Daily blog #56

What Jiu Jitsu is really about…

Depending on where you go, you will hear many different ideas of what Jiu Jitsu is about. Some claim it is self defense, a vehicle to self improvement, a sport, or a tool for self discovery, none of which are wrong. But when you leave the bubble of your academy to learn and exchange energies with different senseis and students you learn it is as much about the people and the connections you make regardless of their background or political preference. A bond is formed purely by love for the same art despite the individual reasons that brought you there. It’s amazing to be in Colorado, where the governor has not taken such a hostile approach to health and fitness (unlike California where I reside), to see the happiness of those of all ages who are training and sweating together. It reaffirms the fact that Jiu Jitsu is about people and gaining an understanding of others from so many walks of life. Not often will you find a sport where a teenager, a lawyer, a doctor, a professional athlete, a mother, a construction worker can all participate with only one requirement. Love for the art. On the other hand you can receive endless inspiration from the 75 year old woman with no martial arts experience who decided to start her journey or the 100 lb young woman who mustered the courage to walk into a BJJ academy full of savage looking beasts (sometimes) and enroll as a student. It hurts my ears to hear people who refer to it solely from the fighting aspect because although it still remains the most effective fighting system, there are so many more aspects to it that will benefit the average person as well as the lessons you will learn about yourself and about life. There will always be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu schools who go against the grain, but for the most part the Jiu Jitsu community is about uniting and empowering, despite your race, beliefs and views, something desperately needed in a time like now with politics, COVID19 and the media dividing everyone. At the end of the day we are humans who matter and deserve our individuality along with a way to thrive and develop among each other without all the peripheral BS that we allow to segregate us from each other.