Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you're looking at contexts like what we're talking about, more traditions and more of an art, you still get that level of care and responsibility and accountability and follow through.
But if not done well, you risk losing the art itself.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I'm Diana Earley, and I've spent most of my life learning firsthand what privilege actually costs.
The legacy control, the family expectations, the guilt of feeling trapped in a life everyone thinks you should be grateful for. If you've ever wondered why having everything still feels like something's missing, you're in the right place.
Welcome to Pressures of Privilege.
Some guests you research. Some guests you know. I've known Yanti Amos since 2010. I met her just before a breakup. One of those moments where your life is breaking open and the right person shows up at the right time.
She told me, use the karate. Focus on it. Let it carry you through.
I did.
I've trained with her at the Honbu Dojo in New York. I've done yoga with her. Her husband, Richard, is my sensei.
And during COVID when I was bemoaning the fact that every dojo was closed and I had nowhere to train, she looked at me and she said, you know enough, Diana, to train on your own.
That's Yanti. She doesn't just teach. She sees what you're capable of before you do, and then she holds you to it. She's a former international lawyer, founder of the award winning Earth Yoga New York City or nyc, global ambassador for the WTKO and the woman behind the WTKO women's leadership group. She's adjunct faculty at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
And she is, without question, one of the people who has shaped how I move through the world today. She's my guest and I couldn't be more glad to finally have her here. Yanti, welcome to the Pressures of Privilege.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Oh, thank you, Dana. What a beautiful intro. That's so kind of you.
It's a great honor and I'm delighted to be here.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just. It's so funny to have you in this kind of format because I'm so used to, you know, sitting wedding with you.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: We can talk sort of more in a more exploratory way about a lot of different ideas. So this is wonderful.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: It's interesting because I've never really talked to you. We always talk karate and we talk yoga, we talk life and we've never. I've never asked you about the international law that you were involved with and the transition from international law to yoga. And then To.
To karate leadership or to karate? Not karate. And then now to becoming an adjunct professor.
Those are like four different careers.
Do you see them as separate careers or do you see them as maybe one continuation?
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really fantastic question, and I get that question a lot because it seems that those paths all seem quite contradictory, or perhaps they're so different and people ask me, don't they clash? And what. How did you lead to where you are today after such a diverse foray into different careers and for long periods of time?
And I'd have to say that the path was, in my view anyway, very logical. There were pivots. But I was in international law for over 17 years and I was posted when I.
I grew up and went to university in Australia. I was posted to Southeast Asia. I was in Southeast Asia for over nine years and then I got posted to Europe.
So I had a long time practicing different jurisdictions, going deep, deep into international business, corporate law, and banking and finance. And it was a great backing or background, if you like, for what I'm doing today. So there's not one minute that I regret. And I think it all feeds in beautifully to what I'm doing today and how I transitioned 20, 23. I knew I wanted to do something different, and that's when I started to flirt with the idea of doing something in health and wellness.
But yeah, it all makes perfect sense. And everything converged today to allow me to be the mentor I and the adjunct professor that I am. And I feel like, wow, all these things in the past have helped me do all those roles in a robust, confident way, because I've had that lived life experience and I have these conversations with my sisters and also with older, over 50 girlfriends, and we wouldn't want to be any other age. I really feel like I've come into a phase where I have the confidence, confidence and the wisdom, as we said, to dispense that knowledge in a very compassionate, kind manner.
So it's actually a wonderful phase that I'm experiencing right now and I'm very, very grateful for that. So. Great question.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: It's just amazing that you've done all that and you're. I mean, I forgot. Did you say how old you are?
[00:05:32] Speaker A: No, you didn't. I'm 62.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: 62.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And really, really embrace that age because I don't think when I look back, I wouldn't want to be my old 20 something self, but I would love to give my 20 something self a lot of advice and I would love to perhaps Redo some things. But no, I am very glad for the mistakes along the way and the challenges and the obstacles and the hiccups and I see all of those low points, the, you know, the peaks and the troughs, I see them all as part of the learning journey and a fantastic adventure. And I can look at it that way because I am, I'm not attached to, as you said. Was it you, you said something in an email to me about how I don't look at people's credentials so much as how they've developed over time. And I actually do. I have to say there's real truth in that and I think that's helped me to.
