Building Confidence and Balance: Innovative Martial Arts Techniques for Neurodivergent Children

Building Confidence and Balance: Innovative Martial Arts Techniques for Neurodivergent Children

Jeffrey Besecker: Today we're talking with Josh George. As a sixth degree black belt, Josh is providing coordinated fitness for marginalized communities as a martial arts instructor. Josh has developed an innovative system to empower and instill greater confidence in neurodivergent individuals as a supplemental therapy modality. With a primary focus on children, he utilizes his skill set development tool that sharpens proprioceptive and vestibular pathways. In essence, moving beyond our traditional understanding of the five senses in order to develop a greater sense of balance and confidence throughout our entire being.

Jeffrey Besecker: My man. How you doing, Josh?

Josh George: Nice shirt. I like that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. I'm trying to get into golfing spirit and I'm hoping the weather shifts soon. We've had such weird, rainy, cold, all over the place weather, and I'm ready to get on a golf course.

Josh George: You're a golfer, huh?

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, yeah, occasionally I not die hard and enjoy getting out swinging clubs every now and then.

Josh George: Yeah, me too. I wish I was better, but… Yeah, I think we all do. I'm terrible, but I do it.

Jeffrey Besecker: No matter how we progress.

Josh George: What's funny about it is for a hundred shots, I hate golf. Then I hit that one perfect shot and it keeps me coming back for more.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm right there with you. It's kind of like life. You just get in the ring and keep on swinging, right? Right. It's hard for the course today. No pun intended, right? Oh, no, I fully intended them. I'm going to own it. Well, I'm excited to come back and visit a little more focus today on your system. We had some great kind of supportive talks as we were getting to know each other last week. We'll get into that in a bit. First off today, Josh, thank you for joining us.

Josh George: Oh, thank you for having me, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're grateful for this opportunity to look at your unique system, and I'm really excited about the opportunity that this provides to not only look at how we traditionally frame and view that idea of confidence, but how we also view our five senses and the role that plays not only in emotional regulation, but throughout our lives. So Josh, I'm excited to explore the core nature of this system and modality with our audience. There are times throughout all of our lives where we wish to be a little bit more confident and more empowered. based on my experience and practice with neurodivergent clients. It's difficult sometimes to feel confident amidst those challenges of neurodiversity. So Josh, would you give us a brief overview of your background in martial arts and how this experience has led you to develop this unique practice?

Josh George: Sure. And thanks again for that great intro, that generous intro. I've been teaching martial arts for Well over 30 years and we get into martial arts for different reasons but interestingly enough all sort of converge on the same path and that's trying to become our ideal self and having our individual journeys in order to get there. Now, early on, about 20 years ago, I started working with different special needs. It was recommended by developmental psychologists, by occupational therapists that they do martial arts programs. And admittedly, I didn't really know what I was doing. I know I was, the one thing I understood was I was trying to give them a level of self-confidence. But I was working well out of my comfort zone because everything that I was used to in terms of traditional teaching was sort of out the window. I had to kind of redefine how I taught. By doing that, I would do a lot more research as to, okay, what is the internal environment of the students and how can I best instill a level of self-confidence in order to help them reach their idealized self? Now, to digress a little bit, working with neurotypical, I would work with victims of bullying and stuff. And I, as a matter of fact, got into martial arts because I was a victim of bullying. And that level of confidence was, OK, how do I carry myself so that way my body is an instrument that I feel much more comfortable in? So extending that to the neurodiversity and having a different set of senses, the goal was still the same. It was just, okay, how do I accomplish that with people that have a slightly different sensory integration issue than we do? And that's when I really started focusing on the bilateral coordinative aspect of this because I realized that there's a lot of things that neurotypical people take for granted with regards to harmony with their body movement. And the exercise of actually breaking those things down that we take for granted into Easier steps that we can articulate that helped me as a person that helped me as an instructor and help me better myself as well as help students on the spectrum down syndrome and help them find their ideal goal and then I developed a curriculum. that focused on proprioceptive and vestibular training. But the fact is I didn't really go that far away from what our curriculum is. And one thing that teaching neurodiversity has helped me is it helped me better understand what martial arts really is. And I look at it as martial arts is more or less achieving physical, mental and emotional balance through dynamic and comfort pushing movement of your body through space. And while doing that, maintaining an active introspection of your internal environment in order to maximize your impact on your external environment. Now that's a mouthful, and that's gonna get into a lot of the discussion today, which I'm sure is vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive sense, which I'm not sure how many people know about that, but hopefully by the end of this, people are gonna have a much better understanding of those senses and how important they are in everyday life. But that for me, Working with neurodiversity helped me better understand the true essence of martial arts and how that is so much more encompassing and holistic for humankind as a whole.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're all thinking and feeling our way through this life, sometimes fumbling and bumbling blindly through that journey. Using martial arts as a teaching tool, let's discuss what true confidence looks like from your perspective, Josh. Are there core characteristics you feel define genuine confidence?

Josh George: The best definition of confidence is a genuine comfort with yourself. And that is a dispassionate observation of traits. And initially, when there's not the level of confidence, some traits are looked at unfavorably, like, oh, I have this, I'm too tall, I'm too short, I'm too dark, I'm too light. And those are obviously physical traits, but then same mental and emotional ones too. But to look at each of those and say, no, I have no judgment with those traits, I have this trait, and how do I maximize this particular characteristic in order to achieve my idealized self? When people are able to embrace that, that is when the level of confidence exists on the physical, mental, and emotional level. And I think that's probably the best definition of confidence. One of the cool side effects with kids that do martial arts is they actually do that identity displacement with their belt. I'm not autistic. I'm a purple belt now. And so they help with some of their own levels of lack of confidence, because now the identity that they believe was foisted on them is now offset by an identity that they were able to create for themselves with hard work and determination.

Jeffrey Besecker: From this perspective as a reference point, the five senses play a key role in developing confidence in general. How does this challenge neurodivergent children particularly?

Josh George: Okay, well, let's take a step back and talk about the five senses. The traditional five senses, they act as the gateways through which we interact with our environment. From the first time that we've opened our eyes to the first sound that we heard, the first taste or smell that we perceived, We have been experiencing evaluating and storing data and that builds the bedrock for our perceptions of all things that everything's based on and then from those perceptions comes decisions and habits and emotions usually tethered to that with regards to. neurodiversity, and just so we're clear, the audience is clear, neurodiversity, I'm talking about autism spectrum disorder specifically, but it also encompasses attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and many, many others. But there is a step that I haven't articulated between the senses, let's call them external senses for the sake of discussion, and the actual formation of perception. Between external sensory reception and perception forming is another neural processing step, which is filtered through what I typically call internal senses. And those internal senses, I mentioned them before, are vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive senses. Now, those have been around for a while, but those are not obviously as actively discussed as the five classical senses. And in a nutshell, I look at the role of our external senses as a method of awareness to the environment around us, and the internal senses as our integration or resonance with that environment. Now, a lot of us have the internal senses that are sort of generally accepted, and so we all perceive the environment and our role in the environment in a similar way. But when you have neuro divergence, and there is a divergence with the ability to integrate those internal senses in the same way. that puts them on a different path and then that makes it difficult for them to interact because there's almost a phase discrimination with how they interact their position in the world or the environment around us versus the way we do it and that makes thus neurodivergence, that's the term, but that also sets the path where the path becomes divergent and much harder for people that have a different sense of neurodiversity to interact with conventional society.

