Episode 824 - Sensei Aaron Hoopes
Sensei Aaron Hoopes is a Martial Arts practitioner and chief instructor at Dragon Mountain Kung Fu School.
Kids need to be out outside, they need to have their feet on the ground. And then teach them whatever they can do to move and stretch and breathe. I mean, it's sad that we have to even introduce that to our kids…
Sensei Aaron Hoopes - Episode 824
Breathing is an essential part of nourishing our bodies. Sensei Aaron Hoopes explains that it is also crucial in martial arts training to reduce stress and anxiety, enhance physical performance, and promote overall well-being.
Sensei Aaron Hoopes is the author of the book Zen Yoga: A Path to Enlightenment through Breathing, Movement and Meditation. Balancing yin and yang energies can promote relaxation and well-being and help individuals navigate challenging situations with more ease and clarity. Sensei Hoopes practices Tai Chi and traditional Shotokan Karate and is the author of seven books about meditation. He is also the chief instructor at Dragon Mountain Kung Fu School. As a passionate gardener, he grows much of what he eats, reflecting his commitment to healthy food.
In this episode, Sensei Aaron Hoopes shares his insights on martial arts as a way of life, the importance of breathing and its relationship to energy circulation, Taoist philosophy, and Zen Yoga. He is passionate about connecting with nature and gardening, so listen to learn more!
Show notes
You can follow Sensei Hoopes on social media through his Instagram (@reconnecting_to_the_earth), YouTube (@zenyoga), and Twitter (@zen17)
This episode is sponsored by Safest Family on the Block by Jason Brick
Jason Brick has dedicated himself to teaching others to apply their skills to protect their family and loved ones. Begin the journey to becoming the “Safest Family on the Block” with his book, “101 Tips, Tricks, Hacks, and Habits to Keep Your Family Safe”.
Use the code: whistlekick23 to receive 25% off!
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Show Transcript
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, episode 824 with today's guest Sensei Aaron Hoopes. Had a great time with this one. I think you will too. Stick around. Hey, if you don't know who I am, my name's Jeremy Lesniak. I host Martial Arts Radio. I founded whistlekick. I'm a passionate, traditional martial arts. I love martial arts, and that's why we do so many different things at whistlekick because I wanna do different things because I love traditional martial arts in all of its forms. And I wanted to start a company that was dedicated to getting more people to train. And you can see that in the things that we do. We connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world. In an effort to get everyone in the world to train for just six months, we're making headway and we appreciate all of your assistance. To that end, if you want to help us or a number of things you could do, you could check out the things that we do. This podcast, for example, share it with a friend or maybe buy something at whistlekick.com. But you can also support our sponsors. They go a long way to helping us grow and increase reach and pay the bills. Today's episode is sponsored by Safest Family on the Block. If you've been around a little while, you may know the name Jason Brick. He's been a great friend of the show, a great friend to me personally, I really appreciate him, but he's doing some really cool stuff with Safest Family on the Block, which is a podcast that brings together kind of all of Jason's areas of knowledge, martial arts, of course. First and foremost, but also journalism and something he's really passionate about parenting and helping parents gain additional resources. You know, he interviews some incredible people on his show about everything from self-defense and crime prevention, but also driving safety and emergency preparedness and mental health and all the sorts of things that are relevant in today's world regarding families. So I hope you do check out the show. It's a wonderful show. I've been on it and I really appreciate Jason's support of Martial Arts Radio. Now, there's also a book, just put together a book kind of following along with the podcast and it's 101 Tips, tricks, hacks. To make your family safer, right? There are a lot of things we talk about, stuff like this on the show, so if you dig what we do, you're probably going to dig this show, but also this book and I hope that you'll check it out because Jason's giving a discount of 25% to all Martial Arts Radio listeners. Use the code whistlekick23, that's one word. Hopefully, you know how to spell whistlekick. whistlekick23 and you can find Safest Family on the Block, on Instagram, and on Facebook, or you can follow the links in the show notes. I think that's a great place to wrap the intro because what we're gonna talk about in my episode today with, Sensei Aaron, is another way of looking at family. I'm not gonna spoil anything by saying more, but I think there's some synergy here and I appreciate when that happens. Synchronicity, if you will, my conversation with Sensei Aaron Hoopes. Hey there. Hello. How are you?
Aaron Hoopes:
Good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's happening?
Aaron Hoopes:
Nice to see you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You too. You know, it's been what, when did I see you? Six weeks ago? Something like that.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah. About.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. What's been going on since how it's been for you in the last six weeks?
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah. Diving into sort of summer stuff, getting the gardens going. I have a big homestead, so I do a lot of gardening and…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh cool.
Aaron Hoopes:
Growing food. Getting my classes going, the kids' classes. We're outside now.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cool.
Aaron Hoopes:
Lots of lots of stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Lots of stuff, yeah. This is summer in Vermont, isn't it?
Aaron Hoopes:
It is. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You gotta flip that switch and you gotta dive right in. Literally, just before I came on to talk to you, I was out pulling some last years I drew some artichoke canes out, you know, just like old stuff that had died just to get the new stuff. Some room. It's constant. Yeah.
Aaron Hoopes:
And I've got a lot of gardens.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Yeah. I finished up, I've got I think about 60 feet of raised bed done for the year. I just know I need to move on to the next.
Aaron Hoopes:
Nice.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Grow a lot of food too. Maybe, probably not as much as you, but…
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, I tend to grow certain things, a lot of, and then I have a lot of fruit trees and fruit bushes and various things like that that take up a lot of space and…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did your trees get hit with the frost? Your…
Aaron Hoopes:
I lost…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Flowers and buds.
Aaron Hoopes:
I lost maybe three or four grapevines and one apple tree. That was really young, but the rest is all fine. We didn't even have frost on the ground, so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, good.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah. Good. I'm up high enough. I'm like 1800, so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because I've spent a little bit of time with you, I'm gonna guess that these two things connect martial arts and gardening for you, tie together.
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, there's an old saying, how does it go? I'd rather be a warrior in the garden than a gardener in the war so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, absolutely. Is gardening something that's always been there for you or is that…
Aaron Hoopes:
Probably in the last 15 years, I've gotten really into it once I like healthy food. I like good organic, you know, food that's not gut, all sorts of stuff in it. And so I tend to try and grow a lot of things that I like to eat. A lot of onions, potatoes, fruit you know, lettuce, kale, spinach, peppers, all that kind of stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right on.