Well, my meditation and yoga practice has helped me with that level of self awareness and that ability to, to help those that I recognize do need the, the support, the encouragement, the nurturing perhaps in the teaching context and in friendships and family situations.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: So what would you tell your 20 year old self? Like what would be some advice you would give her?
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Oh, I would definitely say to trust your intuition, trust your gut and not to care so much what people think of you. In other words, it's sort of guiding you to more authenticity and not minding that you are a little bit odd, not I suppose, non conformist is what I'm saying that if you found yourself a little bit unique and not getting the understanding or consensus, if you like, of people, it's okay not to be understood at a certain point, especially when you're still finding your way.
So I think to have the bravery, the courage to just stick with that and be okay with not being like
[00:07:44] Speaker B: everybody else, it seems like you still carried on like you ride horses, you've gone sailing, you're so good at so many things.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean I try to look at life, as I said earlier, a bit of an adventure. And so when you get the opportunity to get mastery of a lot of different things, I mean I've always said to Richard, I'm a multi hyphenate and I'm definitely a multitasker, whereas he is like the person that just focuses on one or two things and gets very, very good at those things. And he is the single minded, sort of focused guy who's all about karate and I've tried a lot of different things, some of which I'm okay at and other things obviously are mediocre, but I do have a different perspective on that.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: Many of our listeners don't know who Richard Amos is. I mean for us like he's like our sensei, he's like, he's like very
[00:08:52] Speaker A: big in our lives.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: But for people who don't know who he is. Can you give us a quick synopsis?
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Okay, that's a good one. Can you do that?
[00:09:00] Speaker B: He's your husband. It might be harder for you.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: I know. Actually, he's.
Well, I would say that he is one of the, one of the graduates of the jka, prestigious and elite JKA Instructors program, which was initiated, I'm not exactly the year that it started, but he graduated, I believe, in the early 1990s.
And he did, I believe it was three years constant training under some of the masters of Shotokan Karate in Tokyo, Japan, at the JK headquarters. And he was one of very few foreigners to be accepted into the program.
It was one of his, I guess, dreams after being part of the English or the British national squad and competing at a high level in the uk, it was one of his dreams to go to the source and live and get the experience in the headquarters as a can she say?
And he graduated and then went on to specialize and as I said, be single minded about that. Many, many instructors go on to different careers or they multitask and they do a career as well as teach karate. But this is the only thing that Richard has done his entire professional life. And so we have to give him credit for that and being a true, true lineage bearer, if you like. So I am in enormous awe of someone who can really stick with something that long, so many, many decades. And I'm talking, you know, he's 63 and he's been teaching since he was in his teens. So I must say that he's kept it up for that long.
And I think his line is that he will keep on going until he drops and would like to be doing the, the jumping in UNSU as his last little technique. So unsu, for those who don't know, is one of the most difficult, most beautiful kata or prearranged sequence of techniques that we do as part of our syllabus. And it's a challenging jump that happens three quarters of the way through the kata.
And I think he'd like to die that way, doing the jump and then going down on his knees and hands, and that's a nice way to go.
So that's the depth of the love,
[00:11:42] Speaker B: you know, as you're saying, he's been in the, you know, he's been doing karate so long and he's so part of the sort of the lineage, you know, of the Shotokan lineage, you know, he's only like two or three people removed from Funakoshi, who's credited with the modern founder of Shotokan. Right. I think it's. There's. There's, like, Funakoshi, like Nakayama and then.
Then Abe and then. Or. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: And then. And then all of the. The teachers that we should have going through the jk. Right, yeah. The Kenji Said course. Yeah.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: So a lot was, you know, a lot of this tradition was passed to him directly.
Now he's passing it on to his students.
So I was. I was going to use this as sort of a segue into sort of the stewardship concept that. I know you and I both love that word, but I love how you are actually using that word in terms of this mentorship and in terms of this.
You know, I'm wondering is. Is this part of, like, the. The, you know, this tradition that's being passed on through him to you and then down to your mentees?
I'm sort of seeing that as. As perhaps a kind of, you know, your understanding of stewardship or your definition of stewardship.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: I think the stewardship concept came to me because with both the yoga and the karate, I realized there was so much tradition. And what we were absorbing was not just technique.
