Episode 890 - Ari Heart
In today's episode Jeremy gets together in person, with Ari Heart of Elements MMA in Keene NH.Ari Heart - Episode 890
SUMMARY
In this episode, Jeremy interviews Ari Heart, the owner of Elements MMA. Ari shares his journey in martial arts, starting from his early experiences in karate and his fascination with the UFC. He discusses how a traumatic experience led him to pursue martial arts seriously and eventually specialize in jiu-jitsu. Ari also talks about the influence of yoga on his training and teaching, and how it has transformed his perspective on martial arts. He emphasizes the value of traditional martial arts and the importance of creating a welcoming and respectful environment in the MMA community. This conversation explores the diversity of movement and the importance of embracing different ways of doing things. It emphasizes the value of physical movement as a language and the need to expand beyond self-defense and combat in martial arts. The discussion also highlights the role of movement in releasing angst and static energy, as well as the impact of sitting on health. The guest's book, 'Burn Your Chair,' is introduced as a resource for promoting movement and exploring alternative seating options. The conversation concludes with a call to encourage movement and joy in all forms.
TAKEAWAYS
• Martial arts can provide a sense of empowerment and strength during challenging times.
• The practice of yoga can complement martial arts training by promoting flexibility, resilience, and self-awareness.
• The UFC and modern martial arts can benefit from incorporating the values and teachings of traditional martial arts, such as discipline, respect, and teamwork.
• Creating a welcoming and respectful environment in martial arts studios fosters a sense of community and camaraderie among practitioners.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:23 Early Martial Arts Experience
03:29 Interest in UFC and Traumatic Experience
05:29 Transition to Jiu-Jitsu
07:42 Exploring Different Martial Arts Studios
09:36 Shift to Yoga and Yoga Teaching
10:30 Transition to Keene State and Teaching Jiu-Jitsu
12:21 Opening Elements MMA
13:43 Influence of Yoga on Jiu-Jitsu and MMA
22:30 Value of Traditional Martial Arts
28:00 Difference in Training and Atmosphere
35:07 Blending Traditional and Modern Martial Arts
46:22 Shift in Perspective on Traditional Martial Arts
50:19 The Diversity of Movement
51:08 Physical Movement as a Language
52:29 Expanding Beyond Self-Defense and Combat
53:15 Rolling for Different Purposes
54:03 Releasing Angst and Static Energy
54:57 Embracing Different Ways of Doing Things
55:51 The Importance of the 'Why'
56:58 Creating a Fulfilling Training Experience
57:28 Burn Your Chair: A Book on Movement
58:58 The Impact of Sitting on Health
59:27 Children as Natural Yoga Teachers
1:10:15 Encouraging Movement and Joy
Show Notes
Connect with Ari Heart at Elements MMA:
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Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:00.61)
Hey, what's happening everybody? Welcome, it's Whistlekick martial arts radio. And on today's episode, I'm joined by Ari Hart. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. Thanks for being here. Remember, if you wanna go deeper on this or any other episode, it's whis That's the place where we get to put all of the show notes because your podcast player, YouTube, they don't let us put up everything. So if you want the full McGill-a, there we go, right? Did you make that word up? Was that a real word? Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. You can head on over there and you can check it out. We got the transcript over there and everything else. So please do please check out the things that we're doing to connect, educate and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world. Is that Yiddish? Megillah? Hebrew. Megillah is the
Jeremy (00:55.234)
You know, it's funny like for Hanukkah, it takes very little to get the prayers back into my brain. Like the first ones there, but you know, on the first night there are three. I'm no help. I did take an intro to Judaism class here at King State, though. Yeah, but I didn't memorize any Hebrew. Unfortunately, your name might suggest, right? I know I've heard that before.
Yeah, nice. All right, well, we could turn this into some kind of interesting survey of religion, but I don't think the audience would appreciate that. That's not why they're here. Well, that stuff threads through once in a while. We're here to talk martial arts. So, you know, I want to acknowledge, I want to make sure we get this first. You know, you were very generous in the use of your space as part of Martial Summit. You know, we did some stuff in there, which was awesome.
And here we are, you know, we're in Keene again today. Great, great town. Can I call it a town? Do I have to call it a city? It's technically a city. Okay, a great little city. Well, I live in Montpelier, which is a much smaller city. We have 8,000 people. Really? It is a city, yeah. Smallest state capital in the country. Wow. Well, let's talk about you and martial arts because you have in...
You operated a school called Elements MMA and that right there, I mean, probably just had some spit takes out there because MMA is not... I've been labeled as anti-MMA. I'm not, but I have been. I have been as such, because there seems to be this interesting divide between traditional and what I would actually rather call modern martial arts rather than mixed martial arts.
But how did you, we're gonna get into that. I'm sure we'll get into all that. How did you get started? Start there.
Jeremy (02:59.742)
Well, I think it was karate when I was like six. You know, there was a period of time where every picture of me, I'm like reared up with like, like I have one leg up, like caged for like a roundhouse kick. I love it. I think I got to like white with a yellow stripe or something like that. I remember doing like one sparring session. Yeah, it had to be like six, like one like tournament with like a belt ceremony. And I remember like, yeah, like a kick butt, but it was, you know, it was like point sparring.
and it was very, very low contact kind of stuff. And then that school disappeared because I lived in small town, New Hampshire. And yeah, and then I didn't really have anything until I was an adult. And then the UFC came out and it was like, you know, this was back when the UFC was kind of like pornography. It was like, oh my God, did you see this thing on TV? You had to go to Blockbuster and rent the VHS. You had to have like a trench coat on. Yeah. It was on the high shelf.
when it was like really fun for me because you got to see traditional martial arts of all kinds. You have to see newer martial arts like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You get to see weird stuff like a guy going out there with one boxing glove and one free hand. It was so cool. You know, it was like blood sport. It was like watching like blood sport with Jean-Claude Van Damme. And it really piqued my interest. I had actually had a really traumatic experience where I had two people break into my house.
And robbed me with bats and I felt totally powerless And that was when I was like 18 it was right after my mom had passed away and I had like very little direction and then I saw the UFC and it and it It really brought up some it brought up like two sides of me one like this pain side that was like taken advantage of and Also, it brought up this side of me that was like I could do that. I could stick up for myself I could be strong at a point in my life where I was very
Um, and, uh, I was, I was a cook at the time. I'd gone to school for cooking and it turned out that, um, the restaurant that I was working at, when I started seeing this UFC stuff, um, the kitchen manager revealed to all of us one day, he was like, Oh, I was actually a Taekwondo international, like he was like an Olympic champion in Taekwondo, um, Sean Moot. And, um, he also was like, uh, one of the first people trained by Billy Blanks, who was also a big Taekwondo person in Taibo.
