Why Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Might Be More Therapeutic Than Therapy

We slap hands and fist bump. I look up. I’m about to wrestle with a behemoth. What’s the next level up from ‘man-child’, I think to myself. ‘Bigfoot-man’. Surely his Gi (the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu uniform) is custom-made. He didn’t say much before the roll and he’s not saying much now. He’s in attack mode.

We go at it. I’m a white belt and so is he. I’ve been training for about two years now. He told me he’d been training for three weeks. We’ll be rolling (sparring) for five minutes. I’m trying to put him on his back, he’s trying to put me on mine. I’ve got a few extra moves, but I already know I’m expending too much energy. I’m not thinking about my breathing as I should be. I’m in fight/flight mode.

I’m tiring. He sees an opening and flattens me instantly. As I’m being squashed, my mind dissociates, taking me to happy places in an attempt to forget that over one hundred and thirty kilos (another thing he told me) of muscle-mass is intentionally making it harder for me to breathe. He’s also six-foot-nine . . .

I bump my hips so that I can clear enough space between my face and his chest in an effort to move my head to the side. Success! I can breathe again. I’m stuck under the weight of this twenty-seven year-old. I’m twenty-eight. The weight difference is astronomical, and, as a white belt, I don’t know enough technique to escape this position (guard). I’ve barely got my legs wrapped around his—a desperate, yet pitiful attempt to keep him from passing my legs into mount position. He’s so big and so tall that he’s squashing me irrespective of where my legs are. He presses further and elevates my hips so that the entirety of his weight now rests feebly on my neck.

My mind begins to race as the very real sense of claustrophobia emerges from the dark recesses of my subconscious. My ego is stuck there with me. Trying desperately to think of a way out, my ego thinks of excuses and reasons to tap.

“Sorry mate, I think my nose is bleeding”. No, that wouldn’t work because it’s obvious it’s not. There’d be blood!

“Hey dude, just give me a second. I think I’m having an asthma attack”. That wouldn’t work either because he has asthma, so he’ll know I’m lying. What about if I said I was injured and could only drill techniques? But he saw me rolling hardcore with the other guys only minutes ago! Some other voice—not my ego—begins to speak to me:

You think you’re so tough, don’t you? You’ve got two stripes on your white belt—whoop-de-doo! You’re nothing. That anxiety you thought you’d overcome won’t ever leave you. You’re right back where you were as a twenty-three year-old; and now you’re going to have another panic attack!

The voice is right. Not so much about the shame of not being good at Jiu Jitsu; but I am, by this time, having a panic attack. I can’t escape and I can’t breathe properly because I expended so much energy trying to prevent this from happening. I’m stuck, claustrophobic and highly anxious. And within seconds, I remember why I’m so absolutely, completely and utterly obsessed with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu . . .

Drinking the Kool-Aid

My first Jiu Jitsu class was in late March 2019. I’d been eager to give it a go for some time by then, influenced heavily by figures like Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink (two Jiu Jitsu black belts and two people I admire a lot). I had no idea what to expect but was looking for something more than what CrossFit could offer. Having thrown myself into competitive CrossFit training since 2014, shortly after my world came crashing down after having been cut from VFL tryouts, I’d come to miss the physical contact and intensity of playing footy. I knew my body, by that time, wouldn’t do well with high impact sports, but I wanted to traverse the middle ground. I wanted some physical contact. I wanted to know what my body was capable of up against someone else’s. My love of CrossFit was beginning to waver, but my obsession with exercise was as strong as ever. Jiu Jitsu, I thought, might just be what I needed.

I walked into my first Jiu Jitsu academy and said to the coach that I’d never done it before, but that I had no expectations and was looking forward to it, nonetheless. He was incredibly lovely, and I felt welcomed immediately. He gave me a GI to borrow and showed me how to tie the Jiu Jitsu belt. I looked around. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel intimidated like I normally did upon entering other sporting clubs and gyms. Usually I was quick to pinpoint the alphas: the larrikins, the “big dogs”, the gym junkies; the guys who got all the girls—or at least, made you believe they did! Here, in this unassuming little Jiu Jitsu gym, there didn’t seem to be any—or if there were, they must have been out on a pub crawl that night. The gym was quiet, but the energy was enticing. People were calm, yet steadfast. There was something about this place.

After a few more failed attempts at tying the belt, I looked around once more. Not the sporting culture I was used to, I overheard two middle-aged men talking about chess tactics. “Nerds”, I assumed. Before long, one of them put on his black belt. I felt my heart flutter a little. “Maybe he’s just being nice to the other guy”, I thought, as I imagined the other guy struggling as much as me to tie the belt. The black belt gave the other guy a hug, came up to me and looked me in the eyes directly as he shook my hand and introduced himself; then he bowed before the mats and went over to a corner to stretch. I’d never seen anyone behave like that before: so respectful, so humble, yet clearly, a trained assassin. I looked back over to the other guy. In disbelief, I watched as this skinny rake of a human being tied his black belt. He came over to me, shook my hand and introduced himself, bowed before the mats, then began to stretch. This was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was my first subtle hint that I had some serious insecurities. As a lover of the game of chess—and as someone who plays multiple games online, every day—my first thought was to judge others (really, myself) for openly enjoying and speaking about something perceptibly less “manly”. I hadn’t even started training, yet my ego feeble ego was getting exposed!