Jeffrey Besecker: Josh, during our earlier conversations, you mentioned that children with autism gain more self-confidence as a result of martial arts training during your teaching, and that moving beyond the traditional understanding of the five senses can also be adaptive to help children with neurodivergent needs as they develop confidence. Would you share more about what you've discovered from your findings with our listeners?

Josh George: Sure. Initially when I was teaching, when I was working with autism spectrum disorder students, I thought the big thing that I was contributing was giving them a sense of self-confidence. And when I first started teaching, again, it was very new to me because it would have to be on a one-on-one basis because there was sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sounds, sensitivity to all kinds of other stuff, which I know we're going to go into in a little bit. But I would then accommodate, dim the lights, turn off any kind of extraneous sounds, and work with them. Now, in my less educated view back then, as they were getting better with punches, kicks, standing on one leg, moving backwards and forwards in unique ways, I thought that they were developing a level of self-confidence. And I wasn't wrong, but there's a lot more to it, which I'll go into in just a second. And then after some period of time, usually when they got their purple or blue belt, usually about a year after they started training, I would integrate them into group classes. And they actually ended up being successful in group classes. Now, I thought that, okay, they developed self-confidence, so they almost sort of developed a protective veneer against feeling different from everyone else in class. But as I observed, I realized that the way that they're actually interacting with the environment from when I first knew them was vastly different with how they're interacting with the environment now. And I realized that there was a lot more than just self-confidence that had to be at play there. And that's when I started doing more research and learning more about vestibular sense and proprioceptive sense.

Jeffrey Besecker: Beyond the bounds of conventional sensory modalities, proprioception and introception contribute to our perception of safety and security. Josh, what are the less acknowledged internal senses and how do they influence our experiences?

Josh George: In a nutshell, I mean proprioceptive sense is an intimacy with our own body. As an example, like hand-eye coordination, not having to look at your hand when catching a ball, or not having to look at your feet when you're walking forward and backwards. That's just knowing where your body is in space at any given time. And martial arts pushes the threshold of that because we get into elongated stances, we stand on one leg, we twist, we turn at different angles. So it pushes our proprioceptive training because standard proprioceptive is people walk and they know where they're walking, forward and backwards, jogging, whatever, but this pushes that. And then vestibular sense is our internal balance. It's our ability to know with our eyes closed where we are and if we're balanced. As simple as it sounds, with our eyes closed, I know that I'm sitting upright in my chair right now. And again, as I said before, a lot of times we take these things for granted, but that's not as easily developed for people that are different in the neurodiversity scale with that. So again now going back to the vestibular proprioceptive martial arts training really focuses on that internal balance standing on one leg doing kicks that on one leg that turn your body confirmation reaching out with your arms having stances and combining proprioceptive and vestibular. What I realized from that was there was a deficit in proprioceptive sense and vestibular sense in some of the students, but it was trained. And as they got better at their vestibular balance sense and the proprioceptive space sense, I feel like the lens that they were able to view the environment became a little bit more in phase with neurotypical. And that's when I did a lot more research and was realizing that, okay, this is – self-confidence is there, but as a weird example, let me – how about if I say it this way? Someone that is 2,900, like legally blind, like they can't see anything. Their ability to interact in a way that's cooperative with 2020 vision, it's very skewed. But if they got down to 2040, then the phase difference of being able to interact vision-wise is almost imperceptible. or 2060 or 2080, and someone might know, oh, they're a little nearsighted, but it's not that big a deal. I think that when you talk about these internal senses like vestibular and proprioceptive, then that brings it a little bit more to where other people are kind of puts them along the same level and that ability to interpret the external environment and their place in it becomes a little bit more in phase with everyone else. And I think that along with a level of self-confidence helps them interact successfully in class.

Jeffrey Besecker: Introceptive processes support both body and mental functions, establishing a felt sense of psychological and physiological safety. In this regard, Josh, I feel it's important to note that these functions are not brain functions alone and that the body has a significant role in the processes. You know, we can't always outthink our emotional regulation, although we can influence it with logic and reason. So in that regard, how do these sensory differences in interception often surface and in what ways do they become challenging for neurodivergent individuals?

Josh George: Just to provide a little context, the interoceptive sense is the sense that sort of determines our internal environment. And in simpler words, the classical senses observe the external environment and provide input to that. The interoceptive sense has that same lens on our internal environment, our breathing, our temperature, and on all that. And so your question with regards to the interoceptive sense and how it plays a role, it's like the hidden sense, because it's not easily observable by the outside person. And if the person that has a different interoceptive sense, they don't know how to articulate it in a way that is understandable to, you know, caregivers or anyone else, especially when they're young. So Having a divergence in the interoceptive sense can put a person along a different path almost immediately, because if you don't understand… Actually, let me give another example. Let's take an infant. A baby has different interoceptive senses, like it feels different things. It's hungry, it's tired, it has to burp, it has to change its diaper. It doesn't understand that, but it's feeling that the internal environment is different than the norm, and so the simple response is to cry. Now, a parent has almost a checklist. Okay, does my baby need to be fed? Does my baby need to go to sleep? Does it have to have the diaper changed? Does it have to be burped? And so all of those are then done and you know the baby when it's comfortable is smiling again. Imagine if we will, if a person's internal environment is slightly out of phase with anyone else's, like the heart rate, let's say it this way, if they're a little bit more sensitive to bright light, if they're a little bit more sensitive to louder music, if they're a little bit more sensitive to the clothes that they're wearing, That will cause a change in the internal environment, elevated heart rate, temperature things. And if a parent is comfortable within those bounds, they're not going to understand that the child is not in their tranquil state. And instead, they'll look at that child as misbehaved or defiant or whatever it is. And that interoceptive sense then, it's not being addressed and it's leading down into sort of a downward spiral because now the child thinks there's something wrong with me. And then imagine people having a panic attack or descending into a panic attack and thinking that there's something wrong with them. And so that creates a downward spiral for them, as opposed to, hey, you're having a panic attack, breathe, take a deep breath, and let's get you back into your tranquil state. And I know that's a long winded thing about interceptive, but I think it's important to know because it's the one that I think is least discussed. And I think it's the one that leads to the most destructive effect to how people work with or deal with people on the spectrum.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's a great nugget to add. These internal senses play a role in how we perceive and navigate our surroundings, influencing subconscious and unconscious behavior patterns, as you mentioned. As human beings, we can all be classified into three sensory profiles based on our nervous system's response to those environmental stimuli. Josh, can you describe the three main sensory profiles and discern how this can be observed or seen in neurodivergent individuals and the way those profiles all play out, not only in neurodivergent individuals, but in each of us?

