“YOUR PARTNER BECOMES A MIRROR”

When we find ourselves in a place of great physical and emotional weakness, with our backs against the wall, can our training actually revive us? Our guest this week argues that it can…and it has. This episode delves deeply into a personal story of addiction and recovery, and how the process we all undergo as Jiu-Jitsu practitioners can rekindle our ability to connect with one another, to learn more about ourselves and to push through even our darkest challenges.

Rosanna Scimeca has been a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner for over 20 years, and in this episode she shares with Shihan Gene Dunn and guest Jessica Stone how Jiu-Jitsu training grew into an “almost spiritual practice” to support her recovery and transition away from drugs and into a healthier lifestyle.

We also zero in on some of the challenges women face in Jiu-Jitsu; the need to directly contend with our physical shortcomings in the training; the perceptual difference between Jiu-Jitsu sparring and striking, and many more.

One of the more intimate and layered conversations we’ve had in recent memory, we left this exchange better for having had it, thinking more deeply about our own relationship with training, and how the martial arts holds a promise for each of us.

Our hope is that it does the same for you.

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