Jeremy (05:29.288)
So he had this career in martial arts, and it was really cool and Anyways, he started offering taekwondo lessons in his garage and it was brutal It was like everything you expect about taekwondo like, you know Like running up rocky hills with no shoes on and like if you farted in class you got kicked three times in the solo It was like that kind of like really hard nose stuff. Yeah Did that for a year? I ended up transferring down to keen That was I was living in West Lebanon at the time
down to Keene and I again through working in a restaurant met someone who's like oh hey we have this like you're into UFC right you're into MMA we have this fight club in my friend's barn and it was I don't know if you remember Matt Dirling and contenders it was the first mixed martial arts gym here in town I've heard I've heard the name yeah he um so it was just like it was
Jeremy (06:28.688)
Paul who owned martial arts principles, which was a martial arts studio in Keene that fizzled out. And so Matt kept that going. And again, it was super hard. And I was there's a bunch of guys just beaten the tar out of each other with very little technique. You know, like watching YouTube videos and then we were like, we want to get more serious about this. We started sampling local dojos. We went to every dojo in town. And I'm smiling because I remember going over to Shaolin Studios and like.
this is a Kung Fu studio and asking them like, hey, like, we're really interested in you have see like, the ground game is really big right now, like, what would you do if like, what would you show us to do as a technique if someone fell in the ground or we're, you know, we're defending ourselves on the ground. It's like, well, you just kick them. You just keep kicking them. And I was like, okay, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. So we were like, went on this quest to like find some real martial artists in the area.
Um, we ended up, um, finding Dan Caulfield who opened a place in town called flow BJJ. Um, they were open, uh, we were like part of the ground up for that. Um, Matt decided to focus more on boxing. He started turning out golden gloves champs. That was really cool.
I started to pull away from striking a little bit mainly because it was non-traditional. It was like doing Muay Thai and doing boxing. It's like you're getting hit constantly. And I was just like, I didn't like that feeling in my body of being totally, being consistently concussed.
And I started to really get into jujitsu and I just kind of threw myself at it. And I still did boxing once in a while. I would still like spar with people once in a while, but like, jujitsu was my thing. And I got really interested in jujitsu and I, um, I started competing a lot. Um, our instructor, Dan was only a purple belt when he started the school and was, so he was slowly leveling up as we were there. So it took us like a really long time to get belts.
Jeremy (08:28.452)
didn't want to give anybody a belt because he felt he could. So it was like a lot of training.
It was a lot of training and not getting that, not feeling that progression. Like I was like a three year white belt in Jiu-Jitsu. But did a lot of tournaments, had a lot of success. And then I did some traveling and I did Jiu-Jitsu all over the country. One of the places I loved the most when I was traveling was Nashville MMA. I spent a year there. They were awesome. They have, their black belt was a Lloyd Irving black belt.
And he was just amazing. He was a former pro football player. And his name was Sean Hammons. He was just an awesome guy. Yeah. And then I came back to Keene and decided to go to college. I wanted to like figure out like a job that was more in the health and fitness arena because like cooking wasn't lending itself to a martial arts training. It was like you were a cook and nothing else. And it just, it didn't groove with what I wanted to do.
be an environment that's ironically food, right? You would think people involved in food would care about health, but I worked in a kitchen and it was some of the least healthy people and some of the most drug-addled people I've ever been around. Oh yeah. Yeah, that was, and that was a problem for me. It was like when my mom passed and it was like a younger person, like I got into drugs, I got into smoking cigarettes and stuff like that, and the restaurant was like, you know, it was like, I couldn't get away from those things. I knew I wanted to change
The only break you get working in the kitchen is a cigarette break. Exactly. I have to go have a cigarette. People okay that. Yeah, people got that. I need to go decompress for five minutes. I used to do that. I've never been a smoker. And I would say, you're all taking smoke breaks. I'm going to go take an outside, see the sunlight break because I'm working a double today. Yeah. Yeah, so I knew I had to get out of that. So I came back to the area and...
Jeremy (10:30.122)
got accepted to Keen State in the exercise science program. And I took over teaching the Keen State Brazilian Jiu Jitsu club. And I was just a blue belt when I started, but that was more experience than most people had. I got promoted to purple while I was teaching there, while I was attending Keen State. That was a huge shift for me.
being someone who for a long time felt like really shy, really like socially awkward and stuff like that. And then having to teach people how to move their bodies, having to just interact with people and interact with my voice so much more. It really brought me a lot of like confidence and it also helped me to figure out like what I want to do with my life a little bit more. So that took me in the direction of like, I wanna own my own studio one day.
And that got me into yoga, you know, jiu-jitsu, injuring myself all the time, turned me towards yoga. That became like a spiritual path for me. And then lots of life stuff happened in between there. I was a yoga therapist for three years, mainly just doing individualized yoga sessions with people. And that was wonderful. And then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, it was like, well, there's nothing to do. The gym I was training at in Nashua was doing pods.
It was like I was training constantly. Um, what do you mean by pods? Like, um, the groups of people would agree to only train with each other. And they tried to train within like family groups as much as possible or friend groups so that there wasn't as much interaction cross. Yeah. So during that time I wrote my book and I, and I got my brown belt and jujitsu. And I just started dreaming of like, when this COVID things over, like what am I going to do? And, um, and I was like,
I know that Keane needs a well run mixed martial arts school. Cause at the time Contenders was still being run, but it was no longer run by Matt. It was his uncle Mark who was running it. And he wasn't a real fighter. He wasn't really, it was just, and it was just like not run well. And I was like, I know that there's this hole in Keane where people want mixed martial arts.
Jeremy (12:44.618)
And I'm not necessarily a mixed martial artist. I mean, I dabbled, but I have a really concentrated focus on jiu-jitsu. But I knew that the UFC and mixed martial arts was kind of big, and that people appreciated the idea of bringing many different martial arts together to create pedigrees. And so I just decided to go with it,
success when we first opened. It was like, people were really hungry for something like this. And it's been a total whirlwind. And, you know, we're constantly reinventing ourselves. And yeah, it's been a really awesome journey. Being a teacher to so many people in so many different ways over elements and at Keen State and, yeah, it's just totally transformed my life. I want to talk more about
You used the word reinvention. We'll go there in a moment, but I want to go back because I don't think I've ever met anyone who has gone, is it fair to say all in on BJJ? But the other physical thing they do is yoga and that they went kind of all in on yoga. So can you talk about that and where you see the synergy between the two?
Yeah, definitely. Well, when you mention like, there's these differing schools of, of like these sport martial arts like MMA style martial arts, like jujitsu gets sucked into MMA because of what happened with the gray season the UFC. And it's also a modern martial art. It's not a young it's not an old martial art. It has its seeds in judo, but it's fairly young. The other traditional martial arts that people pretend are much, much older, not nearly as old as they like to think.
Right, right. Yeah. BJJ is not as young comparatively as some folks want to make it out to be. Same thing with physical yoga. People are like, oh, this sun salutation has been being performed for 2000. No, not true. It's like maybe 150 years old. Yeah. Sorry. There's a great book called The Story of Yoga that debunks all this stuff. Is that the book? And there's a book and I caught this weird NPR piece once I was driving to New York for some martial arts stuff.