That I was a complete newbie to martial arts would be a slight lie. Truthfully, I’d dabbled in about two weeks of Karate upon the precipice of my teenage years. Karate never stuck despite how cool I thought it was at the time. I remember my first night of sparring. I had no idea what I was doing and, therefore, barely any idea if I was winning or not. Up against a higher belt, she beat me within the minute, and I was left to walk to the end of the line. To this day, I have no idea how she won because I didn’t understand the rules! Fast forward to 2015. I’m cleaning my room. I’m listening to Joe Rogan talk about Jiu Jitsu, not because he’s a psychopathic silverback gorilla obsessed with dominance and winning—the enjoyment of gradually draining someone’s oxygen from their skull—but because he’s interested in getting to know himself. That a martial art might have something more to do with the art as opposed to the fighting intrigued me. This, I believe, four years prior to my first class, is when the seed was planted.

Bridging the Gap Between Perception and Reality

Two things happened that night in March 2019. These two moments would set me on a path I never thought I’d walk down—the path of the martial artist. Coming off the back of a VFL pre-season in 2013/14, I was as aerobically fit as I ever would be. I came third in the beep-test, up against other young, fit footy players keen to make it to the AFL, with a score of 14.6. Shortly after, I found CrossFit and my fitness soared to new heights. In 2017, I came 176^th in the Oceania CrossFit open. At the age of twenty-four, I could snatch one-hundred kilos multiple times under fatigue, handstand walk up to twenty-five metres without stopping and perform over twelve muscle-ups in a row. “White belt”, I thought—and I’m being completely honest with you—wasn’t exactly an accurate depiction.

It came time to put some techniques we’d been practising to the test. The drill was simple: “Sweep or submit”—the idea being that someone starts on the ground and it’s someone else’s job to pass that person’s legs and then consolidate a position on top. The person on the bottom was to “sweep” the top person, meaning they would need to trip or regain a dominant position, thereby finishing on top. I told the coach I wasn’t overly sure what to do. He asked me whether I’d ever “rugby tackled” someone. I said yes. He said, “Great! Try that.” I could fill my ego firing with confidence once again, my mind flirting with an augmented sense of self. Though those ‘chess nerds’ were wearing black belts, I’d spent my whole life tackling people (and, ironically, playing chess!). This was going to be easy.

The first guy approached me. We slapped hands and fist bumped. He passed my legs without looking. He was talking to a friend also rolling with someone else at the same time. Not that he was being arrogant; more that he seemed like he was doing the dishes. In other words, he seemed pretty calm. He thanked me for the roll.

“That was weird”, I thought. I was panting quite heavily, and I hadn’t even ruffed up his GI. A young woman then approached me. She was quite attractive and wearing a purple belt. I’d never tackled a woman before; I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. We slapped hands and first bumped. She was an absolute monster. She lifted my legs, inverted me (put me onto my neck), and slid seamlessly passed my legs like I was coated in oil. She smiled at me and thanked me for the roll. I felt completely disarmed, both emotionally and physically. My ego was well beyond dead by this point. Arrogance was replaced with humility, but my sense of intrigue only grew. That people half the size of those I played against on the footy field were doing—literally—whatever they wanted to me was absolutely astonishing. Physical fitness was always, I thought, my strong suit. The thrill of being so awful at something I thought I was so good at was, for some reason, exciting.

Upon reflection, I can still feel the thrill of it all. The next person came out onto the mats. He was wearing a blue belt. He didn’t look particularly fit, but there was something mysterious about him, like he had his cards to his chest. We slapped hands and fist bump. Unlike the others, he moved more passively. He seemed not to want to dominate me like the others did (and I have to mention that that is what it feels like for every white belt/beginner, despite the fact that this might not at all be the intention of training partners). He was smiling whilst we rolled. I’d never seen anything like this: chess playing assassins, women half my size folding me into a pretzel, people talking and laughing whilst they restricted the oxygen and blood flow from my carotid arteries—I was in a foreign environment.

His smile faded shortly thereafter. He looked bored. Within seconds, he then passed my legs and, before I could say “Gi”, I was wrapped up on the ground unable to move. Then something weird happened. I looked up at the roof and blurted, “What the fuck is happening?” I wasn’t angry in the slightest; I was completely baffled, more confused than I think I’d ever been. I didn’t mean to ask the question out loud but, like a knee reflex, I couldn’t control it. The blue belt looked at me earnestly and said, “Don’t worry mate, you’re a white belt.”

This was a very important moment. Doses of reality are humbling. They hurt, they make us feel like shit, but they are vital if our wish is to be happy with who we are. To be happy with who we are means to have at least some understanding of who we actually are—not who we think we are.

“Tom, you say you’re fit and capable, but are you? Are you actually fit and capable of handling yourself? It certainly doesn’t seem so!”

Though humbling at the time, this key performance indicator helped carve away the fat of egoic sensationalism that had grown inconspicuously around my self-perception; a soft, delightful cushion of delusion keeping me happy and comfortable like a never-ending trickle of dopamine. Stripped back to face the truth—a gift offered by the harsh, unforgiving conditions of reality—I was left to pick up the pieces of my ego and clean up after myself (thank god I didn’t have to pay for the trial class!).