Josh George: Okay. Yeah. Great question. The three ways that there's processing profiles is basically over-responsivity, under-responsivity, and actually discrimination difficulties. Like you just said, these are not unique to neurodivergence. It actually applies to all of us, but it's important to break it down because there's almost three components to it that we should look at, and that is where it goes from acceptable to unknown or uncertain. And that is like the first one is oversensitivity or over-responsivity, under-responsivity, and discrimination difficulty. And I'm going to use the term hyposensitive, HYPO, hypersensitive, and discrimination because those are all related. If we apply those to our five classical senses, within a certain level, it's sort of accepted. I mean, let me just give examples for me. I am hyposensitive when it comes to music. I mean, if I listen to the Beatles to this day, I can't tell if it's Paul McCartney singing or John Lennon singing. I always have to ask my friend, and I never know. I cannot tell the voices apart. I just know I like the music, and I can't articulate it more complex. Same thing with wine. I could say, You know, my friend who's a sommelier is like, oh, do you taste the oak? I don't. I don't. I think this wine is good because I spent a lot. We spent a lot for it, but I can't tell you anything more than that. So I'm hyposensitive to that. And on more generic terms, if we think about this, like people are not ticklish versus super ticklish. Uh, people that, um, oh, here's another great one. If someone scratches a chalkboard, some people have a visceral reaction to that. And some people doesn't bother them. And then there's other ones like, uh, I have my, I'm a family member. If, um, she hears even a distance, somebody vomiting, she immediately starts vomiting. So there's that response to an auditory thing. So on those classical senses, there's a deviation to how hypo or hypersensitive we are to it and the level of reaction we have due to those sensitivities. But those are all almost conventional. We almost laugh and say, oh, you don't have a good ear for music or a good eye for artwork or whatever. But that still stays within the realm of conventional society. But another component of that is, let's just say someone is a little bit more extreme outside of the normal realm. Their ability to articulate that is also a big difference. One movie that I'm a big fan of, it's an older movie, it's called Whiplash. It's J.K. Simmons. He was a music conductor, and he was insane. He just tore into his people. He was a perfectionist, but his ability, if anyone in the audience has seen the movie, he tears into people if they're not playing perfect, but he will say something like, the fourth chair string is out of tune, and then he'd tear the person apart. But his ability to articulate, and then later in the movie, the drummer was one beat lagging or one beat, whereas conventional people can't even understand that. He's able to do it and articulate it, and that makes him go from a crazy, insane man to a genius, because the ability to articulate stuff when they're at the fringes almost gives people an understanding like, wow, it helps us understand perspective from the fringes that we will never be able to get into. Now, a similar point to that is tolerance, tolerance to a standard deviation of the senses. What I mean by that is a lot of the neurodivergent people that I know, that I've taught, their tolerance for certain sensory deviations from the norm is less than conventional society. Whereas I know that people that have a tag on the back of their shirt, the conventional society, they know there's the tag, it's the washing instruction or something. We almost tune it out. It drives them crazy. They cannot focus if that tag. And then same thing with type of music, I mean, sound, or if light is lighter or darker. Again, going back to the interceptive, if they're not able to communicate that, if they're like, I'm in pain right now, but they don't realize because the lights are a few lumen higher or the decibels, then people will say, well, what's wrong with you? And then of course, there goes the degrading pathway. But just to show that the tolerance levels, to understand it, the funny thing was, I didn't go there, but there's this lab, I think in Minnesota somewhere, where they actually have an absolute quiet room. And the funny thing is, when you take a decibel meter in there, it actually registers like negative nine decibels in the room. So it is absolute silence. To this day, the record that a person's been able to stay in that room without going nuts is 45 minutes. And typical people cannot be in that room more than 20 minutes before it drives them crazy and they have to leave. And so that level of deafening silence will drive the entire human population mad. But that's just because now that's outside of our tolerance. And now I think by people going in there, that gives them sort of a peak as to when society's existing outside of the tolerance, sensory tolerance of neurodiversity, that's the state that they're in, in perpetuity, and how they have to deal with it as such.

Jeffrey Besecker: We talked about that sensitivity in neurodivergent individuals in a past episode, and particularly it's resonating with me now how that sensitivity to everything down to that nuance of a tag on a shirt or even the texture on a blanket. We had a discussion about how that texture on a blanket can be soothing for a neurodiverse person as a coping mechanism, a healthy coping mechanism. I want to harken back to that and maybe in our notes throw in a link to that show. Looking at those overall profiles, in a recent conversation we talked with Kim Cordy about how that's kind of a unique recipe for each of us based on so many different factors. We all feel we kind of play with the same deck of cards sometimes in that regard, or we all come kind of preloaded with the same skills and assets. Yet it's easy to discern or observe how different factors influence that. Everything from epigenetics in family history to our learning styles into parental structure to our core characteristics. You know, there's such a diverse range of factors that naturally come into play.

Josh George: Yeah, I like the example of like majorities are given the same 48 cards in a deck. So the variance between one person in neurotypical and the other is like, Oh, that's interesting. You're this or that. But if someone's given, you know, only five of those cards overlap, then there's, it's almost hard to come to a, an understanding of the world that you're experiencing and being able to help. So it's almost that people with neurodiversity, they don't even have an instruction manual as to, okay, what you're saying is not resonating with me. So how am I supposed to even understand this? And then with the interoceptive, the oversensitivity to that, let's put that in our terms. If we feel like something's happening to us, like our heart rate goes up and we don't understand why, and we start sweating and we don't understand why, our primal instinct is almost, am I dying? Am I dying or am I going to live? And we need some doctor or someone to say, it's OK, you're going to live. We need someone reassuring. Imagine if we didn't have that. No one understood why. And so we have this interoceptive set that's slightly out of phase. And we have someone saying, everything's fine in here. What's wrong with you? That is obviously, can you imagine if someone's saying that to us? That is the world that they're living in. And that's why they almost turn their focus inward because that's almost a human protective thing. And they'll escape to playing video games or in their own little world because, okay, everything in the outside world, I don't fit in and I'm the problem. And that's why sometimes the biggest help with helping with Interceptive is just saying, what are you feeling? It's okay. It's okay.

Jeffrey Besecker: Josh, previously in our conversations, you mentioned how we can draw a parallel between nearsightedness and sensory differences in autism. Can you expand on this analogy and offer us some additional context?