Jeremy (15:08.328)
on and here's the summary yoga was invented as a way for Indian men to date and sleep with western women that the 30-minute piece that's what it summarized down to i was like holy cow um
Wow, that wasn't the book that I read. I will say that there's a lot to be, I could see that makes a lot of sense for when yoga was brought to the West, but it was definitely a thing in India before, like it wasn't, I couldn't agree that it was invented just to make Westroon, but I don't know. That makes me feel better. There's better historians out there than me, obviously. But anyways, what happened for me with yoga was,
I...
Well, like most martial artists, oh, I remember the thread that I was on. Let me go back. So traditional martial arts has this focus on conditioning through things like deep stretching. No, it was like a thing like in taekwondo and in karate, most karate forms, like you needed a split or you couldn't do half of the stuff that you were supposed to do. Um, and that focus on flexibility really lent itself to hardiness. You know, it was like durability of the body, you know, like stretching and, and strength training.
was a big part of it. And now with modern martial arts, at least when like, specifically with jujitsu, that teacher that I had, Dan Caulfield, he would say things like, I would say like, what should I do? What kind of workouts? What kind of stretches should I do to get better at jujitsu? He's like, oh, the only thing you need to do to get better at jujitsu is more jujitsu. And that didn't land with me, because I kept getting hurt. And maybe his body, you know, he had done a bunch of other
Jeremy (17:02.032)
And he was like, he had like a full split, you know, his body was very limber. And I was super tight. Hadn't done anything for many years because I had stuck it, stuck myself to a chair as a kid and, you know, played video games. And shoulder, shoulder stuff for you. Yeah. I have, I have shoulder injuries now. Yep. Um, but I, I had four knee surgeries because of jujitsu. Um, and I found out after doing a ton of yoga, like fast forward for a second that was because of really, really tight hips, the knee joint, taking all the torque that the
hip joint was supposed to take. And I and no one ever taught me how to stretch, how to mobilize, how to, how to even do proper strength training. So at Keene State, I started learning about proper strength training. I was like, Whoa, this is way different than what I've been doing. I've been trashing my body. This is so cool. And we would do like yoga esque things, we would do like, athletic mobilization practices, like dynamic warmups and stuff. And, and there was like
Jeremy (18:02.112)
exercise. It's like, duh, this is why I've been getting injured all this time. We just go in, we jog a couple laps, we do karaoke, we do somersaults and that's it. And it's like, that's not mobilizing. Your body's warm, but you didn't do anything for your joints necessarily. So I got really fed up with getting hurt all the time. And I started stretching a little bit here and there, I was noticing benefits. And then actually I got into something,
side, I got into acro yoga, which is like another partner activity. You know, it's like you're playing super fun stuff. Yeah, it's really fun. But my now partner at the time, she was an acro yoga teacher and a yoga teacher. And she saw me and someone else doing acro and she's like, Oh, you're really strong. You'd be really good at this. But you were like super tight. You were like really inflexible. And you'd be way better if you were flexible.
Jeremy (19:01.712)
body is missing when you're too tight. Like you can't, if you can't straighten your arms out all the way, you can't stack properly for like acrobatic movements and stuff. So she was like, you should become a yoga teacher. You already teach jujitsu. Like why not like do a yoga teacher training? And I was like, and originally I was like, oh yeah, this will be a great move for my studio. One day I'll teach yoga and I'll teach jujitsu and it'll all go together.
And then I went and did a yoga teacher training and I had like a spiritual experience that I was not expecting to have. Like I was there for my career. And then I was like, it really opened my heart up and it really opened me up to my spirit. And that was something that I really needed because I lost my mom. I lost my dad. I lost my grandfather. Like all like boom, right in a row and didn't really connect with the ways I was raised to deal with like grief and, and.
practices I've offered or not.
They're almost non-existent. And they, you know, like, like after my mom died, it was like, yeah, we had a funeral and then nobody talked about it, you know? So there was nothing to do with that pain. And yoga- So you stuffed it down. Oh. And you went, and you went at things intensely, whether it was jujitsu or yoga or probably school or whatever, just head down, plow forward. You hit the nail on the head. I, I bottled it up. I stuffed it down. And of course, then it just turns into bio.
You stuff it down. It doesn't disappear. It just turns into like acid in your body and yoga Was like it asks it. I mean at least for me This is what happened with for me with the physical practice It asks me to be like introspective to notice myself instead of that forcing something away It's like you got to look at yourself You're like, oh my body hurts and I've been treating my body like crap and I do the same thing to my mind and so that's what happened for me with yoga and then
Jeremy (21:01.548)
As I started practicing more and more I was like, oh I don't get injured like at all anymore and And I loved the feeling like I liked sharing jujitsu with people at the Keene State jujitsu club I started teaching yoga here and I loved the feeling of people coming up. Oh man. I feel so much better Thank you Like I feel relaxed or that back problem feels better and it's like, you know, like you did it I would say to them like you did the work I just like told you to breathe and stretch and so it was
just it was a really cool yin to the yang of jiu-jitsu or like i could teach people like yeah i can teach you to throw each other around and choke each other and arm bar each other but i can also teach you to take care of yourself and they just they mesh so well with for me that now as a 36 year old who still wants to like train to get his black belt and has to like fight a bunch of really tough young people who just want to go hard i don't know how i did it before without
without mobilizing, without proper athletic care of the body. So I think that they go together so well. And usually when I teach people who are like Jiu Jitsu athletes or martial artists, yoga, I just remove the spirituality component. Because it's like you don't necessarily need that to get the physical benefits. And if someone needs it and is open to it, that spiritual stuff will just happen. Like it happened to me.
The yoga teacher training I did was not very spiritually focused. It's just like, it's just, it makes you look at yourself very closely. And it's like, that's going to open you up to something.
Jeremy (22:45.102)
How did that awakening change the way you not taught but played your jiu-jitsu? So for folks out there, I've done just enough BJJ to have a basic understanding. More of my understanding of BJJ has come from talking with people. How you play is often...
a reflection of who you are. Right? So I could imagine prior you're out there and you're someone's trying to smash you you're trying to smash them back it's you know there's probably a lot of strength in there but I guess on the other side it was a little bit different.
you just made me think of like, um, back when I was training, when I was a white belt and there are these pictures of me and, uh, training. And I'm like, I'm like in a movement and I'm like so rigid and you can see like, I'm very muscular and I've been like left to hang and I've been doing a lot of jujitsu. So, and I, you know, whatever, taking creatine, eating a lot of food. And I've got like, you know, weird bulging stuff going on. And I look like a block of rigid, useless muscle.
and my face is like, you know, I'm like, it's just like all tension. And of course you need moments of that, but it was like every picture of me was like that, you know? And I feel like now when, if you took like 100 pictures of me in a rolling session, half of them would be me smiling and laughing and like, you know, or like, or half of them would be me like, with a look on my face, like I'm reading a book, like I'm like really chilled out. And I think that's a big part
injured it wasn't just that it wasn't stretching I wasn't mobilizing it was just that I was the rock and not the water yeah do you ever roll with your eyes closed oh yeah sometimes when you're when you're rolling even if you have your eyes open it's like the eyes aren't really doing anything when you're so close contact with somebody bodies here it doesn't right yeah a lot
Jeremy (24:59.544)
felt sass. Yeah. Right on. All right. Similar question. How did that awakening change the way you taught Jiu-Jitsu? Well, I know that
my yoga teaching has influenced my jiu-jitsu teaching, but I definitely feel like I have like two versions of myself. Like I have like the jiu-jitsu coach and I have like the yoga teacher.
