Pre History
This part 1 covers briefly the 36 years of my personal martial arts training history (1973-2009) prior to Gracie Barra Gloucester Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy coming into being. It’s very brief so as not to bore you, but covers some important issues that underpin how we came into being and the all important Why!
In February of 2009 I resigned, irrevocably appalled and offended, from what had become a very dubious “Karate” organisation! In essence this meant that after some 36 years of more or less daily Martial Arts practice, obsessive related academic research and the preceding c10years as a Professional Instructor, I found myself to be what’s known as “Ronin” in some circles. I laugh incredulously at the term as I write now but must admit it is an apt description, a “Ronin” is a unemployed samurai often faced with hardship and stigma, without status or income. Whilst the label I can laugh at, all of those elements reflect accurately my situation at that time for sure, the suddenness of the fracture resulted in immediate loss of all income and audience, which, when coupled with being the main breadwinner, dad of three young children with a mortgage to pay meant times did get a little rough.
Without a home dojo or a place to train I looked at the different Martial Arts options available in my area. Gloucester has always provided a rich choice of Martial Arts training and has produced some exceptionally talented practitioners and Instructors over the years, but in the end, I concluded that my own principles and values had brought me to my current situation, and the only real choice was for me to stay true to myself despite the easier choices and external pressures.
So it was, about a week or so after the upheaval, that I took on the top floor of Constitution House and established, from scratch, my own independent dojo. It was a challenging time for sure, but I knew the essence of what I wanted it to be as Dojo or “a place of the way”. I just didn’t know how I was going to achieve it, given that the teaching methodology I had been using up to that point was so soiled and clearly open to corruption in the wrong hands!.
Having become obsessed by the Fighting Arts as a 12 year old, by the age of 48, when all this happened, I had come deeply to the realisation that training, as indeed living the life of a “Martial Artist” had had a profoundly beneficial impact on my life. The lessons of the mat, the hardship of training, the studies at my desk and my observations of students, peers and the world around us had merged into an inseparable part of me. I was, and remain conscious and grateful every day for how walking the path had impacted so positively on all aspects of my life. My successes in academic and vocational exams, several careers, man management roles in industry, parenting etc I unequivocally attribute to walking that path. Perhaps most importantly, I understand that I have developed into a better version of me than I would ever have done, had I not followed it!
Budo or not to Budo
Some may recognise this as the Japanese concept known as “Budo”, essentially it is a way of life and character cultivation rooted in Martial Arts Training. I don’t use the label personally, but for me training has, for as long as I remember, always been as much about inner development as it has about victory. Earnestly studying combat strategy and technique has always been my fascination, but I learned that the training itself is also a means to improve yourself. Personally speaking, it’s not and never has been just about learning how to beat others (from a self-defence perspective or winning medals!) it’s also about improving self through the process.
The reason I think about it like this is simple – most of our time as a Martial Arts practitioners is spent in preparation (training) for confrontation, rather than actually being in confrontation. Either from a self defence perspective or sporting competition this is predominantly true – But it takes so much time and effort, dedication and commitment, discipline and tenacity etc to be able to get yourself consistently onto the mats, to learn, to repetitively practice and to refine your skills, movements and techniques as well as to forge the body!
Said another way, in order to develop the physical skills (techniques, moves, timing, distance, strategies, tactics and body conditioning etc) you seek, you have to also be good at and get better at your time management, effort management, dedication, commitment, discipline, tenacity etc these are the Meta-skills of the Martial Arts if you like, the skills that train other skills or enable other skills to be trained! It’s also always weakness in or lack of attention to these meta-skills that causes students to fail in their aspirations and eventually quit training!
But then comes the really big news – mindfully applying yourself to developing your meta-skills will inevitably have an influence on your disposition because you are working on the essence of you! – that’s to say, your ethos, your character – and that’s the character cultivation rooted in martial arts training bit!
To me it never made any sense to invest all of my time and energy into something that may never happen (like a self defence event) or occasionally happen (as in sporting competition), there had to be something else to make it all worth it! Sure there is just the sheer fun of physical effort, the problem solving, the camaraderie of the training hall on one level … and there is a massive debate to be had about the quality and efficacy of the training that you engage in … but that’s a whole different subject matter! Neither passing time training just for fun, or passing time training in something ineffective, or passing time training for an occasional event has ever appealed to me personally … but that’s just me!
Personal Values to live by
Budo is not a term you hear banded about very much about nowadays, but the concept has resonated profoundly with my core since my early days and given my life guidance, purpose and direction and, it has intrinsically shaped my personal values and ethos, I believe in trying to;
- Act with Honour – courage, loyalty, dignity and rectitude are core values, always keep my word and do what is right even when it’s the most difficult choice.
- Be Respectful – through humility of self and courtesy towards others.
- Show Integrity and Honesty – Align my words, actions and intentions.
- Develop Self-Control – Master my anger, ego and fear.
- Have Compassion – Use my strength (physical, emotional and spiritual) to protect and help others, never to dominate them.
- Take Responsibility – For my actions.
I hope it goes without saying that this is not some pedestal I claim to stand on, far from it, I have erred often during my journey. But this has been my aspirational guide, a template to guide my decision making in life if you like. Importantly though (until now) it’s one that has always been internally perceived by me and hopefully demonstrated in my actions, rather than espoused publicly. Lead by example as opposed to shouting from the rooftops sort of thing! My point is, you don’t have to have the same values, but I think Martial Arts training beyond a “learning techniques for victory” approach, really poses the question “what are the values you try to live by?” because ultimately your values are about what sort of person you aspire to be!