It was traditions, it was values, it was philosophy, everything with what we call the Dojo kun, which is the code of ethics for those who don't know. But it was so much more than just a physical movement class that you could attend once, maybe three times a week. It was. You were buying into a whole system of knowledge, but the system was just soaked in this sense of tradition and values. And I recognize that because I saw the parallel with yoga, because yoga is very similar in that, for example, my direct teachers and the ones that I really respect today and who I practiced with and. And developed my Ashtanga yoga practice with, they were the direct students, David Hollander, John Campbell, these people my age, but who had the experience of training and practicing under the founder of Ashtanga yoga. And so I saw that being, again, steeped in philosophies, steeped in a spiritual practice as well, and the.
The whole level of Sanskrit and mantra and Shloka and all of the aspects which were philosophical and spiritual, not just the physical.
I saw the parallels with karate, and I just felt there's something here that demands respect and demands a kind of.
Well, there's an element of sacredness.
I don't know whether you feel that yourself, Dana, but I know sacred is a very big word, but I Feel like what we're learning is definitely something that is so rich with these traditions that you can't ignore the depth and the breadth of the. And the layers that keep revealing themselves. Every time you hit the dojo floor, it's.
It's mysterious and yet it's there. The system is there. And every time you train and you practice, there's something else that gets revealed to you.
And I just, that's why I chose the word what? Custodianship, lineage bearing, you know, the stewardship idea. That is where I think, I think it's appropriate. I think it's an appropriate labeling, if you like.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: When people think of stewardship, they think, well, it's like you're taking care of something. Let's say you're taking care of like your children Trust account, for example. You're a steward of that or of a charitable foundation, you're in charge of taking care of that for other people.
So in a way by, yeah, you're being a steward of this tradition so that it continues into the future, Right, Absolutely.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: And then also the risk that if the stewardship is not effective, that there's a risk of loss and there's a risk of high stakes loss in terms of if it's financial. But if you're looking at context, like what we're talking about, more traditions and more of an art, you still get that level of care and responsibility and accountability and follow through that if not done well, you risk losing. You risk losing the art itself. And so that's where transmission and the human relationships behind transmission is so important.
And that's where I think the parallels with what you talk about in your podcast is so overlapping and relevant for what we're talking about in lineage bearing and continuum traditions.
Because there is this whole dimension of relationships behind what you're transmitting.
And that is a lovely segue into mentorship.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: I love the sacredness aspect because it's something bigger than ourselves, isn't it?
[00:17:27] Speaker A: This is it.
We are not self created. So when we look at something like yoga or look at Shatkan karate, you realize because of the generations and because of the traditions and how deep all of it is, you realize that you are a product of your teachers and you're a product of your teachers. Teachers as well. You'll like this story, actually, because you've just.
Yeah, you've reminded me of a story that I remember from maybe a decade ago. But Rana Desgupta is a really well known author in England, but he's also a classical musician and one of his key piano teacher, when he was growing up had exposure and, forgive me, ran away if you hear this. Forgive me if I get the story wrong, but the story goes that his piano teacher had exposure to Rachmaninoff. And I think she was either his student or she had exposure to him.
And she valued that exposure to him so deeply that it sort of rubbed off very deeply with Rama when he took lessons with her. And he himself recounts the story with a lot of love because he saw the depth of respect and inspiration that his own teacher had when she was teaching him as a child.
And I think this is what we're talking about when we talk about lineage and that we are really the product of our teachers and our teachers teachers. And whether you know that forebear or the ancestor or the. Your antecedents personally or not, but you do have a part of them in the way you practice your. And I know you must have had some amazing piano teachers growing up. And even today, who you respect and whose whole methodology of teaching will be imbued in what you do today and how you interpret your playing and how you interpret the compositions that you play and how you understand the work that you're learning.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: It's not something that can be written in a book. I think it's something that, as you said, it's a relationship.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's why I think that you.
I think that's why you have to look at mentorship as relational.
Because I think you said at one point in our past discussions, you said that, you know, you can be a leader and you can have technical brilliance, you can have technical know how, but that's only part of the equation because at the end of the day, you need so much more. You need to know how to judge a room. You need to know you have to have that emotional intelligence. You have to have judgment and discernment, and you. You have to have this understanding of how to read a room in order to effectively lead.