Aaron Hoopes:
So, and I just, I love the whole aspect of caring for the plants. I mean, my whole thing is about connecting to nature and you build relationships with the plants and feel the energy. So that's really…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned getting kids' classes going and they're outside. I suspect we've got some instructors who heard that and just thought, oh my god, kids outside. Keeping them focused can be tough.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah, at times, depending on what's going on. Like right now, they're just finishing. The school year is about to end and so they can be a little all over the place, but I just got these, I just found out about 'em. They're reusable water balloons that you fill up and you throw 'em, they splatter and then you fill 'em up again. They have a little magnetic thing or something.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, no way.
Aaron Hoopes:
Putting together. And so we're gonna have this big water balloon fight with them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, that sounds great. Sounds a lot of fun.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah, it's good. But yeah, you know, I've had kid's martial arts school going for probably 12 years now or so. And a lot of it's outside. As much as possible is outside. I have a dojo in the house, in the barn, but we try to be outside as much as possible unless it's winter.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Speak to that mark. It sounds like that's important, so if it's important, there's a reason.
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, it's very important. I think, you know, I mean, when having kids outside in their bare feet, running around on the grass is just, you know, that's the ideal. You know, kids need to be outside, they need to have their feet on the ground. And then, you know, teaching 'em whatever they can do to move and stretch and breathe is really an amazing thing to introduce. I mean, it's sad. You have to even say that. We're introducing it into their lives. They should have it everywhere in their lives all the time, but they don't nowadays. So getting that, getting them to be, you know, comfortable with that and loving that is huge for them. And you see it, you see it in their development as they grow up and, you know, they've spent their life. Being outdoors and climbing trees and you know, I teach 'em how to climb rocks. I teach 'em how to build fires. I teach 'em how to, you know, just spend time outdoors doing adventure-type experiences.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So it sounds like it's martial arts plus.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, it, we bow when we start, we stretch out, we breathe, we do some key home, which is some basic techniques. Then we usually do some kata. Then we, depending on what the day is like we'll climb a mountain or, you know, run around in the woods, in the winters, you know, if it's, if there's a lot of snow I'll send, sometimes I'll send a couple of them out and then the others will have to follow their trail to try and catch them. So it's, you know, it's sort of tracking and ninja work and, you know, kind of fun stuff like that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, they must love that.
Aaron Hoopes:
They do. They do.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's great.
Aaron Hoopes:
That's a good thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You said 12 years, you've been doing that for 12 years. I bet you've had some kids with you for at least a good chunk of that…
Aaron Hoopes:
I have.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Watch their development.
Aaron Hoopes:
Last year I actually had three that made it all the way to black belt. They've been with me for 10, 11 years. Started when they were six and seven, and now the oldest one is 18 and still comes. He's now helping me train the little kids. So they're, you know, it helps them establish who they are and give them a lot of confidence in their life.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I bet you get feedback from parents and probably different feedback from parents than maybe some school owners are used to because you're adding some of these other elements.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yes. Well, I, you know, parents are always kind of going to gush about how happy they are with their kids, you know? Yeah, and proud of their kids. And so yeah, they do see the benefits of, you know, how these kids start to you know, there's certain aspects that you teach 'em, you know, like kindness and generosity. And I have this whole set of precepts that they have to repeat. You know, they learn the Dojo-kun, which is, you know, your martial arts Dojo-kun, but also sort of these seven words like kindness and generosity and respect and honesty and integrity and what is that? And sometimes I have 'em write reports on it, you know, there's, it's, it, yeah, it is martial arts plus because I do a lot of other things besides just the physical aspect of it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Over the course of the 12 years that you've been doing this, have you always incorporated these extra things, these plus things like building fires, or is that stuff you've added over time?
Aaron Hoopes:
So originally, it started as a martial arts class. I started actually going to a few schools and doing kind of introductory classes. Sort of at the end of the school day, a lot of like Waldorf schools and alternative schools, and those children got interested in it and started coming to my place up here. And it kind of evolved from that. And, you know, after a while the kids want, you know, they, you know if they come one day and they're all kind of bouncing off the walls, you can't just sort of sit them and make them do punches and kicks, so you get 'em to do something different. And so we'll take a hike in the woods or we will, you know, do stuff different and then it really just started evolving into other things. Into creating sort of a, like the whole land up here now has trails and, you know tree houses and special, you know, rock ledges that they climb and all sorts of things up here that, you know, we just go out and explore and, and make up games or make-up things to do with 'em. And it just becomes its own thing. It's evolved a lot since the beginning.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's really cool. You know, one of the things that I've had conversations with a number of martial arts instructors about, especially those who are very beholden to the old ways of training. You know, we talk about how those don't always scale down to younger kids, and that if you, as you said, if they come in and, you know, anybody who teaches kids knows that they act differently during a full moon, right? So if you have a full moon class and they're bouncing off the walls, you can try to put the square peg in the round hole. But you do that too many times. They're not coming back, and if they're not there, you can't help them. I know you come from a rather traditional background. Did you have a hard time letting go of some of that?
Aaron Hoopes:
Not really. I just adapted. It was you know, I still keep a structure. There's a structure of the class. They come to class, they have to line up, we kneel down, we bow, we stretch. And then, you know, depending on where things are, we do whatever we're gonna do at the end of class, we line up, we bow, we, they all say the Dojo-kun, they actually learned it in Japanese, and then they speak it in English. And then we bow and there's, there's a structure and between the bows, the bowing in and the bowing out between that we're, you know, we're doing whatever we're gonna do. And that may be playing, that may be whatever, but they see that structure. I feel they see that structure as an important aspect. Even though it's not super you know, traditional martial arts, strict. There still is a structure that it's based around that they know what they're getting when they're coming to class. Sure. So it's not, you just show up and, oh, we're gonna jump in the pond today. You know, but it's there, there's a structure, and as long as we adhere to that basic structure, then we can, you know, branch out and do whatever else we're gonna do.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're calling it a structure, the word that's coming to mind for me is more of a framework.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah. Framework.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You set up these, I don't wanna call them loose, but flexible boundaries, which, you know, of course, we know kids need, you know when we were working together if a few weeks ago, you know, we talked a lot about my word for this parameters and it, I'm hearing a lot of that in there. Cool. Why not adults?
Aaron Hoopes:
Oh, I do. I have taught adults. When I lived in Burlington, I had a school I was teaching at UVM and I had a group of people that I took from white belt to black belt in the five years that I was living up there. And I do, I actually just, a guy just showed up and he's training with me now, and I've got a couple other people who are gonna join. So, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Alright.