Josh George: Sure, I obviously arbitrarily picked nearsightedness, but let's talk about, I mean, we'll use that one, but we could talk about almost any other sensory deficit, traditional sensory deficit, because that's met with understanding. And there's stuff, so nearsightedness, let's imagine a world where nobody understood nearsightedness and I was somewhat nearsighted. We could almost look at nearsightedness as a spectrum as well. That's why it's called autism spectrum disorder. We can look at vision as a spectrum. If I'm at 2040, as I said before, 2060, I might know I'm a little out of phase with people, but I can do compensatory things and exist in a way that people might not really realize they might offhand say. You know, Josh squints a lot when he's looking at that sign. I wonder what's wrong with him. But it doesn't go beyond that to all the way to where you're legally blind. Now there's no reference. There's a person saying, look how beautiful that flower is. And you don't see anything. You just see fog or haze or whatever people that are at that level feel. There is no way to find resonance with other people. You walk up to it and you see you have to go two inches from the flower just to look at it. And you don't have that perception from distance to look at it in the context of its surrounding. So right from the get go, your perception of the environment and your way of dealing with it is already well out of phase with conventional society. Now, the thing is, we understand nearsightedness. So someone will look at me having to come really close to a menu to read it and go, oh, you're nearsighted. Have you seen a doctor? Have you thought about glasses, contacts, LASIK, whatever? And so there's those types of training tools. And even without that, it's like, oh, I understand. Let me read the menu for you. Let me tell you what that sign says, because it's met with the understanding. Same thing with hearing loss. Same thing with lack of sensitivity in your joints. It's met with understanding, it's met with concern, and it's met with a person trying to help you interact with the environment in the way that they are so that there's commonality. Because we're talking about internal senses, which are not as readily understood, what people don't know, they tend to judge. So there's a lot of compassion for vision impairment, hearing impairment, feeling impairment, but without knowing, it's easy to just put the person in a bucket like, wow, that person's weird. Let me actually give another good example. Dyslexia. Before we understood dyslexia, how much did people with dyslexia suffer? They could not read in the same way that other people were reading. What did teachers do? What did parents do? You're not working hard enough. You're lazy. You just don't care about school. Now, all of a sudden, that label is setting them down the wrong path when the reality is the letters are crisscrossed. And with the right type of training, you know, listening to audio books as you're looking at the letters to develop a synergy between them or drawing in the sand or any of the other developmental stuff, people with dyslexia are now able to participate in the world because they've made the proper adjustments. But without us knowing, There was a bad label given to dyslexic people in ways that they didn't deserve. And in a lot of ways, that's what spectrum disorder is dealing with because people don't understand the vestibular and proprioceptive aspects or the hyper and hyposensitivity of the classical senses as well.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, we can all experience that sort of willful blindness throughout life as a result of various biases, mental heuristics, logical fallacies, and simply faulty or distorted reasoning. You know, you mentioned how neurotypical individuals experience life through a unique set of filters themselves. Why is it important to embrace the unique sensory worlds of individuals on the autism spectrum?

Josh George: To answer that question, let me say this. One of the common things that I hear from people is like, oh, we have to be inclusive. We have to be tolerant. We have to help people that are less fortunate than ourselves. So I do commend because it'll still lead to a place of understanding. I think it actually goes beyond that. And I think that even for us to achieve our goal journey of reaching our ideal self, that is necessary. And let me say this from a martial arts, from a combat point of view from martial arts. Let's do it from two senses, dance and martial arts. One I'm pretty good at and one I'm pretty horrible at. Yeah. Understanding dance and martial arts and combat is a journey of understanding the person that's in front of you. Understanding them sometimes in a way that's more than they even understand themselves. And the way to do that is through observation, through proactive observation. and through no judgment. Through observation and understanding through that observation, what does that mean for you and your development? And what does how you are mean for them and their development? There's a saying of an understanding of others is wisdom, an understanding of self is enlightenment. But those two things are the yin and yang of each other. Like the more enlightened we try to become, the more wisdom we have towards other people and vice versa. So it's not hard for people to use that analogy you have, that share 38 cards of a 52 card deck to try to understand each other. That's not hard. It's not really come out of your comfort zone. But understanding somebody that has a different 38 cards in their deck, working on understanding, that helps you better understand yourself. Because by that definition, we're limiting ourselves to 52 cards in the deck. I don't mean to keep extending on your analogy, but by expanding out of our comfort zone, why can't we have 74 cards in our deck? Wouldn't that allow us to have a better understanding of our life and to experience it more fully? I think so. And so from a combative, and again, I'll go with the dance teacher first, because I can't, I had a dance instructor once, and I have two left feet, I can't even move, I don't even know what I'm doing. But she, when she was dancing with me, I like, she had a video of it. And I actually looked like I was pretty good. And that's because she intimately knew my body, my propensities in terms of my balance, my propensities or lack thereof of my position in space. And she knew how to seamlessly lead and seamlessly follow and seamlessly feel where my body is going and passively accept that and go with it or actively influence that. And the only way she was extremely good, so she obviously knew how to do that with thousands of people all across the dancing spectrum. And her ability to do that made her effective to help everyone become a better dancer, but that had to help her be a better dancer because she had to explore things within herself in order to help other people. Now, that is a cooperative way of understanding other people and understanding yourself to reach a higher level. And I don't want to say the word antagonistic, but a competitive way is sparring, is combat. Because you have to ascertain everything about your opponent, their skill level, their propensities. Do they like fighting at punching range or kicking range? Do they like grappling range? Are they orthodox? Are they southpaw? Which ones, if you play them on their left side, are they going to get more defensive? If you press them, are they going to try to attack or are they going to retreat? Those are all unconscious cues that your opponent will give that'll help you determine a profile on how best to beat them. But you still have to understand them. And you have to understand them to better understand yourself in an unbiased way. And some of the things that a dance instructor will say, working with expert dancers or fighters and working with beginner dancers and fighters helps you understand better. People say, oh, I don't want to spar with a beginner. They don't know what they're doing. Well, it's precisely that that'll help you understand yourself. Now, bringing that back to this neurodiversity. Okay, well, now we have to try to understand vestibular sense and proprioceptive sense and hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity. and discrimination difficulties, because we don't even know, in some ways, that we might have some areas in our life where we have discrimination difficulties. I mean, I've stated some obvious ones, like not knowing the difference between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, or a $5 bottle of boxed wine and Chateau Lafitte. You know, I can't tell the difference of it, but at least I know. But there's other aspects of my life that I may not know, or I might have hypo or hypersensitivity. But understanding others is going to help us. And that's why I just believe that working with neurodiversity is sometimes the best tools in us becoming our exceptional self or ideal self.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yesterday's wine is today's tequila. We're all given a hand of cards to play with in life, so to speak. Sometimes we have to shuffle that deck to increase our odds for success, keeping with our metaphors today. So Josh, you've had a unique opportunity to share these experiences with neurotypical children throughout your career path. Could you share some of the practical examples of how proprioception and vestibular training impact your autistic students and some of the results you've seen as an outcome?

Josh George: So again, some of the examples that I saw, as I said before, is sometimes working, and I'll expand on it, just the movement of martial arts, it goes beyond just walking forward or walking backwards. But having those steps of throwing kicks and landing in extended stances laterally at angles behind you, that develops proprioceptive. And kind of what it does is, let's just say perfect proprioceptive sense is, let's just say it's on a scale of 100. And let's say that the people with 38 similar cards are sitting at 80, and they develop up to 90. The cool thing with neurodiversity is even if they're starting at 20, they can practice their way up to 70, 80, 90. And so that allows for a pathway to everyone being at the same level, being at the same level in terms of ability and being in the same room in terms of face discrimination, at least similarly. It allows them to get out of our 38 common cards with each other. It allows them to get 24 of those cards, so to speak. And having that level of vestibular and proprioceptive, what I think is, what it forces neurodiversity to do is it forces them to come out of their comfort zone and try to develop certain things so that they can perceive the world or interact in the world in the way that neurotypical does. Now what that does for them is that it actually gives them a more profound perspective on the world because they understand it from their perspective and hopefully are at peace with that and they understand it relatively from our perspective. And by having that wider range and by actually pushing themselves to be comfortable with uncertainty, that allows them to actually find a way to proceed further on their journey of self-development than sometimes a lot of us neurotypical that like to be in our comfort zone would do. And I think that that is, first of all, it's commendable, but it's obviously something that it would be great if people in neurotypical society would actually then extend themselves in the same way to try to understand a more neurodiverse world for their own benefit.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think that alone offers us each an opportunity to examine how neuroception and intraception play such an integral part in how we all form that sense of balance of safety throughout life, how that then influences every aspect of our safety, security, our sense of confidence, both physically and mentally, psychologically, emotionally. how that all comes together and comes into play. As a hidden sense, interception provides feedback on our bodily states and influences mood, guiding behaviors through internal sensations. As we consider these factors, what is interception from your perspective and why is it considered a hidden sense?

