to the front of the class to demonstrate a technique. So I would hold the pad and I would like or hold my hand up and I let them do a punch. I'm like, OK, that's pretty good. But like, let's put a little more rotation into it, whatever. And they would hit me a second time and I would pretend like they just like slam my hand with a hammer. I'd be like, oh, wow, just like, woo, Superman, watch it there. And a smile will crack on their face. So if you can kind of get them to break whether they're not paying attention or they're nervous or they're mind somewhere else, sometimes a little thing like that can kind of snap them out of it or to make them feel good too. Because, you know, now you just show them in front of the class. Oh, no, I just hurt Mr. Dan. Oh, I'm good, you know. So sometimes I found the effectiveness in that. But there's also a drawback to when you've got a class full of 20 kids and a joke cracks, especially if a kid cracks a joke and they all start laughing, you got to get that under control quick or the whole class is going to unravel. So yeah, it's finding the time and place for it. But I did find humor can be, especially with children, humor can be a good tool when it reinforces something or as a confidence booster or just like you said, add some levity to material that might be a little bit dull for an eight year old to listen to for 10 minutes. So I think it's a good little tension breaker. Yeah, I could see that. Like I said, I am as more being more adult classes. Like I said, I find it more of useful, especially when people get frustrated. That would be the only time I would have, like, say, if you're. A good example is, say, if you're having a sparring day and everyone's around and watching someone spar and watching you spar or better that you're watching someone spar and they're having a tough time at it for whatever reason that day they're not making and they're getting frustrated. And they're getting mad. And at that point in time, I think, you know, if you can get a good, funny joke in where you can get everyone to laugh, you can't not as anyone expenses. That's the other thing, you know, especially if you can do it where it's you kind of direct the tension, get them to calm down for 10 seconds because sometimes in sparring, you know, it gets a little too heated. And, you know, and the person's getting frustrated and getting mad, not necessarily, you know, it's just whatever reason that he can't he can't get a combination in and he keeps getting popped on this combination and he keeps trying it because they want to learn it. And next, you know, they're going to end up actually fighting because over something stupid, you know, or whatever. And if you can sometimes tell a good joke, get everyone to laugh and everyone to calm down, just OK, you know, all right. De-escalate the situation. I think that's where humor is really good as a teaching tool in martial arts is to remember everyone in the in the dojos on the same, you know, on the same page, you're all trying to learn. You're all different levels that you're all trying to get together versus, you know. You know, start I mean, because let's face it, you get we're training sometimes to get, you know, training ourselves to get popped 50 times in the face and get popped in the stomach and and hit. You know, your tension goes up. You get you get mad. Oh, yeah. And you get mad, you know, and you sometimes you have to have your anger gets, you know, you put it on somebody else, you know, and you need to take a step back from it and instead of doing something stupid or, you know. Well, you know, that's it. This time I'm going to kick him in the balls. Yeah. Well, like you mentioned, sparring when Mr. Alex and say, Alex, good friend, good friend of the channel, he he will hold sparring days and we will go on sparring there. And the one main rule is it's all egos outside the door. We're there to have fun. We're there to kind of just practice, work out with each other. So there's a lot of humor flying. There's some fun trash talking, but it's always got that levity. It's never gotten to the point where, like you said, you start fighting, you start getting tense for people who actually start to really fight. There's always a sense of we're here. We're having fun. OK, yeah, you got me in the face. I'm going to crack a joke about how good your your your foot pad tasted. You know, it's always stuff like that. So it definitely can be a good bar to set for controlling whatever level of intensity you want for the classroom. Yeah, but the the number one thing I think you got to also watch out with the humor is not to be where it's your your basically attacking someone with the humor or are degrading someone's self-esteem or point of view with the humor. It's very easy to do that, you know, you know, it's very easy to like if someone accidentally slips and falls on their butt and looks like a moron because he's trying to do a kick just because maybe the last video, you got to be careful about making too much fun of that in too many times because you also don't want to. It's not the fact is, you know, like, OK, hey, martial art, you're supposed to learn, be tough and everything like that. But also, too, is they're there for they're there for a reason. You know, they're they're not there to get, you know, they're not there to get emotionally beat up. They're they're there to get, you know, learn how to defend themselves and get physically beat up, not emotionally, I should say. And that gets complicated, agreed. And Michael actually touches on what I was talking about with the work with the kids. He said, sometimes, sometimes humor helps break the ice or something, but the humor can then be a trigger that sends them down a goofy road. And that is hard to pull them back from because that one kid can turn into several and just be a distraction. So, yeah, there's definitely that domino effect there to be cautious about. So I like to use it like I said, when I brought the kid up, I'd like to use it in that instance, but you do have to be careful when it's in the classroom setting, because it absolutely is a cascading effect. And once you lose that control, it you're going to lose 10 minutes of your class just trying to get it back. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Like I said, you have far more experience doing, you know, kids teaching kids than I do, you know, that I am at most, you know, one or two kids for a short period of time. I don't know how you do like 50 kids in a row. It's not unlike the prison question is you have to identify who can handle what was appropriate for what what you what you could teach who because they find the biggest kid and take the biggest kid down in the first. Yeah, joke. That's not a lie. So this clip is an excerpt from one of our recent Art of Wendojo live episodes in which we talked about the martial arts and whether or not they should be allowed or taught in the prison system. Now, I'm going to challenge you on this topic right here on your beliefs. Do you believe that the martial art should be taught or should not be taught? We look at it from both angles. So you tell me what you think. Should the martial arts be allowed in prison?