Aaron Hoopes:
It's mostly the children because, you know, the children have the time and they're open and they're, you know, they're kind of these open books ready to be written. Adults have all sorts of stuff going on in their lives. I live out in the middle of nowhere where, you know, there's 400 people in my town. And getting, you know, finding a group of people that can come to me regularly to train is a hard thing. I've, you know, I teach them Qigong, I teach them Tai Chi, and just getting people to come all the way up here is always a challenge. But it's mostly, the kids are mostly, you know, local kids who live in the general area.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. Sure. Alright. Well, you've thrown out a few things. You mentioned Qi Gong and I know you have it's a show to come. Background as well.
Aaron Hoopes:
Originally.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Originally. And I know you've done a number of other things, you know, this is I have a little bit more know insight into you and what you've done than a lot of the guests that come on the show. But let's, you know, let's rewind tape. Let's go back to the beginning and how'd you get started training?
Aaron Hoopes:
So in the very beginning, I think I was maybe 10 years old living in Pittsburgh. Vermont was our summer house, but we lived in Pittsburgh and I joined some karate school that was on the main drag, and I must have done it for, I don't know, a year or so. And I have a few memories of it. One of the big memories is they were playing the Doobie Brothers while everybody trained. So it was kind, it must have been kind of a, I'm not sure what that was like. But anyway, it kind of, I got exposed a little bit at 10 years old, but then I stopped and then we moved to Vermont. And then I, you know, I kind of went in various different directions until I got to college and I managed to get into a good college, but I was sort of on a borderline of, you know, going off the rails. But I got into a good college and decided I really wanted to learn, get back into martial arts, and learn something. And I went to Tulane in New Orleans. And the local martial arts instructor who was teaching at the university to get students to come to his dojo was Takayuki Mikami, who was one of the very first all-Japan champions in the sixties. And he had been sent to the States to be one of the main instructors for the Japan Karate Association in America. And so I started training with him and really just got inspired because it just, it was just exactly what I needed to get myself on track. And so I started training at the school and then I went to his private dojo and started training. And I was, you know, I ended up training all the time. And one of his students was a fourth degree. Who was Chen Lam, who is a Chinese Tai Chi master and he had his own school, but he was learning Shotokan at the same time, and I got to be friends with him and just started learning Tai Chi from him as well. So I was doing Shotokan and Tai Chi sort of every other day, Shotokan three or four days a week, and Tai Chi a couple days a week. And so I got this sort of balance or you know, something of both the hardstyle and the soft style right at the beginning.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Contrast is the word coming to mind for me.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yes. The contrast of the hard style and the soft style right as I was starting. And that was, I really attribute a lot of my development to being able to, you know, get that hard stuff but also understand the soft flowing stuff as well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is so uncommon, right? Because you're a college kid and college kids usually don't want the soft stuff, right? So not only are you getting it, you're getting it in balance at, you know, most people that we've had on the show that have fallen into, I shouldn't say fallen into but ended up with some inner of Tai Chi, et cetera. It's decades later and it often comes because they recognize a contrast between what their body can do and what it used to be able to do.
Aaron Hoopes:
Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But you have these two very significant and different roots, so, continue.
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, so yeah, I thought it was just kind of normal. I was, I, you know when people start the martial arts, they kind of dive in headfirst or, you know, if you really get into the martial arts, you start reading everything you can and learning everything you can. And so I was in that state of just trying to soak up as much as I could. And the Tai Chi was, you know, he, Chen Lam was really into like pushing hands and learning the flow. And he incorporated, you know, various different, some even some weapons, some various, some sword stuff, different things like that. And it all was just exactly what I was fascinated by. And like I said, you know, if I hadn't have found the martial arts, I could have gone, you know, off the rails cause I was at that, you know, point in life where, you know, it's like, what am I gonna do? What am I doing? Who am I? All this kind of stuff. And I really found myself grounded in it and able to, you know, accomplish and gain something. And I picked it up, I picked up the martial arts rather quickly. I advanced rather quickly at that stage. And I found myself getting into all sorts of things that were related to Japan, like, Sensei Mikami couldn't really speak English. And so I started learning Japanese. And with another friend of mine who was at the university, we convinced one of the professors there to be our guide and allow us to design our own major. So we brought in a Japanese language teacher and started studying Japanese history, Japanese culture, and the language. And by the time I graduated, I, you know, I could speak some, and it just became the, it just, it was just like, okay, what's the next step? Well, I'll go to Japan. And so you know, I came back here for the summer and then, you know, September rolled around and I was off to Japan, and I was, I stayed.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What did your parents think about that?
Aaron Hoopes:
They were great. My father was actually one of the founders of the intercultural communications field. And so he was all about, you know, foreign languages and learning about other cultures and this and that. And so they were very, very supportive, of me going overseas and learning about other cultures. And so, yeah, that they were, I, you know, it was wonderful and there was no pressure to, you know, get into the mainstream of business or law or whatever, all that kind of stuff. So it was perfect. And yeah, I went to Japan. I didn't leave the country for three and a half years. And when I got there I had to get a cultural visa for learning karate. And so I got this visa from the JKA, the Japan Karate Association. But in order to maintain the visa, you have to train four hours a day, six days a week. And so I was.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah, I was like, full on every day. Like hardcore.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's a lot.
Aaron Hoopes:
And there was a group of us there was a pretty strong group of foreigners. This was in the mid-eighties. And there were a good group of foreigners there, but the Japanese, you know, the Japanese were the Japanese and they didn't, especially like the foreigners coming and trying to appropriate their martial arts or whatever. So there was a lot of headhunting. You got beat up. I don't think a, you know, a week did not go by without a black eye or a bloody nose, or a busted lip and bruises up and down your arms and legs, you know, that was just kind of standard stuff. Other, you know, there were some serious injuries as well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Where was your mindset at that point? Was it worth it? If you stayed there? It must have been worth it, but did it give you doubts?
Aaron Hoopes:
No, I was all in, you know, I got my black, I got my first degree before I left from McCamey, and then I got there, I got to Japan and trained pretty hard for like, it must have been two years. And then are you aware of like the Shotokan sort of lineage, so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
A bit, yeah. In college, I earned a brown belt.
Aaron Hoopes:
Gichin Funakoshi was the originator of modern-day karate. He came from, he went to Japan and learned, or went to China and learned karate or Kung Fu there, and came back and turned it into karate. And he had two students, Nakayama and Nishiyama. And when Funakoshi died, Nakayama and Nishiyama split. And Nakayama became the head of the Japan Karate Association in Japan. And I was able to train with him in Japan during my time there. And I actually got my second degree with him. And…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow.