Josh George: So I consider interoceptive sense more of a hidden sense because, again, it is the sense that perceives our internal environment. So it's not readily observable from the outside world. It's something that we almost have to count on the person to be able to articulate in some meaningful way. And that's why it's the one that It's a sense that is probably the most important because if the person is living in a state of panic because their internal senses, they can't make heads or tails of it, then there's no way to even perceive the world around them. One of the things that we do with training is that we understand that depending on where they are on the spectrum, that is also going to probably determine how inward looking they are. Because if you feel like your internal environment is separated from everyone else, then in a panic, you're going to almost circle the wagons and focus on that. And until you feel safe, like until you feel like, hey, it's okay, you're not going to want to lift your head up and see the world around you. So One of the more important things is to be able to communicate to them. Like I said, I mean, and if we understand it, okay, let me give this example. I have a family member that suffered from vertigo. And vertigo, when I first witnessed him suffering, there was a panic. There was curled up in the bed and just shaking. We went to an ENT and a neurologist, and the one thing that the ENT and neurologist said that was life-changing was, look, vertigo's bad, but vertigo will not kill you. It's not degenerative. It's like migraines. It's horrible, but you will not die. Just that statement helped turn this person around where it's like, Okay, this sucks, but I'm not going to die. I'm not going to get worse. I just have to power through it. Much in the same way, that's basically interoception. This sucks, but I'm not going to die. Or, hey, this doesn't feel well, but this will pass. This is understood. So many of us will go to counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists and And the thing that we most need to hear is, oh, that's normal. You feeling that way is not atypical. You're not a weirdo that needs to be shuffled off to Malachi and live with lepers. You don't need to do that. But that is common. And just that feeling like And that's what I feel like is so important with Interceptive is to first let them know everything's going to be okay and they're not going to die. And then ask questions to help them better understand what they're feeling and how to resolve that.

Jeffrey Besecker: To me, that illustrates where that interceptive awareness sometimes, when correctly aligned, is associated with our more intuitive senses. And that's also considering how sometimes we misidentify that intuitiveness with various biases and mental heuristics. So it's kind of a fine line there. I just want to point that out today if we can. Looking at interceptive awareness, what are some of the challenges neurodivergent individuals face relating to interceptive awareness?

Josh George: Well, again, because it's the hidden sense, any type of interoceptive divergence from societal is almost sort of characterized as, if you're a child, defiance, as being a willful child and not having discipline or something like that. So the measures would sometimes be toxic in terms of helping the child. Look at me when I'm talking to you. No, answer the person, shake their hand, and you're being willful. And so it's almost kind of that one saying, you know, the beatings will continue until morale improves kind of thing. So it's kind of going the wrong way. Whereas when there's an issue with proprioceptive or vestibular When there's a deficit in that, it's readily observable. If a person tries to pick up their leg and they have to look at their foot or they move their arms erratically, then there's like, okay, there's a lack of balance. There's a lack of spatial awareness within themselves. So there could be stuff that could help with that. But let's look at interoceptive in a sense that's the same thing as bipolar disorder. or depression, how is that a downward spiral? They believe that there's something wrong with them. It's undiagnosed, or it's misdiagnosed, or it's like, listen, why are you so depressed all the time? Put a smile on your face and get out there. It's the same type of destructive diagnosis, unprofessional diagnosis, that's going to hurt self-image. I mean, the easiest thing to ascertain is a physical issue, then a mental issue, then an emotional issue. For instance, I have very flat feet. And it's made my life, you know, as a martial artist, it's made my life very hard for working on balance, doing certain moves and stuff, and it has a detrimental effect on my knee alignment, hip alignment, and back alignment. And I had to compensate in a lot of things through my martial arts career, but I'm able to point at my feet and go, that's what's wrong. Okay, let me figure out a way around it. And let me figure out how to be successful in my field, despite having that. So that's something you can point out. But anything emotional or anything that has to do with the internal environment, it's harder to point at. I mean, because yeah, initially, when I was young, it's like, Oh, what was me? Why did I get cursed with flat feet, but then you move past that sooner than you do with any type of mental or emotional deficit. because another person could look at me and go, oh, I see why you're imbalanced. Your feet are flat. I hear you. Don't worry about it. How readily do people say that with someone that's suffering from bipolar disorder or by depression? And when you're talking about on an interoceptive level, that's the same type of thing that can happen with spectrum disorder with an interoceptive, either discrimination, difficulty, hyper reaction, hypo reaction, so on and so forth, or responsivity.

Jeffrey Besecker: So our sensory processes and experiences shape our emotional responses regarding to integrating information in various bodily systems or networks, with factors like the default network, polyvagal theory, the gut-brain axis all coming into play in that emotional response. From your experiences, how do these influences surface in different ways in neurodiverse children?

Josh George: Yeah, great theories. We're talking about polyvagal, the normal fight flight and then freeze aspect of polyvagal. Now, what's interesting about, and I think you say gut brain, what's interesting about those is those are the start at the anatomic or physiological level. And then we analyze how that manifests into behavioral. And so one way of looking at it is, okay, let's look at anatomical and physiological and then see how that works on the behavioral root behavior and then symptomatic behavior. And by looking at it, one, provides us a better understanding, and two, it allows us to take a look at what can we do In terms of training that could help affect it from an outward and perspective because we can deal with issues from an outside in perspective or an inside out perspective and by having a synergy between the two. that is probably going to ensure the highest level of success. Polyvagal, let's talk about that. I mean, because the theory in a nutshell is, okay, depending on, and I'm not as familiar, but the different nerves, the three nerves and which one is activated. And I, in combat, we kind of talk about, there's three states of mind at combat. There's the primal state, there's the tactical state, and then there's the strategic state. The strategic state being you're the most calm, you're not worried about it, so you can actually ascertain the situation dispassionately. Are there multiple attackers? What's the environment like? How do I put myself in the most advantageous position to win in this particular conflict? The tactical phase where that spider sense is going a little bit, so you're able to determine some things, but not at the highest cognitive level, and the primal where nobody wants to be in that state because your thinking is not more advanced than, again, a primal state of thinking. Again, if I can use a martial arts example for that, we try to train people so that they don't exist in the primal state. What I mean by that is when we teach people, like, okay, from a self-defense perspective, someone pulls a knife out on you, the last thing you want to think of is, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, if something happens to me, who's going to feed my children? Who's going to take care of my spouse? Who's going to do this? Who's going to None of the thinking is gonna help you in that situation. None of it. You've just clouded your mind with a bunch of irrelevancies that are actually gonna be more detrimental than helpful. What you have to do is like, okay, how far am I from the knife? What are the angles? Do I have exit angles here? Can my action beat their reaction? Are there multiple people? Am I gonna deal with this? And which angles do I need to move to? Those are all going to be strategic levels of thinking that have to be focused on. So in a sense, through training, you try to make sure your mind does not enter the primal state, that you actually have a structure of thinking in a tense situation so you can go back to that as a backstop and say, ooh, this is a stressful situation, what am I supposed to do? Angle, distance, intent, you know, you kind of go through that. So going back to like Polyvagal or the ones that are anatomic and physiological, by knowing that and knowing that there are certain things that trigger certain behavioral stuff, by being aware of it, you could try to influence what level of thinking that you exist on. So that way, instead of primal being 40% of your interactions, tactical being 20% and the other one being, I forgot what my math was, whatever it is leading up to 100%, let's say primal being 60% and 20 and 20. But then you can push down the primal. Now, when it comes to now how this can work with neurodiversity, because they've been put in a stressful situation, the default to primal is going to be a lot bigger. And so when they say, oh, you know, someone autism, I don't understand them. Well, that's because they're in a primal state. Imagine if you think that something was affecting you perpetually 100% of the time, how interactive would you be? How many times if I are you as a person stressed out, and you say, Hey, I want to talk to you about this. No, no, don't talk to me right now. I'm stressed out about this, this and this. Okay, got it. But that is a perpetual state of someone that is not in phase or perceiving the environment or interacting the same way that we do. But by understanding, we are able to push that primal state down. And whether we're doing an inside out with polyvagal theory by gut brain, and that's the bilateral axis between the gut. I mean, the same thing happens with interoceptive, that as long as we're able to push that from a primal to a strategic level, then the ability to interact with neurodiversity on both sides becomes a lot more productive and positive. I don't know if I answered your question on polyvagal.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think you offered us a great insight there. So these factors of uncertainty and predictability can prove challenging for most of us, especially when we're maintaining emotional regulation in that healthy window of psychological safety and psychological tolerance that you mentioned. From your experience, Josh, what role might circumstantial data or information like past trauma or a child being bullied play in influencing our ability to be confident?