And I think that's something that we don't learn in leadership classes. I mean, of course, in comprehensive leadership courses, you will learn about emotional intelligence in academic form, but on the whole, in something like karate or something like yoga, you might not really emphasize those aspects.
And I do think that they are key. They're very, very important to structure into any type of mentorship program.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: How are you finding this mentorship? How is that showing up right now when you're in your new teaching role?
[00:21:19] Speaker A: It's actually kind of mind blowing in the sense that with bmcc, I have exposure to a completely different demographic of student, that it's a different landscape completely. So you have, I'm not sure of the statistics, but you do have more minorities. You have, you could argue, more marginalized or groups that are less privileged, let's say. And so for me, it was a very humbling experience to be exposed to students who are very bright on the whole, very intelligent and very savvy, but they might not necessarily have the skills that we.
We had growing up in the best schools.
And this is where I really feel very humbled. And I was looking for ways to help them get beyond some of their overwhelm, because coming into a college context, this was clearly something very overwhelming for some of them, not all, but some.
And I was looking at the minority of those who had had trouble adapting to the overwhelm, the cognitive load, the challenges of being in an environment where you have deadlines, you have to be good at time management, you have to be able to deliver papers and present orally, verbally in front of a group. And in these sorts of contexts and assignments and group activities, you may or may not have public speaking skills. And so I had to really work out very quickly what skills I had to give them a little bit of scaffolding around.
And it was just an eye opener and really exciting for me because I was eager to try to find systems that would help them. And I came up with something which I called sort of like my clarity system, or I call it the catch up system, because in many cases at the end of the semester, people were behind in their content. And I wanted to find ways to redo or at least learn from the past or the past weeks of modules and redo their learning and find ways for them to not be in overwhelm to look at re engaging in content.
Content.
So my learning or that I was trying to convey to them in ways that would not involve criticism or judgment.
And this is where there's overlap with the karate world, where I'm learning with my mentees across the globe who are learning how to be in a. In a mentorship situation where you're not going to be judged, you're not going to be criticized, you're not going to be shamed, and you're not going to be humiliated, which might be the old system of learning karate in the dojo or, you know, out of the dojo.
And so I was hoping to.
And I think I have had some realizations around how best to teach people who are in overwhelm or who are not used to not being judged and not being critiqued in a sort of a negative way.
By that, I mean, you know, there's a concept in.
There's a concept in yoga we call svajaya, which is self. It's not self critiquing, more it's self awareness. And you may have heard of it, but it's this idea where you look at yourself just with a simple factual honesty.
And you can reflect on that in writing or you can just meditate on it. But the idea is just to put aside the self critiquing and to put aside the self judgment. And I like to bring that into what I do because I don't want people to when they re engage in content, for example, in the BMCC context, in the community college context, I don't want them to feel that there's shame or stigma related to re engaging.
It's something that we all do in life. Life gets in the way. These are students who sometimes have two, three jobs or they're taking care of their siblings, or they're somehow helping their parents to parent. And there's a lot going on.
So you can just imagine what overwhelm and multitasking they're already juggling.
And I don't want them to feel that catching up is something they should be ashamed of.
So I see some parallels with the mentorship I'm doing in karate, speaking karate and like, how.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: But we do get like, Richard does critique us, but the way he does it is not shaming. And it's a way of like, it makes me want to get better, but I don't feel ashamed of it.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Which is actually very interesting because it's definitely not the way he experienced it when he was doing his kenshisei, or some of the worst experiences, shall we say, that he may have had in Tokyo in the heyday of the JKA during the kenshisei training program. Because you hear about verbal abuse, but you hear about physical abuse as well. You hear about in firsthand from which, if you've read his book, then you which small Plug Chasing Bushido, How I Learned to Just say os. So that book tells you a lot about the insides of behind the scenes, if you like, of that experience. So I think what Richard has done in his genius way is he's taken the best of his country's day experience and he's learned from that. And he knows having been a recipient of the worst way of teaching or the most critical, let's say, or the most, I won't say bullying, but it could be perceived as being sort of on the borderline of that.