Aaron Hoopes:
Virtually, I don't know it may have been a month or two months after that he died. And I had this really weird experience I'd trained in the morning. I. And I was riding the train home and all of a sudden I got this horrible, just really just dark down, horrible feeling. And I learned later that that's when he had died so it was kind of strange.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did you have a strong connection with him?
Aaron Hoopes:
I don't know how much he considered, you know, he had lots and lots of students and lots of foreign students and I couldn't speak very well at that point to him. But I had some kind of relationship with him. Sure. And went to his funeral. There were probably, I don't know, 5,000 people at his funeral, and we had to sit in Seiza for six hours, which yeah, did a number on my knees.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's, you know what, there's nothing I can imagine more Shotokan than a Shotokan funeral where everybody sits in a grueling position for six hours. That's the most Shotokan thing I've ever heard in my life.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It was a Kyoko Shin funeral, it, you know.
Aaron Hoopes:
I'm sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The six hours would involve getting hit with a Shinai while you're doing it.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yep. So, yeah. And then after he died, there was sort of a, I felt like it was sort of a there was a period of time where everybody was just sort of like, what are we doing? What's going on? And things continued. And I was training at Nakayama's Private Dojo called the Hoitsugan, which was being, the classes were being taught by Kawawada, who was one of the main instructors there. And that was a group of US foreigners, you know, from Germany and Chile and the US and Canada and bunch of different places. And we had a really strong group. And you know, we went to the All Japan Championships and went to the All Tokyos. And I think, I don't know, we might have gotten second place or something in the All Tokyos, and it was a really strong core group of people. But then by about 89. The rift was really starting to grow and the two factions that had broken off, broken apart from each other just got really political and you couldn't train with these guys if you were training with these guys. And it and I was really not into the politics.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What was the heart of the rift? I've heard people say, but you were closer to it than anybody I've talked to.
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, they just, you know, the two sides wanted to be the big cheeses and you know, it was interesting because there were guys I liked on both sides and I wanted to train with them. I just, I was just into training and I didn't wanna like get all caught up in that political stuff. And it kind of soured me on things. I also got a pretty bad injury and I just sort of felt like my time was coming to an end. So I wound things up and ended up coming back here. And it was interesting, you know, I got back here and everybody I'd known in college and stuff had gone under business school and law school, and they were all, you know, caught up in the whole rat race thing and I just couldn't relate to it. So I started writing books and teaching karate and sort of making my way through things and…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Talk about the books. You know, anybody who's written a book knows that you don't just, oh, I'm just gonna write a book, right? Writing a book is a tremendous amount of work and, you know, if I'm doing my math right, this is long before self-publishing.
Aaron Hoopes:
Right. Well, fortunately, my father, he had a publishing company called The Intercultural Press which was…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, cool.
Aaron Hoopes:
Which was books about intercultural communications. And it just happened at that time that they needed someone to, they were doing a series of books on how to go and live in different countries, and he was like, well, why don't you write the book on how to go and live in Japan? And so that became, that was the first book I wrote.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, nice. Did you enjoy that process?
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah, that was, I liked that I'd worked as an editor for some of his other books at the company, so I was like, okay, I'll do that. And I did that and that went really well. And so I, you know, I had these dreams of writing books and so I started, you know, started trying to do some of that. I wrote a lot of articles and various different things and nothing really. Nothing really happened for quite a while. You know, this was the this was probably 1990-91, and I don't think my first book was published until like 2002, so it was like 10 years or more that it took, or my second book, the, for sure, the first book was just kind of was there, but the second book was actually a real book that was really published by someone else kind of thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What was that book?
Aaron Hoopes:
That was called Perfecting Ourselves, Coordinating Body, Mind, and Spirit.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sounds like a lot of martial arts in that book.
Aaron Hoopes:
There was some martial arts in that book. It was, and it was really, I mean it wasn't strictly a martial arts book, but it was about the process of bringing these parts of our body and our, you know, the bringing the body mind, and spirit together into, you know, exercises and practices that we can do to help ourselves. Become better people. And it was really, you know, writing, it was a real process for me too, to try and understand, okay, I have this body. What does this mean? How does this work? What does this do? And in my mind, how am I, what am I doing with all these thoughts? And trying to understand that, and then what is that spiritual nature that exists that is beyond the body and the mind? And so that book was my, really, my attempt to trying to understand it myself.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So as you're going through, you know, I've written a couple books. I know they can be wonderful for thinking through things at a really deep level. And I'm going to guess that those books and those subjects were creeping back into your training and how you saw martial arts.
Aaron Hoopes:
Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Very much so. And about that time, I was living in Burlington and I was married to a Japanese woman and her parents were like, you guys live too far away. Why don't you come visit us and we're gonna take a trip to Australia. Come visit us. And so we flew over to Australia and we had a grand old time over there. And while we're there, her parents were like, why don't you guys move to Australia? It'd be fun. We are close. And her father was like a rich Japanese guy, and he ran a trucking company and he was like, we'll help you out and this and that, and whatever. And so we're like, all right, let's move to Australia. Why not? It's something to do and yeah, seems like an adventure. So we packed up and we moved to Australia.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Where'd you move to?
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, the first thing that happened is we had to get visas to go to Australia, and it turns out it was this long process, so we decided to fly to Japan and stay there while we got our visas together. And we were living in Osaka and like. I don't know, A week before we were supposed to get our visas, the Kobe earthquake hit, and literally like, you know, 5,000 people died. The whole, everything was turned upside down. It was a complete, huge disaster and it shut down everything. So we couldn't get our visas. And so we ended up spending six months in Osaka. And so it's like, okay, well I'll get a job. I was an English teacher, at a children's English teacher so I could teach, I could get a job pretty quickly there. And we found a nearby dojo and we started training there. And I started, it had been probably, I don't know, seven or eight years since I'd taken my Nidan test. And I go in there and I'm training with the guys and the guy's like, there's no way you're a Nidan, you gotta take your test for Sandan. I was like, I don't really care. You know, I got it from Nakayama, it's not really a big deal to take another test. He's like, oh, you gotta do it. So, So I ended up taking this black belt test in Osaka, and I was the only foreigner, and it was like the local university had, you know, like 10 students who were all going for their first and second degrees. And so the, you know, this whole line, this table with like five or six old Japanese guys are like, oh, well let's let him fight all of them. So I had to end up, I'm fighting every single one. And by the end, of course, you know, the last one is the, you know, the star of the karate team. And he is, you know…
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's like a movie years.