The Buddhists call reality “Maya” because we each perceive a subjective version of it and, more often than not, our idea of reality is personally favourable. It is not a true depiction of reality, but a version we prefer. So much of my identity at the time was based upon my physical appearance and capabilities. To have that stripped away so effortlessly by unassuming and worse, lovely people (who I’d later find out where doctors, lawyers and a manager at the local Grill’d), proved to be a defining moment for me, an existential crisis turned spiritual awakening. In other words, a giant percentage of who I thought I was turned out not to be true. Now, I didn’t really know who I was; the silver lining being that I now had an opportunity to find out who I could be.

Dancing on the Edge of Limitation

The second defining moment for me occurred toward the end of the class. I was rolling with a four-stripe brown belt. In other words, he wasn’t far off the black! He, like everyone else, wrapped me up like a birthday present, flipping my body like professional gamblers flicking poker chips between their fingers. His legs were contorted around my body. I had no way of escaping. I could feel his fist slowly press into my neck as my awareness began to dull, my vision becoming fuzzier as I gasped for breath that had no way of entering my lungs. I fought as hard as I could, but I was completely stuck. Acquiescing to the demands of my most primal needs, I tapped twice on his shoulder—the universal white flag.

He wouldn’t let go. I began to panic a little. I tapped twice more on his shoulder, this time more forcefully. I didn’t want him to know I was scared, I wanted to prove myself to him; but I also, truth be told, wouldn’t have minded a nice, refreshing glass of oxygen. He didn’t stop. I could feel his face move closer to the back of mine. I could feel the warm heat of oxygen flowing seamlessly in and out of his mouth, a privilege I seldom, if ever, considered.

“You’ve got more in you”, he whispered.

Two conflicting thoughts entered my mind. The first one was that I hated him. This was exactly the reason why people would be turned off from trying a martial arts class—because of “fuck heads like him”, I thought. The second thought, like I said, conflicted with the first. “He’s right.” With a moment of pause, I realised I did have more air in the tank. It was my fear that made me feel as if I were entirely drained of oxygen. I exhaled intentionally. This then allowed me to inhale more fully. Though not completely out of the woods, I recognised in that moment just how significant the contribution of my fear was to my experience of suffering. My body sat behind the steering wheel and my mind took a back seat. I calmed down immediately. Ten more seconds elapsed, and he put the final touches of the choke on. I tapped twice and he let go. I turned around to look at him after he’d uncoiled his legs. He was smiling. He looked proud and welcoming.

“You’re a big guy mate, and you’ve got a lot of fight in you. Just don’t tap early. Find out what you’ve got in you.”

After four and a half years of Jiu Jitsu, I still think this was a risky lesson to teach someone on their first day. It could have gone one of two ways: It could have left a sour taste in my mouth, and I’d have ended up resenting “martial artists with their big, brutish egos”. Or I’d have ended up falling in love with the sport. Thankfully, the latter turned out to be true. In retrospect, I chose to believe that he knew what he was doing—that he could see I was eager to learn, not necessarily to win. I don’t think he was trying to make a point that he was the alpha because, as every Jiu Jitsu player will tell you, the belt you wear is proof enough: “Rest easy young grasshopper!”

What he said taught me another valuable lesson about the ego. It was no coincidence that my two conflicting thoughts manifesting whilst being choked appeared in that order. That I hated him first before leaning into what he was saying shows just how fearful, fragile and insecure the ego is. It wants to protect itself at all costs because for it to be wrong is analogous to death. The ego is our sense of who we are. If we are not who we think we are, then that particular ego—that particular version of ourselves—is otherwise made redundant. The ego will fight tooth and nail to be right because it fears death beyond all else. When faced with the truth that conflicts with our perception of reality, our egos have no choice but to dissolve, amalgamate and merge into a more unified and accurate depiction of reality. Pertinently, the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung stated that, “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” Failing to accept life as it is, not as we wish it to be, leads to suffering as our feeble attempts to resist the universal flow engenders existential anxiety and frustration—weak, futile defence mechanisms whose aims are to keep our heads buried in the sand. Though denial may help in the beginning—for example, upon learning that our spouses are having an affair or that a loved one has died—it is only acceptance, in the end, that well help us come to terms with, integrate and find ourselves once more.    

The beautiful thing about Jiu Jitsu is that being able to breathe is a more primal need than the sustainability of the ego. In the moment described above, it was my ego’s attachment to safety that had to die, paradoxically, so that I could live. The four-stripe brown belt was right. I was okay. It was my anxiety, my mind, that was wrong. Though he might have thought that his gift to me was one of initiation into manhood, I now see it as something much more profound. Like a cold shower, psychedelic journey, or prolonged period of isolation and solitude, forcing ourselves to reach beyond our limits not only challenges those limits, but helps us become who we didn’t think we could be. If it is an adventure we seek in this lifetime, then we must accept the discomfort of challenge prior to adaptation. Refusing the call to adventure is imbued with suffering. We know what we need to do but we are afraid of what it takes to get there. We want to go back to easier times; we want to walk again amongst the flowers and animals in the Garden of Eden. But God—life, reality— has kicked us out for good and we can’t go back. We can only go forwards.