Josh George: Oh, it has tremendous impact. It's one of those things that, again, to be successful in martial arts, there has to be a level of introspection, a dispassionate introspection, no judging, because all of us are going to be affected by our childhood and by things that could constitute in our minds trauma. And sometimes you can point to very specific and the reason if people are not introspective enough or able to break that down enough, they'll have to seek professional help to help unpack things and figure out what the root cause because only if you understand it, can you figure out how to heal from it or move past it. And again, this is why I really put a lot of focus onto neurodiversity because that is sort of, you know, we might have a childhood trauma here or there that has unconsciously affected our decision-making or our perception of the world. But now imagine that that is something that, whereas you and I might have four events, five events, 10 events, there's those that have neurodivergence that almost all of their events are a level of trauma unless it's understood, and then they can begin to unpack it. But there's the people that push down trauma, and no matter what, it manifests itself in the most toxic of ways. People that are bullies that I've seen come into the studio, there are A lot of them are bullied, but they didn't know about it. People that, any type of actually unacceptably divergent behavior usually comes from childhood trauma. One of the things, again, that's one good thing about putting someone in a primal state, it's actually the most honest state a person could be in. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll have a person spar for the first time and I'm there. I'm there to watch it and make sure it's fine. And I'll have someone more advanced against them because now it's going to push the person to a primal state. And I actually then have a window to what is this person's real psyche. If they turn and cower, if they get touched and fold up, if they try to attack with a level of aggression that's not necessarily appropriate, there is some trauma. And it's hard to lie in your primal state. You can lie in your conventional state and have facades and veneers and stuff. But when you get to your primal state, it's very honest. And so sometimes I'll push people into the primal state, just so I can have a window. And then in the training, I will, in a sense, kind of drag it out of them and figure out where exactly it is, and then use physical and mental drills to help weed out the emotional trauma. The one thing again, with neurodiversity is since they're in a primal state, that is honesty. What you see, that is the most honest perception. And so that, in a sense, makes it much easier to work with neurodivergent people, because what you see is what you get, so you know what you're working with. Whereas other people, I've had to peel back, or I've had a misinterpretation of who they were, and that led me to training them in the wrong way, and it ended up being more toxic than beneficial. But the fact is, sometimes unpeeling the layers or peeling back the layers to find out what the root cause is that is integral to being a successful martial artist, and I guess person in general.

Jeffrey Besecker: So referencing that back to the neurotypical perspective, from your personal experiences, Josh, in what ways do sensory processing differences impact subconscious and unconscious behavior patterns in neurodivergent individuals?

Josh George: So again, going back to unconscious and subconscious, there is, you know, when you get trained in self-defense, the biggest part of self-defense is selective awareness. is knowing what things to process and what things to filter out. Because given our five classical senses, we are getting input at an exponential rate, but our subconscious weeds out most of it. One of the things that combat or fighters will, or self-defense people, they'll do is sitting at a restaurant. Anytime that door opens, they'll always just look and just determine, okay. That's why generally speaking, people that have been trained on self-defense, they'll never sit with their back to the door. They'll always pick a seat that faces the door because they want to be able to determine threat, no threat, dismiss it, not dismiss it. How are they sitting? Is the person open? Is the person closed? You know, things like that. And so all of that selection on what we choose to take in from a sensory input is going to form our perception and form our habits and form how we navigate our life. And, you know, someone could look at it and say, okay, oh, you're too paranoid. I have friends that tell me that, oh, I'm too paranoid because of certain things that I think about in everyday situations. And it's like, wow, you just think that there's going to be someone, there's an evil person around every corner. It's like, mom, I mean, that's how I think, so that's sort of the habits, my perception and everything aspect of my life is an extension of that. So based upon that, if you have neurodiversity, there's a few components that are at play here. One is they're getting all the senses, but they're not sure how to discriminate between all that sensory input. they can't talk to anyone around their immediate circle because if the immediate circle's all neurotypical and it's not been diagnosed, then they're going to get advice or perceptions that are based upon a landscape that they're not even sharing it. So either they're A, following the advice and it's actually the wrong advice given the perception that they have, or B, they go at it alone, which leads to feelings of isolation. And by doing that, that is what leads to unconscious and subconscious behaviors. Whereas at a young age, it might be this far apart from neurotypical, as it grows, it's going to grow on a divergent path. And that's why there's parents that when there's early diagnosis of autism or spectrum disorder at kids that are as early as three or four, parents that take a very active approach and working on the particular training that is necessary or the sensory stuff integration stuff that's necessary, their children end up leading a very, a life that's not that's just in phase with everyone else and so it's just like okay, he's a little different she's a little different big deal I mean all of us are a little different. But just like in atomic habits, if you start off in a divergent path, if it's left undiagnosed, untreated, or even just unobserved, after a few years, you're not even, your way of dealing with the world is going to be vastly different. And that is because of the subconscious and unconscious perspectives that we develop, the habits that come from those perspectives, and the emotions that are tethered to all of the above.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, it's interesting what we can learn from that attentional bias or that intentional selective attention. And there's the word I'm looking for that selective attention in all of our interactions. Selective inference being a dual influence of that, where we start to predict things. We start to engage things like the focusing effect, where what we focus our attention on then influences what we're starting to notice and see. Just like sitting there and being in that defense mode. Where in our life are we sitting back and trying to spot that threat or that opponent? Sometimes we begin to infer or project that instance. various things coming into play like biases and fundamental attribution errors. Just simply that error in judgment where we lack more empirical or more certain data.