That he didn't want to do the same thing to his own students. And so he decided actively, proactively make it, or to vow that he would. Would change things up and to be a responsible, compassionate teacher versus one that would shame or make fun of or.
Or make someone feel uncomfortable about doing something wrong.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: He's so honest. Sometimes it's like, whoa. He's so honest.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: It's like, yeah, very blunt. Very, very blunt. Absolutely. But, you know, who doesn't want to want him to call a spade a spade? In a way, you do want that because you want to quickly change. This is a physical art. You want to be able to physically change so that you don't actually pick up bad habits. And so I'd rather. I know. I'd rather that. Although last night in the dojo, he was very impatient with me. He critiqued me. I was almost going to say, well, you're meaner to me than you are to some of the other students, but I didn't. I just said os. And, you know, and for those of you who don't know, when you just say Os, you just, you nod and you say, you know, I understand, and I'll just continue to listen, to try and apply and to continue. And that's what you say to your seniors. And there are moments where you have to just say, oh, you know, just have to bow and continue. And then you can reflect and discuss afterwards when you're out of class or you're, you know, discussing things post class.
But I do think, being honest, I think there's a balance, because obviously you could say it very bluntly and you could say it with a little bit of cruelty, but I think his tone is very matter of fact, and it's just plain, plain speaking. So it's not layered with any kind of, God, you're stupid. It's not that at all, but it's like, let's get on with this, because I want you to get it. I want you to love this as much as I love it. So there's that undertone and the intentionality, which is very sincere. And I think people know that and they get it.
Would you agree with that?
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah, it's really refreshing. Like, I just think he has really good boundaries. He's just very clear. There's. There's no ambiguity in what he says, and that's very, very rare in today's world. His own personal life, to the way he, you know, he's Just like, I eat this way, I eat. Don't do this, I do that. You know, it's very. He knows his limits.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's very important to know yourself. And he always says, oh, know thyself. And, and it's true that we're all on that journey of just knowing what works for you and what, what your boundaries are and how best to care for yourself and how to get the.
How to reveal that your best potential.
And, and at a certain age, we should be at that point where we can say, no, no, I go to bed at 10:30. Or I.
Or, you know, you know, these, the rituals and the practices and everything that work for you. And so to indulge in any other habits just doesn't make sense to someone like Richard. And I admire him for that because it really means every day is. You're going to make every day count.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Well, also, he's very strict about how we move in the dojo in terms of, you know, people say, gosh, you know, it's so dangerous karate, Right.
Which it can be, but he keeps the dojo a safe place, believe it or not. It's kind of weird when people say, you know, like, oh, it's safe. I feel incredibly safe in the dojo because he's got structure and he's got boundaries, he's got rules. And, you know, for example, you know, he, you know, we're, we, we don't strike towards the face, you know, you know, we can strike here, but it's. He's got certain rules about how we engage in kumite. I, I've been in dojos where when we block somebody's kick, it's so painful that you're just like, oh, God, I don't want to block a second one. And, and he's like, if you make every single block, like, to the death, you're just not going to get any training in because you'd be avoiding the movement you're actually supposed to do, which in the end, if you are, God forbid, ne needing it, you know, you, you won't. You will not have practiced it a thousand times, which is what you need in order for it to be effective.
So if every single practice blow is so painful that you just don't want to do the next one, then you're never going to practice it a thousand times.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Well, I think you're onto something because it's a sign of an excellent teacher, someone who can see the common errors a mile off and he can anticipate the five things that people are going to do wrong when they do a front kick or when you're aiming for.
You're talking about the control that we exercise in the dojo and the fact that you always feel safe. Why is that? That's because he set the boundaries, but he also knows the directions and the cues and the demonstrations he needs to give so that people understand that if you lack control, you are not going to aim very close to somebody's chin. You're going to go maybe a foot away.
If you're very inexperienced, especially like the lower belts, the beginners. But if you are someone who's a done grade, who's a black belt already, then you should start to go for accuracy and precision. And then, of course, we have a whole set of different common errors that are going to happen there as well, that he knows exactly what's going to happen. And this is the gift of someone who is a great teacher because he has this anticipation of what could go wrong. So he, in his cues and in his instructions, he's able to weave that into what not to do and what to do. If you remember, he always does, okay, guys, you do not do this. Try not to do this. And he'll show you how to do it wrong. And he'll say, okay, I'm going to try and do it wrong. So he demonstrates something that is wrong, but it's what people are going to do first.