The refusal to accept life as it is, not as we want it to be is, I think, normal. It’s part of the human experience. Take the difficulties of parenthood, for example. A lack of sleep, anxiety, couple conflict and time restrictions are uncomfortable, yet inevitable challenges on the journey toward embodying the new identity of being a parent. Throughout this journey—and upon many other adventures in our lives—we fight and resist life as it is. This is why we argue when we know we’re wrong, why we eat or drink too much, or why we desperately seek a night out! We want a justified escape from the pains of reality. We want things to be different, we want to stand upon greener grass. But we can’t. It’s only with time and acceptance that we come to appreciate just how green the grass we’re standing on is.

What I love about Jiu Jitsu is that it holds no prisoners. The only way to get better at it is to keep going. To do that, you must completely fall in love with losing, being a beginner, and then—more importantly—becoming a learner . . . for life. Jean Jacques Machado, a famous Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner and nephew of the co-founder Grandmaster Carlos Gracie, said, “If you ask me what belt I am today I’ll tell you that I’m a white belt that never gave up.” What this tells me is that greatness comes down to skill development. Pertinently, the American writer George Leonard who wrote extensively on human potential said that “Practice is not something you do, it’s something you are.” Fall in love with what you do, and you’ll become great at it. Remember, however, that greatness is a lovely outcome, but not the thing in itself that is desired by those who become great. For them, they simply enjoy the act of doing what they get to do, day in, day out.

One cannot pretend things are any different whilst one’s oxygen is being depleted. What a wonderful training ground for life—especially as a white belt! You either win or you learn. “Hey, you got it wrong, and now you’re getting choked. This is no one’s fault but yours. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person; it simply means you have more to learn.” This is the message of Jiu Jitsu: profound and simple. You’re not a bad person, you just have more to learn.

Walking out the door of the gym—battered, broken, humbled and still confused—I was yet to realise that I’d just gained more from that sixty minutes of Jiu Jitsu than I had in over six years of psychotherapy. I’ve now been training for four and a half years, and I still think, in many respects, that the lessons on the mat are more beneficial than anything therapy can offer—and I’m a therapist!

Jiu Jitsu not as a Sport but as a Therapy

I’d now like to breakdown a series of therapeutic concepts I think Jiu Jitsu has the potential to teach us. Each of these are fundamental to become an individuated, fulfilled human being. As a counsellor, I’ve often touched upon these concepts with clients. Whilst I appreciate the cognitive understanding and awareness that therapy can provide, embodying the teachings, I believe, is more important. In other words, doing is better than knowing what to do but not doing it. Personally, I’ve found my path so far in Jiu Jitsu to be just as good, if not a better teaching method than the theoretical and practical lessons learned whilst studying to become a therapist.

We all face challenges in our lives, and those challenges engender anxiety, frustration and then, hopefully, satisfaction as we overcome those difficulties and reap the rewards of our hard earned work. Happiness, fulfilment and contentment are dynamic, ongoing processes that will ensue only if we live forthrightly. What we want—and I believe that, when it comes down to it, what we all want is pretty similar, irrespective of how we each attempt to get it—is something we must continually fight for. There is no destination; the aim in life being that, upon our death beds, we are still enlivened with a sense of purpose and meaning. It is my belief that the path of Jiu Jitsu near-perfectly emulates the path of life. It provides a safe and effective training ground by encouraging new Jiu Jitsu athletes to 1. Expose themselves to fear-inducing situations; 2. Manage and regulate their emotions including cultivating assertiveness; 3. Teach them how to use their bodies and learn about their physical limitations; 4. Recognise the importance of community, friends and support networks; and 5. Fall in love with the journey, not the destination.

Exposure Therapy and Fear

Suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance. My first night on the mats proved this to me. I didn’t realise I had more oxygen left to breathe, but I did. It is only when we test our limits that we find out whether they’re actually limiting us or not. To reiterate, what I love about Jiu Jitsu is that the need to breathe is more fundamental than psychological safety. In his book Breathe, James Nestor writes about a lady known as “S.M.” with Urbach-Wiethe disease, a rare genetic condition that caused parts of her brain to harden. This completely destroyed her amygdala, two almond-like structures that rest on both hemispheres in the limbic (mammalian) portion of the brain responsible for emotional—and, in particular, fear—processing. As a result, she developed problems detecting danger, which made her, literally, fearless . . . almost. Nestor poignantly writes that her decisions became so reckless as a result that she even asked a man who attempted to rape her for a ride home. Without fear, life becomes very problematic!

Researchers spent two decades trying to use scare-tactics to help improve her fear response, but to no avail. It was only when a scientist by the name of Dr. Feinstein provided her with a single inhalation of carbon dioxide that things would change. Dr. Feinstein said that other test subjects of his reported a feeling of intense panic as their bodies felt that awful feeling of suffocation upon inhaling the CO₂. He wanted to see whether the same might be true for someone without an amygdala:

“S.M. inhaled a small breath of the carbon dioxide and soon began raising her arms, yelling for help, breathing quickly, and was triggered into a panic attack with the one breath. The carbon dioxide was physically triggering some other mechanism in the brain or body, outside of the emotional function of the brain.”