Josh George: Right and that's why one of the things with martial arts or any of the performative stuff that's interpersonal in an anti-martial arts in general because there is you can have confirmation bias or selective inference on maybe conventional society because you can force that to kind of guide your world right or wrong but in a combative art you're actually having to be brought back to reality soon enough because if your selective bias or your inference or your confirmation bias is objectively false, your opponent will make you feel that in a very definitive way. I had a student that used to think that, I am an aggressive fighter. I want to be the alpha male. And that's what it was. He wanted to be an alpha male, but he was not an alpha male. And so in fighting, he'd fight against his personality and pressing attacks, and he'd just get beaten up. And the fact is, because when you're not an alpha male, there's nothing wrong. I mean, everyone has their position. There is being an aggressive fighter and being a defensive fighter. One is trained to create openings. One is trained to find openings. And neither is better than the other. It's just a question of if you know who you are, then develop the skill sets in it. And sometimes men don't want to be a defensive fighter because they feel like that's emasculating. They want to control the situation, but there's nothing emasculating about it. They put a confirmation bias and a selective inference, but the problem is you are who you are. And if you try to be an aggressive person and you're not that, eventually, and that's sometimes what bullies want to do, they want to be an alpha, and that's why they find the weakest person. because they want to take it out on them. But then when you mess with the wrong person, all of a sudden, it comes to a crashing halt. And then that's why sometimes having that interaction stuff, it forces you if you want to be a more complete person, the easy way to say is getting punched in the face is a good reminder. that maybe your confirmation bias or your selective inference is not quite in line with who you are as a person. And that type of reminder helps. But nowadays, people can live, especially when they're hiding behind keyboards and stuff, they can say, I believe this, and I believe that. And there's no consequence for that behavior to bring them back to a center, which would actually help them.

Jeffrey Besecker: Looking at that role of counterbalancing aggression, what role then does developing that sense of openness and vulnerability also play in developing that confidence as we're relating it to the martial arts?

Josh George: So whoever developed the yin and yang, it's one of the most profound symbols of it because that is the duality and the balance of all things in nature, humanity, and everything. And no matter what, if you're an aggressive person, you need to have a little bit of passivity or at least understanding and appreciation for you to be better. And if you're a defensive person, you have to have a level of understanding and stuff of aggression in order to be more complete. So one of the things, again, one of the things I said early on, you asked me what confidence was. Confidence is being completely comfortable with yourself. One of the issues that people will have, especially in the younger age, is whatever they determine about themselves, they look at it as a negative. I am, I mean, my nose is too big, my ears are too big or whatever it is. And parents are like, oh, you know, having big ears. My mother will always tell me, oh, Joshua, having big ears is a sign of intelligence, you know, kind of a way to make me feel better about having big ears. or I'm too tall or this, you know, whatever it is. And let's use the term aggressive or dominant versus passive. Initially, people will say that I'm passive and it's bad or I'm dominant and I don't want to explore. I'm the best. I don't need to look at the way anyone else is. But then you hit a roof on your ability to grow and your ability to develop yourself. So going back to not judging and saying, let me experience something else. Let me experience something not from the filter of, let me experience it and say why mine is better. Oh, I experienced passivity and it sucks. And now I've further believe that I am the greatest human being alive. And you'll see something about martial arts. The people that are insecure, they'll always say, oh, jujitsu is better than this, or taekwondo is better than this. You're going to have this level of competition that's just toxic, as opposed to, how do these different arts help me navigate to be the most complete person that I can be, without judgment of the art or of the label? So having that humility to say, let me look outside of myself, same thing can be applied to religions, in religions dominance, which religion is the better religion? You know, I mean, there's no need to do that. Religion is supposed to help us find our ideal self. But by doing that in a in a non-discriminatory, non-judgmental way, and looking at each aspect of it and saying, is this helping me become a fuller person? What am I experiencing through this? That is the way and that is what martial arts, the goal of martial arts is to help you do. And there's a diversity in terms of skill levels in terms of baggage that people bring into it and as long as you dispassionately look at it, that can help you be a better person. With neurodiversity, whereas the standard deviation in neurotypicals here, and that's what you navigate, when you have neurodiversity, that aperture opens wide open, and that allows people to have a richer experience on sensory integration diversity, and that there's actually aspects of that that could help anyone, as long as they have the openness to immerse themselves in a non-judgmental, curious sort of way.

Jeffrey Besecker: Ultimately, that interceptive awareness is what sets the tone for that true confidence. Are you able to deal with that uncertainty? Are you emotionally regulated? Are you able to kind of process these things that become very triggering and find that space where you're just open and vulnerable, where you can accept those things?

Josh George: Absolutely. And that's why interoceptive is probably, as the hidden one, is probably the most important one. Because as long as you can identify it, you can use that to control your internal environment and, as you said, become vulnerable. Because the highest level of confidence really is vulnerability. Because only through vulnerability can we experience the world in a non-biased, intimate way. And if we think about children, children that there's no trauma or anything. Look at how they experience the world with wonderment, with awe. That's why they're able to learn. If you're two years old, you can learn, you can become bilingual like that because everything is about taking it in, not without pride, without prejudice. without any kind of confirmation bias. They are vulnerable. And by that vulnerability, they are able to assimilate so many things in a way. And how many times do we say children are like sponges? Yeah, well, why aren't we like sponges? What happened to us? Oh, I got wiser. Are we really wiser? Are we? I mean, and I think the last time we spoke, I was telling you that someone once told me that the first part of a person's life is they adapt to their environment, and then the last part of their life, they adapt their environment to them. Well, children are constantly adapting to a new environment and meeting it with wonderment, awe and excitement. And older people are like, I only like this. I only like having dinner here. I only like watching these movies and I'm going to have my circle of friends that, uh, that agree with that so that I can build my confirmation bias. But that doesn't help. That doesn't help us individually or humanity. in any way move forward on any meaningful level.

Jeffrey Besecker: Now, at what point do we find that emotional regulation, but it's a very philosophical rhetorical question, and simply move into that ability to be open, to be vulnerable, to accept others, to question even your own beliefs and your own morals and values?