And I really appreciate that. The more I teach internationally with him and the more instruction I give to my mentees online, for example, or we have a WhatsApp group where we have a lot of exchanges and we discuss technical issues, we talk about how to sequence, how to lead and how to be in a class context. And it's just like being able to public speak, but be able to shift if circumstances change.
And the more I get this sort of experience, the more I realize how great a teacher he is and how difficult it is to do what he does so well.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: He takes a situation. I mean, sometimes he does ramp it up so that we feel under pressure because, you know, if we ever, God forbid, need it, we. We need to be able to operate under pressure. Right. Um, but I also was thinking, like, he's able to take something that's high pressure and to break it down so that it's doable. And I was thinking you probably have inherited some of that when you're teaching your kids in. In the college, you're taking pressure. You were saying this overwhelm that they have, and you're helping to break it down into things that are doable for them.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: It's a great comment because often I say to Richard, I'll come home and I'll sort of deconstruct the class I just had. And I say, I wonder how I could have done that better because finding analogies, finding metaphors and finding a paradigm that the kids, and by kids I mean they range from 18 to 24, so forgive me if I call them kids, but the students, and then we have a few mature age more, the older students as well, but the majority are of that age group. And so the students sometimes look at me sort of blank faced and I'm looking for analogies. So I've gotten very good, let's say this, that I've gotten very good at finding sports, American sports analogies. So when you're able to find, find something that they can relate to, obviously then the penny's going to drop and then suddenly understanding crosses their face and then you think, oh, they got it. So that concept, at least I can check that concept off the list and I go through the concepts and maybe I just have to find some kind of analogy that they can relate to.
And sometimes as you said it suggested, you have to break it down into its constituent parts and that's how you gain a sense of them being able to relate to what you're saying. Because it might be something relating to business. I teach in the business management department, so I am teaching entrepreneurship and I'm teaching business skills.
And when those business skills just represent something completely unrelatable, the breaking down of the concepts is absolutely what you need to do and to put a story behind it as well. So a story that makes sense to them and that they can identify with. So yeah, I've gotten good at that. So but you know, it's interesting because you can do it the other way around as well because I also teach yoga, meditation and breath work to doctors and scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College. And so yeah, so you, so conversely, yeah, so conversely you might take an idea. Well, not directly opposite actually. You take an idea and you still have to break it down for them to understand it. Because in the case of some of these highly intellectual scientific types, you also have the issue of them not being able to embody it.
So we're talking, you know, embodiment and a movement based practice. And sometimes they're so in their head and they take it to such a degree of intellectuality that you have to just say, you know, let's just not get smart about this. Let's just inhale and look for the, for the sensorial experience of what it feels like to take a deep breath, you know, and then you have to make it simple and in a different way.
And that is also something I've taken from my community college learning or the way that I teach to these different contexts so that it just becomes more accessible, it becomes more actionable, it's easy to do and you don't put up a barrier because it seems too hard.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: Because you've said that technical excellence is only half of leadership.
So what's the other half that nobody teaches?
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think we touched on it earlier, but it is the, it's the judgment, it's discernment, it is the relationships that I think are underestimated.
I call it relational intelligence. So it's understanding how to be in a room and how to work with humans, human beings, how to work with people and get the best out of them.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: I was just thinking also of our, of our dojo kun and the, you know, how we strive for perfection of our whole character as one of our principles. And then the third one is perseverance or endeavor. Right, the third one, it's not like seek perfection of movement.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: So I think it ultimately is, but I think it's the striving and the perseverance that you need in order to get to the point where you will ultimately hopefully get mastery.
But I think it's taken together the principles I think push you to just showing up. Because it's like Tanren, the concept of just forging, repeating, repeating, and then through the repetition and the experience of just showing up each time and knowing that each time practice session is not going to be the same. It's going to be quite different from session to session and you're going to maybe have little epiphanies and realizations and eye opening moments that you didn't expect.
But over time what can happen is that you do get that so called perfection of character because you've just shown up and you've got the, you've worked through the tough moments. In fact, that is exactly. This is a really good point actually Diana, because this is what I hope to achieve in my mentorship groups that I've created through the karate organization.
