I was on the phone recently with a friend I had gotten to know in Detroit. He had called to see how I was doing and was asking me about the things I was currently involved with here in Oakland. I told him about a "business idea" I had gotten the notion of recently. It involves three areas:
1. Fitness
2. Personal Safety
3. Karate/Martial Arts
Let me break that down one by one here:
- When I talk about "Fitness" I'm talking about what tends to be commonly associated with that, i.e. regular exercise routine to improve/maintain cardiovascular health, promote/maintain flexibility, endurance, strength, etc. I'm also talking about the nutritional component, i.e. what constitutes a healthy diet, understanding of diet in accordance with training routines, and other basic information centering around nutritional health. And because not everyone is built the same, I think it's important that people have a personalized fitness program/routine that works for them and their needs.
- "Personal Safety". This is an umbrella term I'm using to describe everything from "full-force" self-defense training to "people safety" skills like boundary setting to knowledge of self-defense laws for your particular state. This idea is influenced by the "seven elements" of self-defense training that the author Rory Miller highlighted in his book Facing Violence. Personal safety differs from martial arts training in that this is not about learning the "art" itself. It is about learning the practical skills to deal with aggression/violence in a relatively short amount of time (as opposed to the many years it can take to ingrain a particular martial art in order to have "functional spontaneity" with it). Plus, personal safety isn't necessarily focused on "fighting". That would be only one component of this field as opposed to martial arts which is centered around the strategies and techniques for successful fighting (I'm not gonna get into the semantics here about whether to call it self-defense or fighting. Save that for another post). Personal safety training also deals with understanding, to some degree, non-violent communication and ways to examine how we process and react to things which can lead to violent or aggressive behavior (which is the work that AVP does for example). But those last two things are sort of still in questioning mode right now as to whether or not I feel that actually corresponds to the goals/needs of Personal Safety or if that has more to do with Personal Growth.
- The last thing to break down here is "Martial Arts" or "Karate" in particular (and not just because I'm a karate guy; you could apply to this 3 pronged model to include another martial art like Jujutsu instead). But since I believe that karate needs to get back to its "roots" and become about functionality instead of formality, and because I know from my reading that karate was developed as a civilian self-defensive art, it seems very appropriate to go with karate as being the martial art of choice in the 21st century. And maybe I'm biased cause I am a 4th generation Okinawan American and I still think karate is the original martial cool, at least in the United States. But this field isn't just about developing functional fighting skill; it's about the culture and history of karate; it's about cross-training with other "styles" in order to better understand the principles of karate; holding regular seminars with people like Miller and McCarthy; it's about having at least a basic understanding of anatomy and physics; it's about ways of healing; it's about Zen/spirituality,etc. But I should also note here that this last category is actually integrated with the other two. Which leads me to my next point...
The name I had in mind for this "business" is something like the Shin-gi-tai International Dojo or something (actually that sounds kinda boring). "Shin-gi-tai" literally translates to "mind-technique-body" and is a fairly common term in the karate community to describe what the karate practitioner (karateka) should ideally embody. As you can probably guess, it has to do with understanding karate as a holistic art where each of those elements is seen as one. And each of the fields I've described above roughly corresponds to these elements, although of course they can be fluid as well; Shin = Personal Safety, Gi = Karate/Martial Arts, Tai = Fitness. I don't know, maybe that name doesn't work. I was just trying to find a creative way to incorporate the Okinawan karate philosophy into this 21st century "business" idea. But let me now get into why I keep putting that word "business" in quotes.
I'm actually not talking about a "for-profit" model of business; I'm talking about something that would probably fit more along the lines of a "non-profit - 501(c)(3)" type of organization, but maybe not even that. As you might know from previous posts (there I go again, talking as though I'm actually speaking to a reading audience), I have been concerned with finding/doing work that is "healing and transformative", i.e. "soul work" but that also provides me with a living. So basically I'm looking for like a "career", you know? But that career isn't something that actually exists right now. It's something I want to create. And as I'm contemplating all of this, I'm also thinking about what I want karate training to be about for myself. And then I'm thinking, that's kinda it, "shin-gi-tai". That's what I want to embody generally (personally I want to embody "kisshu fushin"/demon's hand, saint's heart). But so I was like, okay, not everyone wants/needs to become a martial artist, but everyone needs to be healthy (or not) and everyone can benefit from the principles of Personal Safety (especially in urban environments). So I was thinking that as a "service-model" (as opposed to "business-model"), I could get involved with building a space/center that provides Fitness and Personal Safety services to the general public, but only advertises the martial arts/karate to those who are more serious about that kind of training. And these services are of course provided on a sliding-scale and the people who run this center can work with people on a one-on-one basis to set up a payment plan that accommodates for that person's financial situation. For example, a single mother working minimum-wage who wants to do fitness training would work with an "employee" of this center to come up with a payment plan that fits with her monthly budget. And she wouldn't even necessarily have to pay money; there could be "work-trade" opportunities provided; like volunteering to help keep the center clean on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. I mean, even just paying $5/week/month (depending on what works for her) because she doesn't have time to do any work-trade is suitable. I would imagine that this center operates on some combination of grants and customer fees. And the whole point of having people do either work-trade or paying low fees is so that we don't build a culture of "learned-helplessness". That is to say, this isn't a charity organization that just does things for free and doesn't give to people a sense of ownership. It is an organization to provide people with ways to keep fit, active, and healthy and/or the skills to safely maneuver in an urban environment. [I should quickly note here too that this center provides those two services (Fitness and Personal Safety) for people to do separately or together]. And the "employees" of this organization/service/business are people from the community in which the center is based. This is so that we can provide, theoretically, a self-sufficient economic model that keeps the money circulating within that community in order to provide work for people that provides a living but that isn't a job (slavery). As you can probably guess too, this center would be located in an area where you would not normally find such a high-quality training facility. Which leads me to why this post is titled that way.
"The little red dojo" is something my friend on the phone said. He was referencing the idea of the "little red schoolhouse". That is to say, a place-based, small-scale local entity that provides the community it is based in with necessary services. I mean, being healthy doesn't have to be a privilege nor should it have to be an ordeal to work into our busy lives. And Personal Safety is about the common-sense skills we need in order to maneuver our crowded urban society without unnecessary fear and distrust. This idea of the little red dojo is connected to the ideas of Community Building as advocated by James and Grace Lee Boggs as well the ideas presented in The Reinvention of Work by Matthew Fox, but it isn't so much a political idea as it is more about how I personally would want karate training to be about for me. It came about mostly because as I was visiting dojo in Detroit and in Oakland, I noticed that there was little to no attention paid to fitness or Personal Safety. And I don't see how I, as a martial artist can be prepared for the real world (or claim to be a martial artist) if those two things are not incorporated. But, right now, it's just an idea. It's how I think and how I think is constantly changing. But it's an idea I'd like to be involved with somewhere down the line.
Elbow SMASH.
- Hiji Até
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