The implications for these findings were momentous. Up until then it was believed that without an amygdala, there was no fear. This was wrong. More primitive than the limbic system is the brain stem, which is responsible for our most fundamental survival needs i.e., thermoregulation, balance and heart rate. We now know that fear isn’t entirely psychological. This means that we can take the power back and, by regulating our breathing, regulate our fear response. We can reduce the intensity and frequency of “what if” thoughts, catastrophizing and ruminating because these awful, yet necessary components of keeping safe are directly modulated by the uptake of oxygen relative to the levels of carbon dioxide in our bodies. Put simply, focusing more on exhaling significantly calms, and therefore, desensitizes the fear response. Jiu Jitsu forces you to control your breathing, or else face panic, claustrophobia and defeat. Learning to control your breathing is, as the research outlines, absolutely vital to regulating fear.

Emotional Regulation

Jiu Jitsu also teaches you about the redundancy of anger as an effective emotion to resolve conflict. Once again, as a white belt, I couldn’t help but get increasingly angrier as the “injustice” of not being able to win continually cursed me! I am reminded of Romeo’s cursing of the stars as his despairing fate sealed his loving demise with Juliet. I am also reminded of the Biblical fable of Cain and Abel. When God favoured Abel’s sacrifice over Cain’s, Cain murdered his brother in a fit of rage as resentment boiled beyond control. Yes, anger is responsible for heinous acts of violence—especially when we believe injustices committed against us are beyond our control . . . and responsibility! What I love about Jiu Jitsu is that, irrespective of how angry you are, you won’t submit someone better than you. You can be as angry as you want, but it won’t help if your technique isn’t up to scratch. And the only way to get better technique is to keep showing up, which means, as we now know, to accept that you’re not very good, but that you could be better with a helpful dose of humility and discipline. I think this is particularly important for young, pubescent men (though, of course, women too) who are struggling to grow into their bodies whose rapid testosterone spikes leave them feeling like they’re sitting in the backseat of a speeding car without breaks.

Jiu Jitsu teaches you that the path to being good is slow, arduous and painfully incremental, but that anger won’t help you if you want the quick fix. This has helped me immensely in my professional work as a therapist. A particular example comes to mind. Working with an autistic man who, as he described it, was quite “oppositional”, proved to be difficult. In the beginning, he didn’t trust me. He opened up, but only insofar as he could test me to see what I was made of. He spoke over me; frequently told me I was wrong and that I had no idea about the experiences in his life. I could feel my anger rising. He’d come to me for help, and here he was belittling and defying my efforts. I wanted so desperately to armour myself against his armour and (inevitably) escalate the situation to prove I was right, that only I could have the last word and that, ultimately—and it pains me to say it—he was the client, and I was the therapist. Without getting lost in the weeds, my work with this man proved to be vital in my own personal work and learning. If it wasn’t for the many, many, many times Jiu Jitsu had proven to me just how insufficient anger is at achieving positive outcomes, I’d have probably attempted to utilise it. Make no mistake, this man was doing a very good job of intentionally pushing my buttons. Rather than armouring myself, I stripped bare in front of him, psychologically, and told him how I was feeling.

“Look, I feel really hurt if I’m being honest. I’m really trying to help you and I feel hurt that I’m not getting anywhere. I think I feel hurt mostly because I pride myself on being a good counsellor, and not being able to help you—and worse, make you angrier—makes me feel that I’m not as good at counselling as I thought I was. Could you help me by pointing me in the right direction?” I didn’t want to say this. Jiu Jitsu taught me to tap when I was stuck and couldn’t go on; to admit defeat, to swallow the teaspoon full of humility, to slap hands, fist bump and get back on the horse. There was a moment’s pause. The energy changed, and what came about was a wonderfully enlightening conversation about why being oppositional in the past helped this man detach from being heartbroken by an ex-lover.

This was a successful outcome. I’ve had many, many unsuccessful outcomes. The point is that Jiu Jitsu has proven to me, time and time again, that anger is a second-order emotion, an attempt to fight and armour oneself up against the pain one feels. My client was angry—was using anger—because he was sick of being hurt. I was angry because I was hurt that my counselling competency was being put to the test. In the beginning, I was very hurt, and therefore, angry, that I wasn’t as physically capable as I thought I was. Jiu Jitsu taught me not to care about that because, if I wanted to get better, all I had to do was keep showing up.

There is one final point I’d like to make here about emotional regulation, and that is what Jiu Jitsu can teach us about conflict resolution in relationships. I’ve worked for some time in the couples counselling space. Ongoing couple conflict is commonly precipitated and perpetuated by a host of factors including, but not limited to, individual childhood trauma, betrayals of trust, differences in values and visions for the direction of the relationship, and circumstantial issues. It is important couples discuss these aspects openly and honestly, which means—counter-intuitive to how it sounds—learning to express differences of opinion constructively (other therapists will call it “effective arguing”, though that is clearly an oxymoron). The art of having an open, honest conversation is being able to stay in the discomfort of not seeing eye-to-eye—maybe for a few minutes, maybe for the entirety of the relationship. In fact, the Gottman Institute, arguably the world’s leading research institute on relationships, has demonstrated that up to 69% of couple conflict is perpetual, meaning that a significant majority of what couples fight about are issues that won’t ever be resolved. They are issues that reflect individual personality differences. The key here is to become better at managing and regulating our own cognitive and emotional responses to our partner’s idiosyncrasies. Though we may not ever understand their introversion, why they never finish their tea, why they prefer tanning on the beach over reading a book in the countryside or why they like cats over dogs, we must come to accept them for who they are, not who we wish they were—as if we could mould them into our egos’ idea of perfection! Ultimately, couple conflict is mostly undergirded by differences between parties that likely won’t ever change. These differences then, aren’t problems to be solved by dichotomies to be managed. Trying to solve these differences will only ratchet up the intensity of argumentation as both parties feel increasingly vilified merely for who they are.