Aaron Hoopes:
His old. And I'm like, oh my God, here we go again. And so I literally just, it, I got into that no mind point where it was like, it doesn't matter what happens, I'm just gonna stand here. And if he steps there, you know, that would be great. And he stepped right there and I took him down and I hit him and it was just, and it was over. I looked up at the table, I was like, is that enough? And so…
Jeremy Lesniak:
I love it.
Aaron Hoopes:
So, and you know, and that was, I got my Sandan and then we were off to Australia. So we landed in Brisbane, ended up on the Gold Coast. I got a job as a Japanese-speaking tour guide. And spent, you know, the next six or seven years or five or six years taking Japanese tourists around the country, just having a blast.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cool.
Aaron Hoopes:
It was a lot of fun.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sounds like a lot of fun. What was training like for you while you were in Australia?
Aaron Hoopes:
So, in Australia, there was I got in touch with some Shotokan people, but I also started meeting other people, doing other things, which was really interesting. There was a wing chunk school nearby that I did some training there. And then I met this guy wonderful guy, really good friend of mine who does who still does Tong Long Kung Fu, which is praying Mantis. And we would spend hours and hours just like fighting each other and, you know, sharing stuff. And we ended up getting a whole group of martial artists that would get together, you know, a couple times a week up on the rooftop overlooking the ocean. And we'd all just sit and fight each other and, you know, exchange ideas about martial arts sounds. It's just, it was fantastic.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I didn't realize it until now, but that's one of my dreams. That sounds amazing.
Aaron Hoopes:
I'm actually starting it here. We've got a whole bunch of people that are into pushing hands and
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm in, I'll let you know when and where.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No ocean though. There won't.
Aaron Hoopes:
Right? Well, no, we got the mountains, but…
Jeremy Lesniak:
We do have the mountains.
Aaron Hoopes:
So I was doing that and at that point, my marriage fell apart and we got a divorce and I was sort of like, kind of, you know, trying to figure things out and I figured, I realized I really needed something that was going to get my head together. And I found the Australian Meditation Institute, which was right in the, on the Gold Coast nearby. And I went there and I met this woman who was the chief instructor. Her name was Shanti Gowans, and she was maybe 65. You know, every word that she spoke was just this magical sound. And she floated when she walked into the room, I mean, she, her parents died when she was four, and she was put into an Indian monastery. She's Indian. And so she was just this yogi. She really, she'd done yoga her whole life. And she had designed this whole organization of the Australian Meditation Institute in Shanti Yoga. And I was at this point where I just did what I did when I got to college. I jumped into yoga and was doing it four hours a day, six days a week. I would, you know, I'd, fortunately, my job was like I could pick people up at six in the morning, take 'em to their hotel, and be done and have the rest of the day free. And so I was able to do, to go and jump into this yoga training. And I did that for a number of years and eventually went through her teacher training and, you know, all this, you know practice of yoga and meditation. And eventually got to the point where I'm like, wait, what if you put Tai Chi and Qi Gong and breathing and all of this together with the yoga and, you know, make it into an art in itself? And that's really where Zen Yoga started, which is the sort of the training modality that I've, that I started called Zen Yoga.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. Talk more about that.
Aaron Hoopes:
Well, I just, I was just doing the yoga by itself. I found that it needed it for me personally because I was, I'd done so much martial arts that I needed more, you know, the breathing and the stretching was great, but then I wanted to apply it to something. And so I started turning it into an art, which it was, I call it the art of Zen Yoga. And it's really a martial art of yoga where, you know, you're doing the breathing, you're doing the movement, but you're also applying it to the movements and the forms and taking it sort of another, the next step forward. And I got a contract to, well, let's see, the perfecting ourselves. Then I got a contract to write the book from a Japanese publisher. And so I started diving into creating a whole Zen Yoga book. And I really felt that you know, Australia was a beautiful place. It was incredible. And I would, I'd been working I'd been doing the tour guiding, but then I got a job as a marketing director for an accommodation company. And we were building out this big huge accommodation website where Japanese would be able to come and, you know, log on. And it was early days of the internet kind of thing. And my job was to drive around to different holiday apartments all over Australia and test out the apartments to see what they were like and get the people who ran it to join our website. So it was just this great job of like traveling all over Australia and having fun and…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sounds terrible.
Aaron Hoopes:
And so we got this we wrote this big huge business plan. We had these investors who were gonna invest millions of dollars in setting the whole thing up. And then 9 11 happened and everything shut down. And the Japanese didn't even come to Australia much after that. And it was just like, oh geez, you know, time to do something different. So, and I had the book going and so eventually I made my way back here in order to get that on track and moving.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Was that a difficult emotional process to come back here?
Aaron Hoopes:
Not to a degree, but the thing was, my parents were here. They were getting older and I did really feel like it was time to spend some quality time with them cause they'd been so supportive my whole life. And so I wanted to be able to come back and spend some time with them and take care of them, which I ended up doing, taking, you know, real care of them for the last years of both their lives. So, and to be able to share, you know, the book with them. And my dad was an editor, so he, like, he and my mom both were editors and they, you know, they read through every single page that I ever wrote and corrected it. And we discussed, you know, concepts and this and that. So it was really a great process to spend that time with them. So, you know, I went back and forth to Australia for a couple years. I ended up being there for like nine years total And that was a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For a long time.
Aaron Hoopes:
And I think I would recommend to anybody to live overseas for a period of time. Just be, just so you get a view of the world from outside the sort of bubble that we're encased in here and there's a lot of other opinions about things.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes. That's well said. Okay. So here you are, you're back in the States.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you've written a number of books and you're, what I'm hearing is you are kind of molding this philosophy of what martial arts means to you in a rather broad's not the right word, perhaps unconventional amalgamation. And I don't see that in a disrespectful way cause you know enough about me to know that I have similar but different views, right? Mine is also an amalgamation. But what can be really difficult for someone with that view is how do you find people who are of like, mind, how do you advance this when you've brought it together yourself? And I wonder if that created some challenges when you came back to the States and you're figuring out what's next for training.