Jeremy (25:32.786)
As a yoga therapist, I learned a lot about trauma sensitivity and stuff like that. So I think that more affected the way I teach people than like my spiritual awakening, because I've always kept a pretty strong delineation between my teaching of Jiu Jitsu and that spiritual side, because
I don't want to turn people off I guess maybe that's like a hang-up like an insecurity Maybe I should work on that, but I definitely like
Yeah, when I when I like for instance, I, I teach yoga after the martial arts classes up at this place I train at in Nashua. And the edgiest part of the whole stretching session is the last like the last moment where I'm like, all right, take three deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. And I can feel everybody like a little bit like the stretching thing like I can just barely get on board with that. But when you tell me to breathe, man, this is getting too woo for me, you know, so I just so
It is. We all breathe. Especially in martial arts. Or you die very quickly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So it's interesting. I have to think more about your question, but my initial reaction is I don't think I blend it that much. Other than sometimes I...
Yeah, I wanted to, and we opened elements to make it more like traditional martial arts where there's like a bunch of stretching beforehand and there's some like focus and stuff like that. And the only reason why I got away from that is because it felt like the classes weren't long enough, like the time the time jumps weren't long enough like 20 minutes of stretching then it's like how much like how much technique and sparring can you actually get into in an hour class. So, yeah, I guess it hasn't informed it as much as, as I would like it to.
Jeremy (27:30.092)
but it sounds like you're asking yourself these questions, how can it? Yeah. Right. And that's interesting. And you know, one of the, I've been in enough martial arts schools over the years that I can get a sense. You can tell, and those of you out there who've been in a bunch of martial arts schools, you know what I'm talking about, that you can tell from the way things are laid out or what's on the wall or the signage. You can tell a lot about a school and the philosophy of the school. And I knew as soon as I saw the space, I was like, yeah.
This is a different sort of MMA gym. When I did BJJ, I stopped doing BJJ because everybody wanted to smash all the time.
You know, I was in my late 20s at the time. You know, I'm still in my 40s quite resilient physically. But I was young enough to do it, but old enough to not want to, right? And, you know, we would have stand up night, you know, and I'd get them back for what they did the other night. You know, they're throwing me around, like, all right, well, I'm gonna kick you in the face six times. And it was all in good fun. It was a good group, but I think very highly of them. They've turned out some.
Jeremy (28:56.91)
there was an energy to it. And maybe it's the contribution of the yoga energy or whatever it is, but you have a different sort of space. And I wonder if you've heard that from other people. You're not nodding your head like, wow, this is the first time I've heard that.
Yeah, we definitely have gotten that before. Actually, I was just speaking to a former member and he was like, oh yeah, me and my son, we loved your program. And then when we dropped out, we took a moment and went to another studio. And he said, he was like, I just, I couldn't stay there because I felt like everyone was trying to kill me. And that was kind of the feel that I got from contenders. And that was the way that I was raised
martial arts, which I mean, as I started as an adult, getting into MMA, that Taekwondo story I told you, it was all very brutish and hard-nosed.
Ego forward, very egocentric. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I wanted to be different when we started the studio. So I guess better answering your question of how it's informed the way I teach Jiu Jitsu, it's more like the way that the space is presented and the way that I encourage people to spar. Because when I'm teaching people the technique, I feel like I'm very like to the point and I'm not, you know, I'm not, the yoga part of me isn't necessarily coming out.
ready to spar, I am always trying to encourage people to take it down a notch.
Jeremy (30:29.942)
And actually that is really a tenant of real jujitsu, you know, they in Brazil, they call it arte suave, the gentle art. And that's also has been the tenant of judo, which was the grandmother of jujitsu. And I think that that's gotten lost a lot as jujitsu has become one, a sport and two associated with mixed martial arts.
go to a lot of jujitsu studios it's like people might have aspirations about being a great fighter or something like that and I think what makes jujitsu studios and martial arts studios the most
useful to our society is the brotherly or sisterly love that you can get from martial arts studios. And that's what we want to offer elements. We want people to feel welcome. Like when we first were opening, you know, we made sure it was a part of all of our, like our blurbs on our website, our social media posts, our discounts, they all reflected that we want to attract a diverse group of people. You know, we had discounted programs
concurrent discounts for correctional officers and police officers and EMS and any first responders we did you know anti-bullying seminars and stuff like that we want to get people from all walks of life that's community it's funny and I'm sure this story it's a short story briefly but you've been watching the UFC for a while probably remember the name Carlos
So I had the opportunity to roll with Carlos Nunes at an event and it was the most enjoyable grappling experience of my life because he wasn't trying to kill me. He closed his eyes and we moved. I had no illusions that I could touch this guy. He outweighed me. He outclassed me.
Jeremy (32:40.722)
He was a headliner at the event. So even if I could have come close, it would have been disrespectful, right? There's zero in my brain that I can do anything, but I'm gonna participate. And I'm just gonna, and he just kinda closes his eyes, and I'm like, this is awesome. And I just got to experience what it was like to be with someone who knew so much about how the body moved that he knew where I was going before I went.
Right? And I've got some of that standing up from my background, but to see it into experiences that other way was great. And I came away. And because my most of my experience prior to that had been getting smashed right now, it's like, OK, so there are people who have my general martial arts philosophy and apply it to BJJ. And that's what I'm hearing from you is that you're like, yeah, it's just another way of moving. It doesn't have to be. Violent, it doesn't have to be ego.
I just came from Brattleboro Conscious Dance, which is this thing that they do once or twice a month over at Inner Heat Yoga And it's really funny like I'm not a big dancer, but I've been getting into it more as an adult and They have It so it's kind of like move however you want It's not like you know the tango or something like everyone's doing the same steps like somebody's in the corner doing yoga This person is like shaking their body vigorously these people are dancing the tango maybe but
it's like everyone just does whatever they want. And I briefly started dancing with a couple people and I realized that I was like doing these like flowing movements with them that was like I was like oh this is all the jujitsu training in my body like I don't know how to dance but taking out all of the force and totally just trying to move with someone fluidly I was like oh shoot I know
Jeremy (34:37.856)
I felt so connected to these people. It was like, you know, that comradery, that community thing was there. And yeah, that's what I think is missing from martial arts is like, or it's missing from modern martial arts is that focus on using the littlest amount of energy possible to affect change in some way. So let's talk about that because, you know, you certainly exist at least partially, at least one foot in a world
and draws a thick line between modern or real, I'm using air quotes to the folks listening, arts like Muay Thai, BJJ, some people might put Krav Maga over there and then maybe on the other side of the line, karate and kung fu and taekwondo, et cetera. And there's a lot of...
there's a lot of disrespect that's thrown in both directions. And, you know, I certainly have enough history. I've done enough episodes at the show that my views on the subject are quite plain and quite consistent. I see value in both things. And the place that I have issue, when and if I have issue, has to do with the way it's trained in terms of disrespect, ego.
class training being inherently violent towards students, things that I don't think are exclusive to one side of the line or the other. But what I think I'm hearing you say is maybe some of the more modern martial arts would benefit from some of the traditional elements in the way they're trained.