Developing the skill of emotional regulation in these circumstances is something Jiu Jitsu can help with. I’ve noticed its effect in my own relationship, and I believe the carry-over may be significantly correlated to what I’ve learnt, and what I still need to get better at on the mats. When rolling with lower grade belts, I recognise that dominating them will get me nowhere. Though I’m by no means a black belt, I know enough about Jiu Jitsu now that I’d feel quite confident backing myself in a roll with a newbie, analogous to a guitarist whom, having played for four years, is requested to play a G chord. It’s not arrogance, just a test of skill. Put it this way: it would be easier for a black belt to submit me than for me to submit a white belt (my sensitivity to arrogance compels me to add context!).

In the beginning—as you’re now very well aware of—it was about winning for me. I was shocked and disappointed when my physical prowess was put to the test, and I came out second best. Looking back, the only thing that got me through was the love of the sport. It’s incredibly uncomfortable having someone you know is better than you slowly, but surely, remove precious oxygen from your lungs. Try as you might to consolidate dominant positions, these efforts are fleeting. As a white belt, I noticed how often my anger would rise. I would imagine dominating these higher belts, my mind’s escape to a reality more satisfying that the one I had to reckon with. The anger would fester the closer I came to accepting that there was absolutely nothing I could do to win. As a colleague of mine once said, “Fantasizing about revenge can help us feel powerful when the world is making us feel powerless.”

The ongoing discomfort of being stuck under someone, their chest sweat dripping into your mouth, makes the aches of couple conflict throb less. Science tells us that decreasing our sensitivity to discomfort transfers across domains. Cold exposure, sweat lodges, psychedelic journeys, Jiu Jitsu—these are all training grounds to increase the likelihood of a favourable outcome in the game of life. Becoming a seasoned athlete, one who can accept emotional discomfort and seek not to remove it hastily will go a long way in cultivating a successful and committed relationship. By accepting discomfort, we choose not to fight—to win the argument, thereby dominating our partners; to flight—escape by checking out or walking away; freeze—to psychologically remove ourselves from reality; or to appease—to acquiesce entirely to their wishes. Rather, we stay true to who we are, with both backbone and heart, and seek to find a way to move forward with the ones we love. It is us against the problem, not us against our significant others.

Jiu Jitsu perfectly mirrors this dance. It arouses the sympathetic nervous system—the fight/flight/freeze/appease system—in a safe environment. It simulates real danger, but with someone you can trust. Learning to feel safe whilst activated is one of the primary ways couple counsellors help individuals in a relationship work through their perpetuating conflict. It is only when the bathtub overflows, when we become emotionally dysregulated, that our ability to speak openly and honestly is inhibited. Some people have a very low tolerance to emotional dysregulation, perhaps moulded by the terrors of childhood trauma. Others have a high tolerance. No matter who we are and where we come from, what upbringings we’ve had or who we like to be, I believe that Jiu Jitsu can lower our sensitivities to stress and emotional dysregulation by encouraging us to dance on our edge of tolerance every time we slap hands and fist bump. This can help us become both kinder and more assertive as we seek not to win at every cost nor to appease and acquiesce, thereby not having our voices heard or accepting defeat by not trying or tapping too early on the mats of our homelife.

Body Awareness

Our bodies aren’t fail-safe, nor are they incapable of hurting others tremendously. We don’t let teenagers drive cars without at least one-hundred and twenty hours of learning under their belts; why do we then consider ourselves ‘professional humans’ just because we’ve mastered the bare necessities? To me, this is like a telling someone you’re ready to drive solo because you know where the accelerator is. Becoming a competent driver means practising under all conditions. In Melbourne where I grew up, it was mandatory to log at least ten hours of wet weather driving and ten hours of night-time driving too, before being able to take the test to get my provisional driver’s license. Though the weather conditions were good when I went for the test, the instructor still directed me onto a freeway and through busy traffic. Without this exposure whilst learning, I’d have surely failed. Likewise, it is important we expose our bodies to as many different conditions as possible in case we are, in the real world, forced to contend with similar situations.

I would come to learn this valuable lesson shortly after I drunk the Kool-Aid, about three months into my Jiu Jitsu journey. I was rolling with a woman, a purple belt whose technique was highly skilled. Try as I might to consolidate anything close to a dominant position, all attempts proved futile. Her ability to invert to regain guard (picture someone rolling over their neck to re-wrap their legs around your waist); her sweeping and defensive playing—these were far too much from me. Though I’m hazy on the details, I recall the frustration building. Halfway through the roll, I went blank. She’d wrapped me up in a triangle choke, her legs coiled around my head with one of my arms extended and pressing into the side of my neck. I felt both dizzy and angry; dizzy because I couldn’t breathe and angry because I was losing. I stood up in an effort to shake her off but don’t remember much after that. My frustration must have boiled to breaking point because, when I finally came to, she was looking at me directly in the eyes and telling me off for nearly slamming her on the ground. Because she was so much smaller than me, it was easy to stand up and then—if I wanted to (thankfully I didn’t)—slam her on the mats. “Calm down”, she said, encouragingly, yet sternly. Immediately, a rush of guilt coursed through my oxygen-deficient blood.     