Aaron Hoopes:
So coming back here, I, you know, I was traveling a lot. I was giving lectures and talks on breathing and talks on stretching and workshops. I was doing all these whole health expos and diabetes conferences and brain injury conferences. I, you know, I just traveled around bringing all my books and DVDs and CDs and all that and schlepping it around and selling it and giving talks. So I got really sort of focused on that for a while. I think that for a period of time, I was totally content just sort of promoting that and going for it. But at some point, you get to this like the whole self-promotion thing gets old after a while and I got quite tired of it and decided that's when I really started coming up here and getting into the gardens and starting to, you know, think about other things like homesteading, what does that mean? And obviously still continuing the martial arts. You know, I was teaching at Dartmouth for a while. I was teaching a few other, you know, little schools and in my own groups teaching the Tai Chi form to, you know, a group of people who would wanted to learn and just that kind of thing. But really, Until I sort of, you know, I focused on the Zen Yoga for a long time until it became part of me and became something that, you know, I can just talk about without even thinking anymore, you know, how to breathe, why we breathe, what's the importance of breathing and how it affects the body and all of this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I, I'm not sure what the question was.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's ok. The questions on this show don't really matter. Like I said, just keeping you talking. Where do we go from here? We talk often on the show and we talk often as martial artists about bringing martial arts out into the world. It's something that we talk about, you know, almost constantly. And, you know, there's the, a very clear example of self-defense and being prepared and watching the door and, you know, wearing clothes and shoes that you know, you can defend yourself in, right? But as I get older, I find I'm much more interested in the other way, the way that you know, it sounds like you were into, at a very young age, how do I bring the rest of the world into my martial arts? How does my martial arts change, evolve, grow with me and continue to be the appropriate support structure for where I'm at and where I'm trying to go in life? And what I'm hearing is that that's a strong thread for your story. So you're back here and you're teaching at Dartmouth, you've got these other schools, you know, that's quite a bit bigger than what it sounds like you were doing before. It sounds like before was, you know, I'm, you're focused on one thing in one place, but it would. It had some turnover, right? If you're going, if you're teaching and lecturing, you know, you're all in with a group of people for a short period of time, and then you disconnect and you go on to the next group and there's an energy to that. And folks who have taught seminars, I've taught seminars. I know what that's like. It can be really intense and really rewarding, but you don't always get to help them. Move on. So is,
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah, it's a different thing teaching just a group for a short period of time, and then go to the next group and teach the same thing, and then go to the next group and teach the same thing. You get really good at teaching the same thing over and over again, but you, it lacks some depth. But I will say that while I was teaching like that, I was also doing some training. I was learning some white crane Qi Gong and Kung Fu and you know, a few other things that were, that I was maintaining my training with. But what I've, I think the way that it's evolved is, What I found and we have a group called the Hoitsugan Instructors. These are all the foreigners who were training in Japan under Sensei Nakayama. And we actually put together two or three seminars out in California where the, we got together and we taught a whole camp worth of training in the traditional style of Nakayama. And what I found is I brought a completely different kind of approach to, you know, everybody brought their own thing to it. But what I'm, what I found and what I have found in training with a lot of martial artists, not necessarily just traditional martial artists, but even, you know more modern styles is that there's a lot of focus on technique and stance and power generation and all of this kind of stuff. But there's the, it seems that there's less focus on the things that I'm really focused on, which are learning how to breathe properly and learning how to stretch properly because breathing and stretching, it's not necessarily martial arts, but it is what allows you to do your martial arts at the highest level. And so my focus is on really trying to bring the breath work, which is what I learned in yoga and Qi Gong, and the stretching, which is also what I learned in the yoga to the martial artists so that they can then bring their martial arts to a higher level. You know, if it's all well and good to practice a thousand kicks, but if you don't know how to stretch those muscles in a way that is not gonna hurt 'em, then you know, your kicks are gonna be whatever they are. But the more that you internalize the this whole system of energy flow through the body so the muscles are full of oxygen so that they work properly, so the body works properly. The more, the better your martial arts is going to become.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Makes sense.
Aaron Hoopes:
And so, yeah, that's what I do now, I, you know, if I go to a martial arts clinic or school or whatever, I teach the breathing, the stretching. And then once we've done that, then okay, let's try this, or let's do that, or whatever to apply this. And notice that the changes that take place when you are working with energy and working with your body in that way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I suspect most people in the audience can understand the stretching part. Flexibility makes a lot of sense. And maybe people are doing it for different reasons. You know, I think a lot of people stretch because they want to kick people in the head, right? You know, you're not quite articulating that as the reason, but. I think people can understand. Injury reduction in a variety of other…
Aaron Hoopes:
Injury reduction is a huge one that really is. I mean, the more oxygenated and flexible and energized your muscles are, the less chance they're going to rip or tear or strain or sprain or whatever, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
But what about the breathing side? I think for most people, breathing is a binary state. You're breathing or you're not. And if you're not breathing, you're gonna start breathing very soon or you're never gonna breathe again. Speak to that.
Aaron Hoopes:
Which is okay, and that kind of breathing is what I call subsistence breathing. That's unconscious breathing where you breathe just enough to maintain life. You know, you watch people, if you're s standing next to 'em and you see their chest, it goes up and down and up and down and it's unconscious. We don't have to think about it. We don't have to do anything. And in fact, if we had to think about it, then we wouldn't survive very long because all the other thoughts would make us forget to breathe. But this unconscious breathing it doesn't actually fulfill what we could become. And so I call it subsistence breathing because it's just enough to keep the body functioning at its minimal level, and most people are fine with that. But if you understand how breathing works, we breathe in oxygen that's converted to energy, that then flows through the body, and when it flows through the body, it collects the toxins and impurities, and then we breathe that out as carbon dioxide. So if that's the case, if the case is that we breathe in oxygen, it turns to energy, and then that energy cleans out and gets rid of the toxins and poisons, wouldn't it make sense to maximize that process? And so if we can learn to breathe deeper, longer, slower, then we take in more oxygen, which creates more energy, which gets rid of more toxins and impurities out of the body. And we start to realize that we can live in this more energized activated state, which is basically the principle of Qi Gong, which is about breathing and learning how to Well, let me correct that. I mean, that's more advanced breathing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure.
Aaron Hoopes:
But once you're doing this more advanced breathing, you start to feel the energy flows and the Qi Gong is actually learning to cycle and circulate that energy through the various vessels and meridians of the body so that, that energy goes to everywhere that it needs.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay? So again, with the contrast here. If someone wants to become more flexible, they know what to do to do that maybe they're not doing it, but they understand enough of the principles to know where they are versus where they want to be, and they can probably self-direct that path. Maybe, you know, source out some things, but the breathing as simple as subsistence breathing is I think for most of us, far more complex because, what do you mean there's a different way I can breathe and okay, now, now I've heard, okay, now there's another way I can breathe. But where do I start? So given that the audience is primarily martial artists, what would you, where would you have them start on that journey if they so chose?