Yeah, you know lots of times when people reach out to us at the studio about Like a kids program they're like What do you folks do for like discipline and like self-awareness and like um and self-confidence and stuff like that because That's what when we like a lot of people who haven't been um Who haven't tasted the um the ufc who haven't um become
Jeremy (36:52.556)
Okay. When people reach out to us about the kids program, they are reaching out because they want their kids to get what they have the idea of martial arts gives to people and they get that from like karate movies, kung fu movies, stuff like that. And it's like things like discipline and self-awareness and self-confidence and fluidity and focus. And I mean, I don't know, when you watch the UFC, especially nowadays, you probably don't get that.
you get like a big testosterone circus. And people ask me a lot because they know I own an MMA studio. They're like, oh, did you watch the fights recently? And I have a hard time telling people, but I'm like, no, I don't really watch the UFC anymore because honestly, it has degraded to something that I don't really enjoy anymore. You know, when I was talking to you in the beginning about my story of starting off as a martial artist as an adult,
it was that those first couple of UFCs where you have to see all the different martial arts, you know, coming together, like who's the best and all that. But, but it was, it was cool because there was all these different schools of thought. And at the end, everybody was like shaking hands and saying, Oh, you've got to teach me that you've got to teach me that. Like, that's so cool. And I'm sure that's still a part of MMA and the UFC. But when you turn on the TV now, because they've turned it into this big capitalistic thing,
It's just all about like who's making the most who's like instigating the most basically. It's like it's like WWE wrestling is not an accident that the same ownership now has WWE UFC Yeah, and it's just I just I can't watch that stuff anymore like to like all the posturing all the ego It it's just it makes it not enjoyable to watch and you also add in the fact that now they're telling people
how to fight to make it look more enjoyable, to make it look more spectacular. So they like, they pay people more money to like not go to the ground and stuff like that, to like keep things standing up so that people get knocked out because it's boring when it goes to the ground and stuff like that. So it's just, yeah, I don't really like that kind of stuff. But yes, I agree with you that modern martial arts could definitely benefit from a lot of aspects
Jeremy (39:18.764)
that have been lost from traditional martial arts. I mean, we talked about like stretching as an obvious one, like resilience training, like training people so that they can be martial arts their whole lives, instead of just their 20s. Things like, like teamwork and respect. And these are all the foundations of what we try to offer in our kids program. We have this four element system, where it's like, instead of just giving kids a white stripe on their belt every time they figure out a new technique.
We have a four stripe system of different colors and they all mean something like we have a respect strike We have a teamwork strike. We have a self-control strike. And so kids will who are like really good at the techniques You know, they'll have a bunch of red stripes on their bulb It's like we can't promote you because you're not kind to your teammates or you're not helpful with your with your instructor Ask you to do something. That's the word you use for fellow students is teammates teammates. Yeah. Yeah
like, you know, I noticed with kids a lot when they are learning, they're drilling, for instance, or trying to have them drill that they want to like win the drill. And I have to tell kids be like, hey, you know, we're not able to give you your teamwork stripe. If you're trying to trick your partner, you know what they're doing. And you're like, you're messing it up so they can't learn. So the kids learn really quickly, like it's like, no, we're doing this with zero resistance, so that our partner can learn.
You might be bigger than them. You might feel like you're smarter than them. Like you've got it figured out how you can defeat it already. But that's not how we do things here. And so it's, you also bring up a really good point. When I first opened Elements, I was definitely indoctrinated with this idea that like I didn't want to offer any traditional martial arts because I didn't think they were that applicable to things like self-defense,
like mixed martial arts, like if people want to compete in like more high-contact stuff. And then I got this application from Abby, Abby Hoy. So Abby has not been on the show. Damn it, Abby. I've invited her. It's an open invite.
Jeremy (41:41.598)
It'll happen, but those of you who have been to whistlekick events, you may have met Abby. If you've been to any of our events in the Northeast, you're going to have to drag her in here probably. But.
So I'm gonna tell the story from the beginning to the end so that I don't give it away. But yeah, I get this email from Abby, an instructor application, and I read the credentials and I'm like, huh, like black belt in karate, black belt in taekwondo, and I'm like, I wanna offer Muay Thai and I wanna offer boxing, I wanna offer Jiu Jitsu, I wanna offer these sports martial arts that have been proven in the UFC to be competition ready.
useful in self-defense. And I recognize now that's a very dwarf view. And I'm just trying to tell, I'm trying to be honest. I'm telling the other story. Trying to be honest. And then we share a phone call. I'm like, yeah, I could probably use some help with like kids program, you know. And then...
Anyways, we're a couple months into running elements. I realize I'm totally over my head, you know, like I'm like, I'm like, wow, like, this is getting way busier than I thought. This is really, you know, a lot of stuff. Great problem to have still a problem. Yeah. And like the kids program, I was like, this is my first time teaching kids and like, wow, this is wild. One day, Abby just comes in, this is post COVID. So she's got a mask on. I don't even I'm like, who is this person? She's got a black belt on. She comes into the kids program. I got a brown belt on because of course, I only have a brown belt.
is smaller of stature so with a mask on you may have thought she was a tall child. Right exactly yeah I was confused and then she just jumps in and she's like magic with the kids I mean she's also an educator so that helps but um
Jeremy (43:29.986)
And then over time, working with Abby, it was just like, whoa, this is the kind of person that I want at this job. This is like, if I could have an ideal teacher and an ideal, even like an ideal student, like say she came in and she became a student, it would be Abby, because she's super respectful, super driven, and she's always there. She made it another home. That's what I did when I got really into martial arts.
that's kind of people I need. And she makes people feel welcome. And anyways, she totally changed my mind about the value of these traditional martial arts, because it was a part of her personality, all these other tenants. And then she started just destroying it in the jiu jitsu classes, again, five foot something tall, you know, like 110 pounds, I don't know, she's like very small person. And we have like, I have guys
coming up to regularly who are a foot taller than her and you know, like, solid guys and like, damn, like, what are you feeding her? I'm like, it's called jujitsu. She just like does it, you know, and, and I know that's because of her, her mind space around martial arts. She treats jujitsu like she's treated all of the other martial arts she's trained. And, and that's why those black belts are, they're super valid to be now. And when I
When I first read it, I was like, I don't know about this. Like, I, you know, I have mixed feelings about these martial arts. And then, yeah, she totally changed my mind. I take it back. I remember Abby was on and I want to. I'm going to do something I don't usually do. I'm going to grab my phone and I'm going to check something. She I know she was on a group episode that we did because we pretty much had to. You have to trick her. We kind of had to trick her. That makes sense. And I want to get that episode.
so people can just shoot she was great on it 781 was titled martial arts friendships and we talked about
Jeremy (45:40.746)
the friendships that form within the martial arts, specifically because you're beating on people and they're beating on you, it creates a different caliber of relationship. Yeah. But I'm sure Abby will watch or listen. And so I apologize for forgetting that you were on that, but you know, almost 900 episodes. My brain isn't always great for that. And I still want you to come on the show and maybe Ari will. I'll try to convince her. I appreciate it, yeah. Cool. So, as you had that,
shift in how you looked at traditional arts because of Abbey, how did that also change perhaps you, your training, your teaching, your school?
