Edward Norton on Aikido, Martial Arts Teaching You to be Calm | Joe Rogan

I think that people don't realize that a lot of stress, a lot of aggression, it's like aggression actually is paired with stress usually. You know what I mean? It's hard to be aggressive, super aggressive without a little bit of adrenaline pumping and stress and all these things. The truth is there's so much of the training, if you're actually training this stuff, what you're training yourself to do is be calm. And that's totally counterintuitive because people think, no, you've got to go in there like Rocky and want to win. And it's like, well, in a competition, sure, on some level, but really, really, really great people, kind of in any sport, but it's even more counterintuitive in fighting is you need to cultivate calm. And the ability to be clinical and think calmly, control your breathing because you get exhausted if you can't control your breathing. And the truth is that those are life skills that are actually very...they cultivate a very calm. It helps you cultivate calm in life. And the thing I always really liked about Aikido is that there aren't attacks in it. It was developed by a guy, Mora Hiyushiba, who was an all-around Bujitsu master. He was like in jujitsu, kendo, karate, all these things. And he developed Aikido because he had joined the global pacifist movement. He was like one of the most respected cross-form Japanese martial artists. He joined the same movement for pacifism that Gandhi was a part of in the 20s. And he believed that martial arts could contribute to pacifism if they refined. And Aikido was a refinement of kendo, jujitsu, judo. And he basically said, I'm going to develop a non-aggressive martial art that has all...it has no attacks. And there's an uke in it for the thing, but it's only a defensive. And it's like that phrase we all hear, redirection of energy, the conversion of negative energy into neutral. That's his...that is really his contribution. He was like, you can take the most aggressive energy and you can neutralize it. You can neutralize it very peacefully, or you can neutralize it with a little more teeth in it depending on how aggressive the person's being. But I loved that. I thought that was amazing because it was like...I wasn't looking to be in fight, but I loved the idea that you could have control and you could neutralize. And I think there's something kind of amazing in that. I think it's actually aligns with yoga, with meditation, with all things. Surfing, I mean, that's what surfing is. It's like there's all this energy coming at you. And it's going to put you into the rocks or rock you or flip you over. But you don't let that happen. You look at it, you look at a million waves, you figure out how to move yourself, you get in there and you get the exact opposite of getting torched. You get the best thing ever. And I think things like that that are...where you have to...those are like Zen. You know what I mean? Like, Jiu-Jitsu, what you're saying is really ultimately like why he was great is he had like the deepest Zen of anybody in the whole thing because he was the calmest and he had like the micro, micro, micro, micro understanding of forms, but really like it's something deeper. It's like Neo in the Matrix. He's like seeing it with more granularity. Yeah. He had everything. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it. He had the full package of it.