Breathe is a book that I found in the Schuylkill Camp library. It caught my attention because I had just been in conversation with a Pastor/Inmate at our camp who does our bible studies Thursday and Sunday evenings at 7p. In the course of our conversation the pastor had mentioned about some things he had noticed about me saying “he felt a heaviness” around me and that I needed in his opinion, to flow more with God and breathe, and then not 5 minutes later this book was staring me in the face. Not a coincidence.
Breathe is about one of the Gracie Jiu jitsu storied families’ most decorated fighters who never lost any professional matches, Rickson Gracie. Rickson, grew up with 21 brothers between his father’s family and his uncle’s, both also, fighting legends. But for the Gracie family jiu jitsu transcends fighting and was really a way of life for these Brazilian boys. The Gracie family was also instrumental in helping form MMA and eventually modern day UFC fighting and also Japanese Prize fighting before returning to their roots to really educate and train new students in the methodology and psychology of Gracie Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
These are some of the main take aways from Breathe:
- Stay calm in bad situations
- Cover and conceal your intent with other maneuvers
- Utilize the simplest and most efficient methods
- prioritize your focus of effort
- Train until you trust yourself to move intuitively
- Move at the right time
- defend critical areas
- Don’t attack your enemy’s strong points
- Utilize leverage
- Don’t let your emotions drive your decisions. Never put emotion before reason.
- Establish a good base foundation to build upon.
- Don’t be overly aggressive, but don’t just allow things to happen either.
- When you move, believe in it 100 percent!
- Be mentally strong.
- Keep an open mind
- Continuously learn new techniques, while reinforcing the fundamentals
- Adapt your plan if circumstances change.
- Overcoming fear, deal with loss, be courageous, find meaning, Strength, Honor, Pride, Forgiveness, The Warrior Way
- Respect
- Physical pressure will reveal emotional balance or ability to manage pressure.
- Curiosity coupled with courage will allow you to go beyond your limits or fears.
- Bioginastica through controlled movement and breathing can help you or athletes become more sensitive and intuitive.
- Code of the warrior – Honor and Loyalty are more important than wealth, life and family.
- Judge people based on their humility and self-respect.
This book reinforced for me primarily the concept from the bible of “Be still and know that I’m God”, so when we focus our breath and calm our hearts and minds we can enter a special state where we are not distracted or bombarded by thoughts, so that we can get into a “flow” with God, hear from Him, and He can direct our path daily almost effortlessly, much like Rickson Gracie used to enter his fights.
Also it was a good reminder to keep life simple, and focus on the most important things like family, serving and joy! And if you don’t focus on you marriage unfortunately it will suffer.