Because what I do and what's characteristic about my mentorship groups is that I give them assignments and scenarios of non ideal situations. And I ask what would you do given these circumstances?
And it's the situations that are really difficult and the situations that challenge your ability to keep your cool, to Keep your calm and to have calm clarity in the face of disputes, conflict.
And what do you do when you are in a situation of dispute resolution or conflict resolution?
How do you react? What is your default?
So that is something that I hope I'm offering to my mentees and I give them those scenarios. Because if you don't train in this mentorship context, then how is the younger generation of leaders, how are they going to cope without that little practice or practice run or the tan ren that I just spoke of, the repetition and the showing up in those non ideal scenarios, how are they going to be good leaders without that practice? Because they're just going to be thrown in the deep end if you don't train them and if you don't hone their, their knowledge base. But also these relationship issues that I referred to earlier, they're not going to be good with people and they're not going to be able to read a room. They're not going to be able to understand when you need more empathy or compassion or when you have to be more hardline and meet the inward sizes. You know, it's discernment and it's this.
Diana, do you know that concept? Sens aru and sense naive. I hope I'm using it the right way. But Richard taught us how sense nai is where you don't read things correctly in a contextual sense. And so you get the tone of the room off.
And so you behave therefore, sometimes inappropriately or you overspeak or you underspeak or you don't show up for yourself. And so you get the balance wrong and then you've got sense aru which is this understanding of knowing how to be impeccable in all circumstances. And that's a hard thing to achieve. But you get it through exposure, you get it through discussing things intellectually if that's the type of learner you are. But you also trial and error of having the experience of getting things wrong and then learning and reflecting on those experiences. So I hope that my mentorship group gets a little bit of all of that through the sense 9 sense ARU kind of dichotomy. But it is a, yeah, it's a, it's a great paradigm in, to refer to from, from time to time.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: I've noticed that in rebellion. Like for example, you know, we've had, you know, if you stand. If, like for example, I've walked and when we were lined up in two lines, I've walked in the middle of the two lines and been pulled off.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: The thoughts you got like, and, and, and, and so it's part of the etiquette, but it's also also like the person who stands in the room and blocks the people behind them from seeing.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah, perfect example.
Yeah, yeah. Not having the awareness. This is the sort of protocol and etiquette issues. But then even on a relationship level, when you're talking about on an organizational level, so management level, where people and sometimes of high rank interact with one another and sometimes you get those. The protocol wrong or the understanding wrong as well. So, yes, on a physical dojo level, absolutely. That is the most obvious example. But then you've also got it on a political slash, you know, relationship dynamic level with your higher ups or people of the same level.
And sometimes you can get that dynamic wrong. And so you'll learn, you know, the hard way, through being admonished or just being told, well, let's look at this situation and how you behaved here or there. And sometimes you're lucky if people or that your seniors will take the time to mentor you on those things. But on the whole, though, a lot of seniors, I think you'll find in the karate context, don't do that. I would hope that I'm here to change that.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: You have, I think it's on YouTube.
People. Can you respond to questions from people who have dojo dilemmas?
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Dojo dilemmas. Yeah, that's it. I've got a column with an online magazine called Budo Mindset, and on that platform, people write articles about all aspects of training life, dojo life, and anything to do with Shotokan Karthi, and actually a little bit beyond that, too, some other martial arts as well. But they asked me kindly to do a column called Dojo Dilemmas, and it's all about the issues that you can encounter relationally or maybe just from a technical perspective and from a teaching perspective. And some of the questions I've got from people from all around the world are pretty amazing. And by amazing, I mean everybody can relate because you've either had a direct experience yourself or you've heard stories around the dojo about these scenarios. And I won't say they're hilarious, but they do make you realize I'm not alone. I really am not alone because it happens everywhere. And I'm hoping that the.
That people can find value in these little. They're little clips that I put together, but they. I also write an actual written column about the topic as well.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: So, yeah, everything that you've been given, I can. You know you're passing it on to the next, and it's so. It's so awesome.
If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people like you navigating exactly that. You can reach me at Diana Oeh Hrli.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Com.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Thanks for listening.