Aaron Hoopes:
Okay, well first, lemme go back to something you just said about the stretching.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Aaron Hoopes:
Because here's the thing. If you learn to breathe properly, and then, and this is basic yoga. I mean, if you've ever done any yoga, you go into a yoga stretch into whatever stretching position you're gonna go into, and you hold that position and you breathe. And that breathing in that position sends that energy that you're generating to the part that's being stretched. And so if you can migrate that to a martial arts setting. If you can learn to breathe properly and you go into your martial arts stretching, which are, you know, maybe different from yoga stretches, maybe not. I mean, I've created a lot of, there's a 8,000 different yoga positions of stretching, so that covers a lot. If you can add the breathing to the stretching, then that's going to activate that process of the energy circulation in the body. And so it really starts with learning how to breathe consciously. And I think this is something that I started, oh, must have been 30 plus years ago, is when I realized how important breathing was. And, you know, the conscious breathing. Once you realize how important conscious breathing is and you learn how to do it, then it's just a matter of remembering to do it on a regular basis. And I think, you know, 30 years ago I was like, wow, this is so important. I'm gonna try and do it every day. And I may not have done it every single day, but I remembered like, oh wait, I gotta breathe and I'll do this breathing practice. And it's like putting a pebble in a jar. You know, you take a deep breath, you put a pebble in the jar, next day you take a deep breath, you put a pebble in the jar, you know you got a couple pebbles in the jar. But after you practice this for weeks, for months, for years, you're filling up that jar. Now it really starts to be something. And this is the same principles behind martial arts, same principles behind yoga, same principles behind Qi Gong. The more you practice, the more you effort and time you put into it. That's the whole meaning of Kung Fu is time and effort put into doing something that is what creates that ability to get the effects, the be the effects and benefits of it. And so the learning how to breathe consciously remembering to do it on a regular basis, that allows the process to activate inside the body and get that energy moving. And it takes longer than martial arts, honestly. You know, the Qi Gong, Qi Gong is a 20, 30-year practice until you're like, wait a minute, what's that energy I'm feeling? You know, it takes a long time to get there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is it worth it?
Aaron Hoopes:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's worth it because it enhances everything you do. Now. You learn to breathe properly and you add that to your martial arts that just, you know, then you, then it just takes it to a whole another level really.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So if people wanna get started, you know, they're like, okay, I'm in. I get it. Where do they start? Where do you send them? Do they start with a book? Do they have to seek out a person? Do you want them to go do yoga for a couple years?
Aaron Hoopes:
I would say just start breathing. I mean, you know okay, so you lie down on the ground, you put a book on your belly just below your navel, you lie down on the ground, you put a book on your navel, and you close your eyes and you breathe in, and you try and push that book up as you fill up your belly. So the whole process is you want to engage the abdominal muscles, so you're breathing down into the abdomen. And what this does is this concentrates the breath in the lowest part of the lungs. And then you can take a deeper breath and fill the lungs up from the bottom if you take a moment to concentrate on your own breath. We're really just breathing with the top part of the lungs, very shallow. And so you learn to breathe down into the belly and expand by pushing those abdominal muscles out as you breathe in, filling up. And then you contract those muscles, then you exhale. And it's really that simple. It's really learning to breathe with those abdominal muscles, using them to draw the breath deeper into the body, and then using them to exhale and push it out. And we could go into 150 different practices or hold the breath for this long, hold the breath in, hold the breath out, circle it through, you know, do, there's plenty of exercises and practices to do and you know, I'm more than happy to, you know, teach that kind of thing. But it really starts with doing a deeper breath practice on your own for as often as you can. And then what happens is once you start doing that, you start saying, wait a minute, I'm feeling something. This is doing something. And then sure. Then you can start to explore. Look for you know, I've written a book called Breathe Smart and is, which is just about how to breathe properly. It's part of Zen Yoga. It's part of numerous other experts on breathing have written books on how to breathe. You know, there's it's not a complicated thing, but it's something that needs to be recognized as an important aspect of really everything. It's not just a martial art thing. Now, breathing will enhance just about everything you try and do in your life, even just playing your life.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things I've been working on, is, you know, I deal with some anxiety stuff and it forces my breath shallow. And one of the easiest things I can do, it doesn't completely dismiss the anxious feelings, but if I can focus on my breath, it rounds off some of those corners, they're not quite so sharp, and then I can take some other actions. It's been, you know, that realization took me a very long time.
Aaron Hoopes:
And you know, I think in martial arts training, this is one of the really most important things that's missed because we can train all we want in the dojo, but if you go out into the real world and you're confronted with someone acting aggressive towards you or acting aggressive towards someone else, the first, very first, most important thing to do is stop. Breathe, center yourself, and then decide how you're gonna respond. Because if we just respond off the top of our head, chances are that it's not, may not be as well thought out as it should be on, oh, what are the ramifications of me stepping in and punching this guy in the head, or whatever it may be. If we stop and do that breathing, that brings you back into your body to start with. And, martial artists need to be centered in their body so that they can then decide how to respond and react to whatever the challenges that appear before 'em. And so taking that deep breath, taking that moment to say, wait a minute, I'm gonna be in myself before I just go off the handle. That's a huge important part of martial arts. And, I think that's probably one of the most important, you know, we, as people living in this society and I'm talking about the majority of people they live with this sympathetic nervous system activated all the time, and by sympathetic nervous system. It's this fight or flight mode and the stresses and anxiety of daily life in the world cause us to sort of be in this state at all times. And what that does, it's like it raises your blood pressure, it makes your heart beat faster. It makes your adrenal gland secrete cortisol and it really is detrimental to relaxation and digestion and all these normal bodily processes that are supposed to keep us healthy and sane. And so if we live in that sort of heightened state, and then something happens that puts us, that would normally take us from a relaxed state and put us into a heightened state of fight or flight, if we're already in that heightened state of flight or flight, first of all, everything causes more anxiety or stress. And if you get into an actual real situation where you are, where you need to be in a flight or flight mode, there's no contrast. You're already there. So you're already wound up and then, oh, something happened. I'm, how do you get more wound up? It's just, it's terrible for the body. It's terrible for the situation. So the breathing takes us down into that parasympathetic nervous system, which is all about relaxation. It's all about letting that stress go. It's all about reducing the anxiety, allowing the body to digest any food we've taken. It's really, it allows the levels of the adrenal cortisol to balance out. And so, it's as martial artists, it's almost our responsibility to, I mean, if you're a traditional martial artist or any martial artist who follows, I call it the way, you know, the way of a real martial artist, you know, integrity, you know, nonviolence, respect, honor, truth, all of these aspects of what it really means to be a martial artist following the way, then it's kind of our responsibility to take care of ourselves so that we aren't just flying off the handle or aren't all wound up in tension and stress and anxiety when something comes along that we actually have to deal with. And so that's, I dunno, that's where I'm at.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm with you. What's next for you?