Well, it brought a new light to me to the term mixed martial arts, because I think that acronym mixed martial arts, like it gets associated with UFC. And I think it's really important that we tease those apart now, because Abby was a true mixed martial artist. You know, she's got a black belt in karate, she had a black belt in taekwondo, and she didn't stop there. She wasn't like, this is enough for me. She's like, No, I want to learn jiu jitsu too. I want to like totally different, like a paradigm shift in martial arts from
striking the grappling and like, and now she's like, she's sinking her teeth. And she has a black bone super kickboxing. Yeah. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah.
Yeah, so elements is now and my philosophy is now like more open to any martial art that brings people, that brings people joy, that brings people happiness, focus, strength, confidence. I'm all about it. It's, and it's interesting because I've been saying to people for years, people are like, oh, I don't do yoga. And I'm like, well, you might, you might be surprised because to me, yoga is anything that like opens you up.
Jeremy (47:31.668)
And I've been telling people, maybe if you're a rock climber, that's your yoga. If you get into your zen spot, you get into that place where everything flows, that's your yoga. And I feel that way about martial arts now. I feel like there is validity in all martial arts. It makes me think of capoeira actually right now. Because capoeira was a way for basically for slaves and prisoners to empower themselves
of like, like the rules were they couldn't touch each other, right, in these prison systems and these slave camps. And so they created a dance, a martial arts system where they could train kicks and punches and, you know, acrobatic movements with each other and connect with each other in a martial sense, um, under, underneath like an umbrella of, you know, oppression. And so I think
Jeremy (48:31.348)
and whatever your movement form is, like whatever brings people that joy, that's what we want to offer. And so right down the street at Elements, we're like, we're offering like dance classes and stuff. We offer yoga. That's awesome. After doing this conscious dancing in Brativore, like I want to get them to come over and do this over Elements, because for me, that statement that I mentioned that a sensei once told me, like the only thing you should do to get better at jiu-jitsu is to do more jiu-jitsu. That might've been true for him.
the truth has been that the more I open myself up to new ideas and new versions of movement, whether it's going from thinking that jiu jitsu is like the most powerful martial art and you know, like it's what I want to teach everybody to know like, if you connect with taekwondo if that's your thing, that's what you should do if it lights you up, do it. And I want to end this, this thread on the other day.
I was doing my stretches after teaching jiu-jitsu and Abby was hosting a taekwondo class and she's like, oh, it's sparring day. She's like, hey, Ari, you want to hit people? And I hadn't done striking sparring in years. Maybe since I first opened Elements, I like sparred with the coach and a couple of people like when we were first opening the striking coach, Shane, I sparred with him. I was like, yeah, sure. That sounds like fun. And I had so much fun sparring with these taekwondo folks.
was Andrew. I guess he's not necessarily a Taekwondo guy, but he had the super foot belt. And I just had a blast. And it was like, I'm now thinking about like that experience at this dance and the experience in Taekwondo where I felt...
I just felt so open to the diversity of the way that we move our body. You know, I was that, that day with Abby in her class, I was sparring with like, with like kids, like half my size and, you know, obviously very, very gently sparring with big people, like Andrew sparring with grapplers. It was like, it was like, wow, we have like this amazing mixed community. And we're all coming together and everyone's having fun. And, and it was the same vibe that I just had at this conscious
Jeremy (50:49.92)
where I'm connecting with people and feeling my martial arts body moving with these people who are all like trained dancers and stuff and feeling like we're speaking the same language, just different dialects. And you know, I love that metaphor. It's one that we've used on the show a number of times, this idea that...
physical movement can be communicated in a language and we have different words for it, right? I started my martial arts career as a karate person. So even when I do taekwondo, I look like a karate person doing taekwondo. And I have taekwondo friends who I've taught karate. I have taekwondo people. In fact, roughly a third of my karate school is people who have trained taekwondo for a while. And they do karate like taekwondo people.
Dancing like a jujitsu person right and so it's this idea that yeah there's this physical expression the body can only move in so many different ways and We get used to using them in a certain way in a certain art, but you know, there's some value in going, okay What is my?
Now that you're having this realization right now it can be an intentional question What's it like if I dance like jujitsu? Which is a weird question, right? Like what does that question even mean? But in discovering the question, there's some really cool stuff that comes up whatever the answer answers are and You know as we're talking you've got my mind turning and I hope the folks in the audience it's turning some wheels for them, too Because you know, there's something I want to go back to
As you've talked through this, one of the things I'm hearing is you started a school originally that was self-defense and combat sport focused. But what I heard, not in these words, but what I heard was there's value in developing beyond that and we can use these same tools to develop other things.
Jeremy (52:56.45)
Right, I can roll in hopes that I compete. I can also roll to relieve stress. I can roll for health. I can roll for community. I can roll for love, right, you know.
Hopefully we don't get into fights, you know, hopefully the self-defense aspects of what we train are minimally used But life is still gonna kick the crap out of us on a day-to-day basis, you know being able to mitigate that
Jeremy (53:33.87)
I have literally never been in a fight since starting training martial arts as an adult. That's awesome. And I used to get into a lot of them as a kid, you know, and I really think that the training trains us out of the need. Well, most of us, you know, there's definitely like outliers where people just want to hurt each other and they train martial arts to get better at hurting each other. But I think the majority of people.
out of that energy. It's like I get all my angst out in the gym and then I go home and it's been released and I don't need to bring that into the rest of my life. That's been probably the most, no, that has literally been the most important part of martial arts for me is getting rid of the kind of static.
energy of angst of pain that will turn into anger and will turn into like you know like wanting to whether it's wanting to like hurt other people or hurt yourself or you know like to be just rough it down stuff it down turn it to bile yeah and that's what we need nowadays is more ways to express ourselves and when you were talking a few minutes ago i was thinking about
Jeremy (54:57.628)
into these ways of thinking that's like, this is the best, and I just explained how I did the same thing in the story with Abby, like this is the best way to do it and therefore other ways of doing this is invalid. You know, like this is the best form of dancing and therefore all other forms are invalid. And it's like, I think that is a really important thing for us to look at and extricate from our culture as much as possible. Because if it's if it's lighting people up, there's value.