Choice over Compulsion
In 2009, as an experienced instructor and teacher I already knew what the power of walking the path could do for others, but I had also witnessed how this journey could be hijacked by the unscrupulous. As a result, I knew that I wanted to create a space where students would have the opportunity to benefit from my take on the hidden value of martial arts training if they so choose (i.e for the character cultivation), but equally a place where the freedom to make the choice not to (i.e to train solely for victory, for self defence and/or sporting competition or even for fun and exercise only) was truly genuine.
The thing I have learned is that no one really chooses the “budo” approach consciously, students either slide their way into it through exposure in the training environment and recognising the positive impact it has on them over time, or they are indoctrinated into the environment as their Martial Art school insists upon it old school style and become conditioned because of it! This old school approach is called that because it is dying out, it’s not modern and hasn’t adapted as life has moved on, making the old traditions of the art a thing of the past! The thing is, I believe the core of the legacy of self improvement is worth saving. The problem as I saw it was that the choice was between the Old school way where “Budo” was obligatory and the Modern school way where “Budo” was non existent, neither of which appealed to me!
I wanted a sort of ”it’s there if you want it, but no problem if you don’t” alongside each other approach!
In latter years of my “Karate” career, as the senior instructor, I took great pleasure in teaching students’ higher level and more realistic combat technique alongside leading their inquiry into some of life’s eternal philosophical, ethical and moral dilemmas, with the sole aim of helping them find their way through walking the path in their own lives too
I also understood that to achieve this, I would need to create a place that simultaneously respected and negated the authoritarian approach that the traditional martial arts rank hierarchy creates, especially the old school Japanese militaristic version!
In simple terms, I knew what it needed to be as much as I knew what it must never be!
So, drawing heavily on my previous experiences and my almost obsessive personal search for understanding I quite deliberately named my new home The Seishin Dojo (Dojo of Truth) and wrote the following “mission statement” setting out our founding principles.
We the Seishin Dojo Men and Women of No Rank, faithful to the way of truth, the spirit of Mutual Enquiry and Fellowship that binds us VOW to pursue excellence in our training by way of Critical Study And Struggling Practice. To be the guardians of Financial Propriety and Mutual Accountability. To Actively cultivate and environment of Openness and Transparency. To Never follow in a Blind, Facile or Superficial Manner. WE WISH this place to be known as a “Place of the Way” that is Loyal, Constant and Steadfast to the qualities of being Free from Deceit, Untruthfulness and Pretence. Strongly principled and with genuine feelings towards expressing things as they actually exist in the world. (Feb 2009)
For those who are interested, the statement was inspired by the work of Shinichi Hisamatsu, a Zen philosopher of Kyoto School lineage. His work on the formless self was a seminal influence on my grasp of the reasoning and rationale of some of the worlds greatest warriors on the combat mind set (from East and West I would add). Void, Mushin, Zanshin, formless self, Wu Wei, Mu Sim, original face, fog of war, flowstate and the many other threads that I have discovered over the years, lead to the same conclusions!
When we opened our doors in 2009 as Seishin Dojo, as I said earlier, I knew what I wanted the place to be, I just didn’t know how! I had no intention of ever teaching “Karate” again and at the same time deliberately dropped the philosophical/ethical study programme I had been teaching alongside it in recognition of its potential to be hijacked for coercive control by unscrupulous teachers. To be honest, as I look back to those days, it’s fair to say I was at a bit of a loss as to how best to proceed.
Experts in Other Martial Arts
From the outset in Feb 2009, because I was looking for that direction, I made it a policy of the dojo to invite in Martial Arts instructors of all vocations to come and teach at Seishin Dojo. About once a month we held an “external experts” evening that brought in local Martial Arts Instructors from Aikido, Daito Ryu Aikijutsu, Muay Thai, English Catch Wrestling, Filippino Arnis (Escrima), Enshin Ryu Iaido to name but a few …. and then eventually Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
I had by the early summer of 2009 decided to continue my personal studies under the enigmatic fighting science maverick Steve Morris. The Morris Method NHB was and still is very serious training. The sessions were long and very intense on a Saturday afternoon once a month. As a very small dojo group we spent our evenings in between his sessions putting into practice the stuff we we learning from him. It was more a collective practice than me doing any coaching, as only Steve could possibly ever teach his stuff.
Around the same time, two former students got in touch to tell me they had taken up BJJ a while back and were now teaching. I immediately invited them to teach an external experts evening session at Seishin Dojo. I was becoming increasingly aware of BJJ as the ground fighting basis of the underground “vale tudo” (anything goes) fighting matches coming out of Brazil on the Internet. I was intensely studying these fights (studying … not just watching!) as research, the purpose of which was to provide additional evidential and contextual understanding for the Morris NHB sessions I was engaged in. Fighting on the ground was integral part of the Morris Method training, it wasn’t BJJ per se with Steve, it was fighting on the ground that had some recognisable crossovers.
Dave and Matt, my BJJ friends came down for the session in late summer of 2009 and it was an absolute winner. Within minutes I recognised that this Martial Art had solved one of the key problems that had been plaguing me for years as a coach/instructor, I fell in love with the art almost instantly …. and the rest as they say is history (as in the brief history of Gracie Barra Gloucester Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy Part 2!!!!! )
Murray