Aaron Hoopes:
I miss that, what?
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's next for you? What's coming?
Aaron Hoopes:
What's coming? Well, like I said I have a regular group of guys that I hike with and we've started pushing hands when we get to the top of the mountain. And then I've got a number of other people, some of my students have, are now, you know, grown up and going away to college and so I'm gonna start up this adult push hands group where we get together, we breathe and stretch, and then we start pushing each other around and, you know, getting grounded and it enables us to do, you know, physical work against each other without injury, without a lot of ego, without a lot of, you know, anything. Just real good solid training. So that's a major thing. I've got a couple new students who starting to take things to another level. We're gonna, I think we're gonna start a YouTube channel of original forms that we've created. And yeah, you know, I've got this book that came out. It's called Reconnecting to the Earth. And unfortunately, it came out right like a month before Covid hit. And so it kind of just got completely sidetracked and I haven't really been able to get that back on track because now it's kind of too late. But I still am very into connecting to the earth and helping people find their connection to the natural world because, you know, we're in kind of a state here in our present day and the one thing that's really going to help people get themselves relaxed and feeling better about life is to get out in nature and start to realize that we are connected to everything on this planet. And that's really what Daoism is all about. It's, you know, the Dao is everything and we need to be in relationship with the plants and the animals and the trees. It's not about, you know, it's not about taking advantage of them or exploiting them or consuming them. It's about a relationship with all these living beings that we exist on this planet with. And I think we've pretty much lost that concept, at least in the mainstream and it's not for our highest good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I would agree with everything you just said there. If people wanna find these books or follow you, get in touch with you, anything like that, website, social media, what would think about?
Aaron Hoopes:
So I have @reconnecting_to_the_earth, reconnecting to the earth on Instagram. I don't know. I kind of get sick of social media, so I, you know, I don't post a whole lot…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure.
Aaron Hoopes:
Anymore. I have artofzenyoga.com, which is all about my Zen Yoga practice, and I think it has my Chi Gong class that I do online. And then reconnectingtotheearth.com is the book. And any contact us on those pages will come directly to me. So I can think anybody can get in, contact me with me that way I'm, you know, I travel and do some, like I you're all in weekend. That was fantastic. Really enjoyed doing that with you guys. Hope to do some more with you. I've already...
Jeremy Lesniak:
For sure.
Aaron Hoopes:
Been over and seen Tommy a couple times.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, great.
Aaron Hoopes:
We're doing stuff. He's gonna come over here. We've been doing some training together.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For the audience, that's Tommy Gibbon. I forget what episode number he was, but he's been on the show.
Aaron Hoopes:
Yeah. Yep. And yeah, you know, I feel like the state of the world is, we're in a place where we need to kind of get ourselves, dial ourselves down, and take care of what's important. So I'm focused on that, you know, community, local community, food production, various things like that, that now we're not gonna change. The one person isn't gonna go out and, you know, change all that's wrong in the world, but we can work on our small little local place to get that going. And, I want to touch on this. This is like really an important point. I think we might have talked about this at the OM weekend, but it's this idea of Yin and Yang. And I think if, you know, the, the concept of yin and yang, it's the white and the black circle with the them flowing in each other and the yang basically represents the active, the expression light outward, outgoing, masculine, I don't necessarily want to use that word, but that, and the yin is the receptive, the inward, the dark, the soft, hard and soft is probably the best. Internal is Yin. Soft is Yin. Hard, external is Yang. And I think my sense is that most of us in the world have, and the world itself is a bit too much Yang right now. Everything is hard and outward and rah rah loud and all this. And if you have studied the yin and the yang and the Tai Chi, you don't want to be in Yang all the time. It's really if it's about a balance. And when I say balance, I don't mean, oh, we have half yin and half yang because half yin and yang is not really the answer. And the best way, this is the best explanation of that is, is chocolate milk. So if I have a glass of milk, if I have say a whole cup of milk and a whole cup of chocolate and I pour that chocolate in the milk, it's just gonna be a mess like pudding. Okay? But if I have a glass of milk and I take a little bit of that chocolate and I put that in the milk and stir it up, then I have really nice chocolate milk. So if the yin, the soft is the milk and the yang is this little bit of chocolate that you put in the milk, then you have very nice milk. By putting just a little bit of yang. You don't need to put a whole huge amount equal to the milk. Just a little bit. That's what the balance of yin and yang should be. And so we, as martial artists, if we can stay in that yang place, which is the receptive, which is the soft, the accepting, the gentle. It doesn't mean that we're weak. It doesn't mean that we, it doesn't mean anything. It just means that we exist in that place. And then if you need yang of course we train, we're martial artists. We know how to be yang, kick, punch, whatever, you know, throws, takedowns. All of this, we know all that. We can be violent, but we live in the yin. And then if something comes along and it's like, oh, I need to be yang right now, then you let the yang out. In, however much it needs to be let out. But it's not something that we live in all the time. Just banging you know, it's that whole thing about, you know, if everything you see is an, if you, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything you see is a nail. Well, hammer is yang, and so we don't want to be in that state at all times. That's the fight or flight. That's the sympathetic nervous system. Rah, rah, rah yang all the time. We need to be in this yin, this soft, receptive, relaxed place. Let the yang out when we need to, but return to the yin. Stay in the yin. That's my soapbox.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, thanks for coming by and for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget you can support whistlekick and our mission to connect, educate, and entertain by supporting us with the code podcast15 at whistlekick.com, joining our Patreon, or at the very least, check out what Jason Brick is doing with Safest Family on the Block. If you're not up for a book, I understand, but show him that we are supporting him and what he's doing. Subscribe to his podcast, download his podcast, follow him on social media, Safest Family on the Block. Check out the book, use the code whistlekick23, get yourself 25% off that awesome, awesome book that he put a tremendous amount of time into. I wanna thank Cynthia Aaron for coming on the show. I hope all of you enjoyed this episode. I certainly did. And don't forget, you can follow us on social media. We're @whistlekick everywhere. My email address, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Until next time, train hard, smile, have a great day.