Jeremy (55:31.389)
I rail against that this is the best. Can be the best for you, can be the best for me, can be the best for this purpose. But the key is why. Why we train ideally informs how we train, when we train, how often we train, what we train. Right? That why question is so absolutely critical. And...
just because my why and your why aren't the same, which they're not, even if they're close, they're not the same because we're different. Our training is at least a little different, ideally because it reflects that why, and it's part of why, you know, with my own students.
They're not all there for the exact same reason. So I try to make sure they all get something out of it. And I try to make sure that, you know, as I come to know them better, oh, you're here for this and you're here for that and you're here for this. I can make some minor adjustments in real time. Just make sure, okay, you get a little bit more of this and you get a little bit less of that and make sure they go out the door ideally with that feeling. And I don't even know how to quantify, qualify that feeling, how to describe it, but you know the feeling. It's the feeling you had at dance. It's the feeling that we have at the end of,
great training session where you leave and your heart's full and you enjoyed yourself and you got better and You connected with other people and if you were to make a list of whatever the things are on your why you checked off a ton of those boxes Because that's what it's about for me. Yeah
If people want to find you, website, socials, all that stuff, where do they go? Yeah, you can find us at elements dash MMA dot com. We if you're interested, we didn't talk about it, but I also have a book that I put out. Oh, that's right. Let's talk about the book. Yeah. Yeah, we can talk about the book. But that's at burn your chair dot com. That's a really big that's like a big piece of my heart. Let's take a few minutes and talk about that, because I we before we even started recording, you mentioned book. And I was like, well, we've got to talk about the book, because it's not often I get somebody in a chair who wrote a book.
Jeremy (57:28.664)
Tell me about your book. Yeah. So the book's called burn your chair as we're sitting in chairs, but if the camera could tilt down, it would You're at least cross-legged. So one thing that happened for me when I was getting really injured in martial arts training was I would have these knee surgeries and then I started doing a yoga therapy training. Yoga therapy was like really like life-changing for me and then if I could in a lot of ways that would be all I was doing for a profession but life took me in this direction. So I'm teaching martial arts.
I'd love it too. But I was doing this yoga therapy training. And of course, the training is in a yoga studio. And so there's no chairs, right? And for a couple of the trainings, I had to just have knee surgeries because of jujitsu. And when I'm like rehabbing these knee injuries, and we're doing these classes in the yoga studio, you know, it's like an eight hour day, but instead of sitting in a chair, and like just crushing my glutes
like fast forward, that's why I had tight hips, which messed up my knees. We were sitting on the ground. We would like have bolsters and blankets and you would kneel and you would squat and you would, you know, do like sphinx pose and like shapes that when you sit in a chair, you never do. And I was like, there's something to this. And I had here at Keene State, I had a professor who her whole research for her Ph.D. was all about the sitting disease and how it's basically killing us that we sit so much.
And I was like, oh, I've heard of this idea before. And then I heard this NPR special about these studies of indigenous people who basically don't have our paint and don't have our lifestyle-based diseases. And they're like, what's the difference? And one of the differences, so they found, of course, there's many differences, diet, how much they're outside, things like that. But a big one that the researchers pointed to is like, they don't sit all the time.
And I noticed that the more I sat on the ground, it was like, I was forced to stretch. Basically, I was forced to move. You know, like when you're sitting on the ground, you, you have so much more freedom and you fidget, right? Yeah. You like change the shape of your legs. I only have like two shapes in the chair. Like I can put myself in cross legged and that's it. But like on the ground, it's like, you can kneel, you can squat, you can do 90, 90 pose. You can have one leg out, one leg in. You can do straddle. Sorry. Yeah. You're that, you know, you're,
Jeremy (59:57.296)
that mobile. And I just noticed that like I decided to make it a thing for myself to not sit in chairs as often as possible. And then I thought like, wouldn't it be a cool idea to write a book? And I had this idea, this was many years before the book was completed. I was like, Oh, burn your chair, stop sitting in chairs. It's such a great idea. It makes you do yoga.
Um, and so I, when I was traveling for a little while, I wrote like the first chapter and I was like, uh, I'm never going to do anything with this. And then, and then I tried sending it out to publishers and it was, it was hard to make the sale. And then I finally found a publisher and they're like, we love this. And this was right when COVID was starting. So people were looking for lots of ideas. They're like, we love this, but we want 60,000 more words. And I was like, Oh, it totally changed the scope of the book. Cause my original idea was it was just gonna be like a coffee.
you know, where you flip it open and here's a couple ideas of things you could do rather than sitting in a chair. You could kneel, you could sit on the floor, whatever.
And it totally expanded it for me. It ended up with eight postures that I encouraged people to replace the chair shape with as often as possible. And I found a ton of research about indigenous people and about children and how they move their bodies. And if you stick us to a chair, how much that changes our life. So I found a ton of corroborating evidence that was very validating for my idea and my method. Because at first it was just me intuitively saying, we should do this.
and then like all this evidence pointed to the same. And it's been really a really important practice for me to not sit in chairs all the time. You know, in our society, we, it's like it's everywhere. It's all pervasive. Like there's always the chair. You're waiting for the doctor, you're in a chair. You're going to the bathroom in the morning, you're in a chair. You're driving to the doctor in the morning, you're in a chair. It's like, it's all chairs. And I don't think really that there's anything wrong with the chair shape.
Jeremy (01:01:58.836)
say the what's wrong is the fact that we're eliminating all of our other shapes for this one shape so people tell me like you know like I joke just now like we're sitting in the chair but this will be like one hour of chair sitting for me a day I did maybe an hour I'll do maybe an hour and a half of driving today so that's like two and a half hours of chair sitting I have to do the rest of the day I want to be on the floor or I'll be standing
Jeremy (01:02:29.196)
is cooking one part of my body until it's burnt to a crisp, you know, and that's kind of our lives. Like, like everything involves a little bit of pressure, you know, like whether you choose standing desk or you, or you, even if you sit on the floor to work, it's all creating pressures on our body. But my idea is that the body was designed to be kind of roticerized throughout the day, moving through many different positions. And that's why they say like, you know, motion is lotion.
you move the healthier your body is. So that's the concept of the book. It's just the idea that like there are people out there that don't hurt as much as us. And here's one of the reasons. And it's just one, but it's a big one. It's a big one. Yeah. Most of our lives are going from one type of chair to another chair. And yeah, it's I used to coach CrossFit. I spent about 10 years coaching CrossFit. And the number one thing I could do
to improve everything in their physical health was, I need you to hang out in a squat. And most of them couldn't get below 90 degrees, a chair. We are what we do repeatedly, so they would get to that position and they couldn't get lower. And I would work with them on getting lower and say, okay, when you're watching TV, when the commercials come on, I want you to get in this position. And it would take a lot of people three to six months, but they would come in, my ankles don't hurt, my knees don't hurt, my hips don't hurt,
back you know whatever hurt often went away or at least got better I'm not a doctor don't listen to me but this simple action of using that full range of motion in that squat all these other positions moving around make your preaching of the choir here
Yeah, when you talk about CrossFit, you make me think of Dr. Kelly Sturrett. I was going to ask you if you know about Kelly and the foundation he asked for the kids with the standing desks. Yes, and he just wrote a book. I forget the name of his new book. I read The Supple Leopard. I haven't read his new one, but I heard a podcast where he was being interviewed about it. And his first chapter is my book basically. Is it really? And it was and you know. That's quite validating from somebody like him. Yeah, and I actually after I wrote the book, I told my neighbor about it. He's like, oh you're talking about Nutritious Movement by Katie Bowman.