One of the lessons a white belt with a fitness background must learn is how to control his/her body. Jiu Jitsu favours skill and technique; strength is—despite what many say—very important too. I could have really hurt the purple belt which, though beneficial in a real-world situation, would have been an awful outcome. Young men have a tendency to be like raging bulls when they first begin their Jiu Jitsu journeys. Helping other young men through this has come to be rather fulfilling for me; it wasn’t long ago I was one of them! You’re fit, strong, capable—you think you can wrestle as good as the rest! Learning how to control your ego by accepting defeat through technique or, even more importantly, by prioritising the ‘play’ of Jiu Jitsu over the desire to win is an unbelievably important skill for any male. I’m not saying women don’t benefit from Jiu Jitsu at all; but what learning to flow with one’s body does for a young man buzzing with testosterone up to his ears is an invaluable skill.   

For both men and women, the simulation of fighting in a safe environment is wonderfully transformative. For men, as discussed, it can teach them about the damaging potential of their bodies, and how to control them. It can teach them to control their egos, accepting defeat when technique overrides strength and grit. Jiu Jitsu shows men not to rely on anger when times are tough, not to emotionally dysregulate because it feels powerful despite the world making them feel powerless. For women, Jiu Jitsu is just as transformative.

A colleague of mine made an interesting point. Whilst talking about Jiu Jitsu with her over some tea, she spoke of what it was like from her perspective. She’d trained for a few months prior and, though her Jiu Jitsu career had come to an end, was left with some pretty insightful perspectives. Having only ever trained Jiu Jitsu in a male body, I was keen to hear her perspective. She said that there are only two occasions whereby a woman will be that close, physically, with a man: both are vulnerable; one is pleasurable, the other, painful. Two ends of the spectrum—intimacy and assault (or worse). I looked at her for a moment. I’d never thought of it like that.

“Jiu Jitsu showed me what it was like to wrestle and play with men purely from a platonic standpoint. The only other times in my life whereby I’ve been that close with men were, thankfully, joyous; but I’ve got many friends who weren’t so lucky.”

As children, we play fight and wrestle a lot. There are important reasons for this. The late American neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp—who later became known as the “rat tickler” because he discovered that rats laugh when you tickle them—conducted experiments with rat pups who weren’t able to playfight when they were young. Very quickly, they became agitated, shook rather violently and remained on the peripheries of the social community. They couldn’t pay attention and their goal-orientation systems became inhibited. Even more interestingly, their symptoms dissipated when they were given Adderall! The implications of these findings demonstrate that mammals, including us, have evolved to playfight and wrestle, to mimic real-life situations for normal development. I would argue that body contact is just as vital for adults as it is for children.

We live in a detached world where individualism has separated us from intimate connections despite how “connected” we now are. Jiu Jitsu has the potential to run that back a bit, to bridge the gap between self and other, to show men and women how to play, to help them see the humanity in one another. Play is so important. It’s teamwork in the guise of physical intimacy. Cultivating a mutual feeling of psychological and physical security whereby men learn not to possess and dominate, and women learn not to acquiesce or appease lends itself not only to individual growth but political benefits too. Equality between the sexes made manifest with the acceptance and celebration of difference—yep, Jiu Jitsu can do it all!

The Power of Community

World renowned writer Johann Hari’s book Lost Connections was a very important book for me (and I am humbled to now call him a friend!). In that book, Hari did a wonderful job of humanising psychological pain and discomfort. Relying upon clinical nomenclature, he broke down the reasons why people feel the way they do living in a disconnected, fast-paced, consumerist world that, despite its many advantages, breeds a society driven to perform out of insecurity, insufficiency and lack. I can’t help but agree.

Right now I’m writing in a café. It’s my favourite thing to do. After the morning chores—walking and feeding the dogs, and the usual toiletries—my partner and I go our separate ways. Her morning ritual is one of solitude, peace and quiet, an introvert born and bred. I find my peace among others. I am an extrovert. My favourite café is nestled in a shopping mall. There are three clothing stores that I must walk passed in order to taste the sweet nectar of caffeine in the morning. One cannot help but notice the models who pose on the outside of the clothing stores. They all have the same faces. I notice the feelings within me that surface as I gaze toward their beauty. I feel as if I should think twice before approaching them; that if this person were standing right in front of me, I wouldn’t quite know how to act. Perhaps I’d stumble my words? Perhaps I’d say the wrong thing? Though models are becoming increasingly more diverse in figure and race, their look is still one of moral superiority—that I am better and that, more perversely, I am better because of what I’m wearing (“If you want to be better, you should wear what I wear.”). I’m not particularly interested in fashion, yet even I feel the desire to ‘fix’ my emotional discomfort by rectifying my superficial insufficiencies these photos of models were so quick to point out. In a nutshell, consumer marketing tells us, “You’ll only be happy if and when . . . (insert product or service).” Desire motivates; so does fear. Remember that.

