MMA: Mixed Medicine Arts.

"Martial skills, spiritual self-discipline, and aesthetic sensitivity became merged into a single indistinguishable whole." – Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi

Mixed Medicine Arts. Or, Martial Medicine Arts? Medicine Martial Arts?

Let me know if one of those sounds better...

Shoutout to Cameron Shayne—5th degree taekwondo black belt, 3rd degree karate black belt, BJJ black belt, and founder of Budokon—for the seed of inspiration. 

Shayne refers to Budokon—a movement language for martial artists—as "Mixed Movement Arts."

Brilliant.

“Remember… you are expressing the technique, not doing the technique.” – Bruce Lee.

Mixed Medicine Arts.

Everything this implies is where I'm taking my work. The center point of overlapping Venn diagrams.

The philosophy, discipline, and Way of Being of the martial arts, woven into the healing, wholeness, and evolution of personalized natural medicine.

Progression paths for eager students, dojos of discipline for earnest practitioners, personalized healing journeys for private clients, and rigorous standards of quality and excellence along the way.

Natural medicine. Plant medicine. Zen medicine. Bitcoin medicine. The Right Medicine, for the Right Person, at the Right Time, in the Right Way. 

Noticing early whispers of a 'Medicine Eightfold Path’ here…

The Practice of Medicine as a Process of Becoming.

One of the questions I get from friends at home when I talk about my work and process is, “Aren’t you ever done healing?”

It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it's often genuine.

The practice of medicine is a process of becoming. It’s a dance with the flow of time and change.

My answer is a consistent ‘no’, there’s no real end, and there are a few reasons why:

1. Experientially, the further I go into healing, the more new material surfaces. The deeper you go, the more complicated it gets, and the longer it takes to resolve. Start with anxiety, progress to self-worth, then fear of death and the illusion of separation. The rabbit hole of what is possible to be healed runs deep, far deeper than modern culture recognizes.
2. The difference between ‘growth’ and ‘healing’ might just be semantic. The once-clear boundary separating ‘healing’ and ‘personal growth’ is beginning to blur and disappear. Most people consider ‘developing discipline’ a growth-oriented activity. Nowadays, I'd say we’re working on ‘healing your discipline’. There's an obstacle impeding the natural flow of life force energy, creating psycho-spiritual inconsistency (lack of discipline). Address the obstacle, ‘heal’ your discipline. But when you develop more discipline, most people would say you’ve grown instead of healed.
3. New identities and new bodies will have new issues. Humanity has not yet conquered aging, nature, or the law of entropy. Every few years, you have an entirely new body. No single cell remains the same. New bodies have new issues. As you’ve grown older, you’ve started to notice a little less energy, cuts take longer to heal, more frequent sickness, lower back pain, still comparing yourself to people more than you’d like, not a huge fan of the aging reflection that looks back at you in the mirror. So long as you remain a living creature, there is healing work to be done.

Basic Goodness & Radiant Sunlight.

This is a core part of my worldview. I believe all people have 'basic goodness', from Chogyam Trungpa and the Shambhala Prophecy:

"You have something in yourself that is fundamentally, basically good. It transcends the notion of good or bad. Something that is worthwhile, wholesome, and healthy exists in all of us. Such goodness is synonymous with bravery. It is always there. Whenever you see a bright and beautiful color, you are witnessing your own inherent goodness. Whenever you hear a sweet and beautiful sound, you are hearing your own basic goodness. Whenever you taste something sweet or sour, you are experiencing your own basic goodness. Things like that are always happening to you, but you have been ignoring them, thinking that they are mundane and unimportant, purely coincidences of an ordinary nature. However, it is worthwhile to take advantage of anything that happens to you that has that particular nature of goodness. You begin to realize that there is nonaggression happening all around you in your life, and you are able to feel the freshness of realizing your goodness, again and again."

If you've ever explored Internal Family Systems (IFS), you'll know that at the center is their theory of the Self.

The Self is present in all people, and when 'unobstructed', radiates the 8 C's: Confidence, Calm, Curiosity, Compassion, Clarity, Creativity, Connectedness, Courage.

I believe this. Though the clouds may block the Sun, the Sun never stops shining. Inside all people are all the virtues and positive traits we admire in humanity.

For various reasons, these get covered up. Whether you're in a 'growth mindset' or deep healing, the aim and outcome are the same: clear away the obstacles and illnesses blocking the naturally beautiful expression of the individual.

Personal Evolution.

Every person is so wonderfully, beautifully, painfully complex. A rich mix of childhood experience, ancestral genetics, cultural inheritance, and the accumulated weight of their human experience.

The precise mix of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual gifts and maladies is unique to each person.

The idea that you can run everyone through the same assembly line of healing is deeply misguided, at minimum less effective than it could be, and oftentimes dangerous. 

And so… Mixed Medicine Arts. 

Part school, part healing center, part dojo, part community, part nature, part sanctuary. Taking the best of allopathic and alternative medicines, finding the compounds, substances, experiences, techniques, and modalities that address the unique circumstances of each person, and creating tailored and personalized progressions for each person.

Medicine and Mastery fused in a brilliant process of being and becoming. Healing and growth united as one.

MMA — Mixed Medicine Arts.

Welcome to the dojo, partner.
EB.