Jeremy (01:04:49.324)
Yeah, there's been people writing about Katie's a little extreme if I remember correctly She got rid of all of her furniture including her bed. Oh Katie's intense. We still have a couch. We sit on We've got some chairs at the house, but our dining room table is a table that someone gave us It was like a regular table and we had a friend who's a carpenter cut the legs in half so we can sit on the floor And that's wonderful And you know we have people who come to our home who are in poor health
that can't sit on the floor. They're like, Oh, I can't, I can't get on the floor. I'm so like, I just can't do that. So we have chairs for them. And the people who've been moving their bodies like, Oh yeah, no big deal. And they just sit on the floor. Like it's not, it's not a thing. And if you probably, if you brought a lot of martial artists over to my house, most of them, it'd be the same thing. Cause they're, they're making those shapes. Give us a pillow, a little Neil. Yeah. Um, one thing I wanted to say is, um, the last chapter I wrote in the book was called children are the world's greatest yoga teachers
the research on indigenous people and people of traditional cultures and notice that they that you know they all keep doing these shapes but then I realized my daughter was born as I was writing the book.
And she was learning to walk as I was finishing it. And I'm like watching her. And because it's COVID and I'm a yoga teacher, I'm teaching yoga online all the time. She's seeing me do all these yoga postures. It's like she was walking by nine months, which is pretty early. And I started recognizing, oh, shoot, she's doing all the postures. So the last chapter is I have pictures of her that the artist turned into illustrations
literally every single posture that I recommended on the way to walking. You know, so as, as babies, you know, we start off where we can basically only be on our back safely. And then we start grabbing our feet. We start playing with the tension of our arms and legs. Happy baby babies. And that's how we get a little bit stronger. We get a little bit more mobile. And then eventually we start rolling over on our belly and we start like pushing ourselves up Sphinx pose, which is like, so, so the postures that I offer in the book are like
Jeremy (01:07:01.076)
on the ground. And then the next one, I'm just I'll go through the order of how a child would do it. The next one in our development is sphinx or Cobra. We're like lying on our belly. We're like, I want to get off the ground, but all I can do is move my arm. So they start like pushing themselves up. I pictures of her doing like Superman poses and stuff because she's just like playing around with her body. And then they start to push themselves back to kneeling and sitting postures.
And kneeling and sitting is the gateway to like squatting, you know, so they start squatting a little bit and they're like, Oh, I kind of feel like I can sit up. But, but as they're kneeling, squatting and sitting, they're developing like core strength for eventually being ambulatory. And then they start grabbing onto things. One of the other postures I put in there is hanging, which people might not think of as a yoga posture, but to me, it's a natural human shape that we don't do anymore. We used to climb and grab overhead all the time and now we don't. And so she starts hanging onto things and cruising, which is where
like walking but holding on to something.
And, and, you know, and she would do things like inverting her body, like, you know, like doing like a downward facing dog or like making her body go upside down. And, and then eventually she was walking and that's all the posture. So my postures that I offer are lying on the ground, um, as opposed to just the bed, I don't tell people to get rid of their bed, but yes, not just the bed all the time, so lying on a hard flat surface, um, Sphinx or Cobra or prone positions where you take the vector of your posture and you make it your shoulders instead
usually is sitting kneeling squatting, which are just obvious, like being on the ground shapes, inverting, like making the body upside down sort of a stabular system and our, and our brain or getting like a totally flipped perspective and standing and walking. And she did all of those in her first nine months of life. And I was just like, Oh, she did all of it. So she validating she's born now. Does she seem physically advanced compared to her peers? Oh yeah. Oh, it was, it was very.
Jeremy (01:09:00.288)
a parent right away, like one of her little friends that, I put air quotes because they were too young, I don't know if they were necessarily friends, but we were in the same birth group with this mom, and so same age, I mean, it's different because he's a boy, and I know girls develop a little faster than boys, but she's going through all these really ergonomic shapes and movements, and you know,
He didn't have good modeling and he also didn't have good nutrition and stuff like that. He's doing strange stuff like butt scooting like he's a sick dog. To move around, they're the same age, he's already walking. He's not even crawling yet.
And again, I don't know how much of that is like boy to girl development stuff. And some of it's individualized. Yeah. But yeah, but now at four years old, like, you know, like her being able to do things like a like a somersault and a split and like things that like, you know, I, I try to teach the kids at the martial arts studio. I have like 14 year olds who come in and they can't do a somersault, you know, because they haven't really ever moved their bodies. So, yeah, it definitely you can definitely tell that she's got a different kind of
But it's cool that you have that opportunity to translate that up.
to kids and then it's awesome that for whatever reason, whether it's the UFC or something else, it got them out of the chair. Whatever their goal is, whatever their why is, they're there and you get a chance to work with them and better their lives and it's awesome. Most of the kids are there because their parents told them. I would say probably at least 75%, it's the parents driving them in there, which is awesome that parents are doing that. We do get some kids that are there because they want that martial arts power and those kids are really fun too.
Jeremy (01:10:50.144)
Awesome. I hope you check out Ari's book, website, those of you who have been around for a while at the beginning of this episode, you might have been wondering, this is an interesting guest selection. Now you understand why. You get it. You get it. Check out whistlekick.com for all the things that we do, whis for the show notes. But I'll hand it back to you to close us up. What do you want to tell the audience? How do you want to end things?
Yeah, I mean, of course, I want to reiterate, like, please go to our website. If you're interested in martial arts, you're in the Southern New Hampshire area, elements-mma.com. Uh, if you're interested in my idea on the book, it's bernierchair.com. Reach out to me. If you have questions, Ari at soul shine yoga.me. That's my email Ari at soul shine yoga.me. But the thing that I really want to close on is like kind of, it feels like this is the synthesis of this conversation.
um is whatever lights you up
you know, whether it's traditional Kempokuradi or it's jujitsu or boxing or it's yoga or dancing, like whatever lights you up, whatever lights up your kids, whatever brings people joy, like, like don't discourage that for any reason, you know, like, please encourage others to move and jive in the way that works for them. And let's get rid of the elitism because we're all a family of human beings. And, and however people are making
themselves happy as long as it's not hurting someone else I think that's really important to let that let that joy thrive