The key to happiness is being free from want. This is the path of enlightenment. For most of us who aren’t likely to shave our heads and renounce our belongings, we must find the balance between wanting more and having enough. One of the ways to do this is through community. Being around good people reminds us of the little things in life, and this, I believe is yet another example of the therapeutic benefit of Jiu Jitsu.

Hari, quoting an interviewee, writes that, “Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people . . . it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else.” Sharing the path of Jiu Jitsu is wonderfully intimate. Jiu Jitsu brings up a lot for people: Fear, social anxiety, anger, “not-enough-ness”—these are significant obstacles. Though I no longer feel the panic of claustrophobia like I use to when I was a white belt, I still have an incredibly long path ahead of me. I feel most at ease when a higher grade belt thanks me for the roll and offers me advice. This tells me that people are looking out for me, that I am part of a community and that they can empathise because, not too long ago, they were where I am. Empathy is phenomenally powerful when it comes to therapy. Empathy is the bridge that mitigates the pain of existential isolation inherent to the conditions of living. Empathy says to our fellow human beings, “Hey, I get it. I’ve been there. I won’t take the adventure of life away from you and tell you how to do it, but I’ll walk along beside you whilst you make mistakes and then prevail.” I find that Jiu Jitsu constantly reminds me that I am enough, that I am sovereign, despite not being as good as others at the game. On the mats, I feel completely different to when I walk passed a model or watch an advertisement on TV. And that is why, pertinently, Hari became famous for saying that “The opposite of addiction is connection.”

The Journey, not the Destination

If you want the belt, you won’t get it. To get a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, it can’t be about the belt. It has to be about the love of the sport. Likewise, the late spiritual teacher Ram Dass said that life presents “The most exquisite paradox . . . as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.” Jiu Jitsu is the perfect training ground to help an individual embody spiritual wisdom—clichés we all know and love (or perhaps resent?). We know life isn’t about the destination, that it must be about the journey, otherwise we’ll miss all the fun. Conversely, without an aim, we’ll float adrift in a vast sea without direction or intent, slowly dying from starvation and thirst. We need to live both in the present and the future. We need to be here—and there! It’s just that, in our society, we’ve become obsessed with there, not here. Jiu Jitsu strips all that back and says, “Hey, you want to get there? Great! You can do it, but first you’ll need to be here, and for a long time. Don’t lost sight of where you want to get to but enjoy being here too.”

I fell in love with therapy because it benefited me so much in my early twenties. Clinically diagnosed with OCD with co-morbid ADHD, I’ve never found patience to be my strong suit. I need to put my time and energy into things—and people—that force me to grow. Otherwise, I’ll find a way to wriggle out and abdicate responsibility. What I love about Jiu Jitsu is that the rules are simple: The only way to get better is to keep showing up. Whilst that is true in every domain of life, I am yet to find one that offers such frequent and consistent, direct feedback. You know if you’re improving based upon your wins and losses. If you’re beating people you used to lose against, it’s safe to say you’re improving. If you’re losing, then the opposite is true. As I’ve stated, Jiu Jitsu might be one of the only activities whereby the feedback received is impossible to deny. Our egos are very good at justifying our actions and behaviours even when the evidence points clearly to negligence, ignorance, naivety and the like. We can get defensive when our managers are providing us with constructive feedback, when our partners are trying to have an honest conversation with us or when our kids are doing the wrong thing, and we attempt with all our might to forget that they are our mirrors and that their behaviour is a direct reflection of our parenting. There’s no hiding in Jiu Jitsu. If you lost, you lost. Both you and your partner know it. This isn’t something to resent or be fearful of. Rather, it’s something to embrace, a way to cultivate a growth mindset that can be applied to all walks of life.

I’ll never be the best at Jiu Jitsu. I’ll never be the best writer, therapist, parent, partner, friend, meditator, conversationalist or family member. My humanity is rife with imperfection. But Jiu Jitsu is teaching me to fall in love with striving to become better as opposed to the pain of not being the best. It demands that I fall in love with the journey because that is the only way I’ll improve. I notice that my love of Jiu Jitsu wavers the more I think about the end goal or beating someone I have a strong rivalry with. On the other hand, I can look back on weeks and months when my training was frequent and recognise that it was only because I was enjoying the banter, the physicality and the overall love of what the sport offers. Ultimately, as George Leonard implored, practice must become something I am—and for all of us—if we want to both improve and enjoy the paths we each walk in life.

I won’t say much more other than this: if you’re keen to try a Jiu Jitsu class but still find yourself on the fence, let me point out that you’ve just read a near ten-thousand word article about its benefits! If that won’t convince you then I don’t know what will . . .

A Word of Thanks to my Teachers Along the Way

I’ve been blessed by the guidance of seven different coaches in my four and a half years on the mats. Each coach has taught me far more than techniques and submissions. Most of what I’ve taken from them have been life lessons, many of which I’ve written about in this article. To my coaches: Ben, Kael, Brett, Jeroen, Jason, Adam and VC—thank you for your wisdom, guidance, banter and, most importantly, friendship. And thank you also for your inspiration, encouragement and feedback. They say that only when intellect is embodied that it becomes wisdom. You’ve each given me a north star to set course for. Hopefully, one day, I’ll slap hands and fist bump you there.