Josh George: So one of the things I was teaching, again, that's why I appreciate neurodiversity, because it forces me to almost step out of my skin and just say, OK, let me be a blank slate so I can better understand. And a long time ago, I was, in my earliest days, teaching someone on the spectrum, a child. He, very quiet. Parents came in. Autism was still new. So I didn't really know. And I would teach him, and he wouldn't look at me, he wouldn't pay attention. So the same, no eye contact. And so I mistakenly thought he wasn't paying attention or wasn't interested. But, and I hate to admit this, but in my younger days, I was like, well, it's a paycheck. I'm making money for it, so I'll just go through the motions and work with him on all this stuff. Whatever, I'll just do it and I'll be encouraging when I see things. Anyway, this went on for a few weeks and then I had actually, as I was teaching, and I can't remember exactly what it was, but I misstated something. I misstated a principle that no one less than Brownbelt, high rank, would have really been able to differentiate because it wasn't that big a mistake. And he looked up at me and said, well, don't you mean this? And I was like, wow, you do. Yeah, technically, I do mean that. I mean, nobody should have gotten that, but he got it. And I thought about it, I'm like, you know, and then as a test and other classes and stuff, I would say it wrong, it would just gloss over people. And then it just, I realized, obviously, the most obvious one is I judged a book by its cover. And that was horrible. And that I and I just judged that because of lack of eye contact, because of just the lack of engagement that this person is not processing. And, but what I didn't realize, and what I wanted to bring up now is because He embraced getting my 38 cards of the deck. He was able to make correlations because he immersed himself. So it wasn't an incremental. It wasn't. Okay, I'm learning a front kick. How does that jive with who I am as a person? He was willing at the age of like 11, he was willing to separate himself as much as he could and dive in head first as to what is it I'm teaching, not as an incrementally applied to him, but in the totality of what I'm doing. And because he was unencumbered by his own biases, He was able to make correlations and connections that there's even some martial arts instructors that would not be able to correlate and that level of being able to separate himself and I thought that was really humbling so I actively try to in a conversation with someone that I respect I try not. I say to myself, OK, listen intently and try not to have some perceived filter. And even that internal monologue, I don't think I'll be able to match what this child did to be able to separate myself as cleanly as he was able to. But that was definitely something aspirational for me. And as a matter of fact, that almost got me down. That almost started me on the road of trying to understand this better. Because to be able to know at that young age To better understand another environment, you have to almost immerse yourself in that environment. And, you know, almost like if I want to learn German, let me go live in Germany for four months in a place that does not speak English. Right. Let me immerse myself and not incrementally learn. Let me go up to Bavaria. Let me immerse myself completely in it.

Jeffrey Besecker: So as we near the end of our conversation here today, Josh, what are some of the strategies you recommend for increasing interceptive awareness, whether through mindfulness or discernment or any other path?

Josh George: So I believe that for the listeners that are their performance coaches, that work with, that have the privilege of working with spectrum disorder, I believe that there's a certain path and this path for interception I think is the most helpful. And we've sort of incorporated it in the way we teach martial arts. And that is the observant of the sensory aspect that the person is working through. And you can do this neurotypical anything. It's actually a good exercise. So start with the sensory and ask questions and have discussions on what they're experiencing from a sensory perspective. Repeat back to them if you have a theory as to what they're trying to say, say it in words that they can almost say, yes, that's what I'm feeling or no, that's not what I'm feeling. And by doing that, you actually help them and help yourself understand what they're trying to articulate from what their sensory aspects of what they're feeling inside. When you do that, you're able to now tie that to whatever emotion's tethered to it. And you could either then shift that tethering to something that's more productive or modify it, depending on what the situation, but you can dispassionately unpack it and then look at how it's tethered. When you deal with that sensory and that emotional response to the sensory thing through mindfulness, through breathing, through discussion, through acknowledgement and affirmation, what you're going to see eventually is now that student is going to stop looking inward and be able to start looking outward and understand, look at and observe the world around them. By doing that and having them deal with an environment, and that's why I didn't put them in group lessons yet, because when you deal with social, that's constantly dynamic. But the environment, you can have the environment be constant, and now they can look at the environment and interact dynamically with the environment, which is a constant. and that allows them to continually build, you know, we use proprioceptive and vestibular, so that's the dynamic aspect of it, but now they're able to deal with the environment, be more observant, and not be in that primal state of mind that we were discussing. Maybe move a little bit to that tactical state of mind where they're not in that near panic state. Now as they do and as they get better at that you still are having the discussion about what they're feeling if you need to help them articulate it then you do that you give him a chance to have yes no responses and then have them repeat it back to you because now they're able to own the understanding of their internal environment and be able to articulate it. As they proceed through that, now you put the social aspect of it. Because now what happens, one thing that I see that autistic people do is they kind of learn how to approximate human behavior by observing. And so they go, okay, this is the way to behave. This is what I do at this time. And they're able to do that. And by allowing them to be observant and getting them out of their own head, allowing them to be observed in the environment, the next step is what's in the social context, they're able now to adapt and work within that. After the social aspect, I call it the adaptive aspect, because even though what we did was develop a level of comfort and a level of emulation and integration in the martial arts field, they can use that same pathway and adapt it to any other situation. And we've had students that they were able to go on and have successful careers. And I've had discussions with them because they were able to follow that same mindset. Okay, what I did was I tried to ask myself what I was feeling, how the environment was relating to that, how I can look outward to social and then adapted to other things. So for me, that is probably the journey that I would advocate. I've had success with that journey working with neurodiversity and allowing them to have that sort of structure to build on and have the confidence that if they accomplished it in martial arts and got to black belt, then as long as they have the tenacity to stick with that structure and be comfortable with uncertainty, they're going to be able to adapt that to any other circumstances in their life.

Jeffrey Besecker: That rule of active listening is so essential, both as we listen to that inner voice and as we engage in that feedback and interaction with each other. So finally today, Josh, why is it valuable to have a nuanced perspective on human neurodiversity as we continue this conversation to go on throughout life?

Josh George: So the mean, obviously, I'm glad that we had this podcast together. And I think it's so important that unless people that are neurodivergent are forced if they want to interact in a society that is very structured in what it accepts and what it doesn't accept, They're forced to, but it almost helps them find their ideal self. By us doing the same thing, by us forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone and not judging, not looking at anything else with a level of judgment, but by immersing ourselves in it, it helps us. Again, I was talking about if you have confirmation bias or something, you get punched in the face in sparring and stuff. Okay, you don't need to physically get punched in the face. You don't have to be in a martial artist. But that drill forced people to relook at themselves and dispassionately evaluate themselves and evaluate others in a way that could help them grow as a martial artist and resultantly as a person. But you don't need to have that. I mean, that is done through combat. You could do it through dance. You could do it through but even just in everyday life, looking at, watching the news, watching, seeing, you know, different things, because there's a very polarized world that we're in right now. And with the lack of the ability to, let me take the emotion out of it, and let's not talk about this in a tribal way, where my group is conservative, my group is liberal, my group is this, my group is that, and find comfort in a tribalistic arena. Ask yourself on an individual level, what is this person saying about life, about sensory input, about anything? Can it help me? Let me immerse myself. Let me think about, does this help me? Because that's it. The reality is everyone talks about changing the world, but nobody talks about changing themselves. And the funny thing is people look to figure out the best version of themselves. A lot of times the world will take care of itself, but the problem with changing the world is assuming that there's nothing wrong with you. that everyone else is wrong. And if they come to your way of thinking, the world will be a great place. But that's precisely the opposite of the kind of mindset that we should have in general. And with this discussion on neurodiversity, even if it's like, hey, let me, you know, there's someone that I feel is odd at work. And maybe they're neuro diverse for me. Why don't I go out of my way and understand his or her story, how they interact with life, and without judgment and say, Wow, I'm really glad that I'm not like that. No, that's very narrow. And that's binary thinking. But why do they experience life that way? Why do they make the judgments and almost go backwards? Because again, We start with sensory integration and then get to perception, then get to habits, emotions, lifestyle. But if you look at lifestyle and you have the question and you're curious and you work your way backwards to lifestyle, emotion, habits, perception, then you can better understand the sensory aspect of it too. And there's no downside to pursuing that. And so whatever situation you want to put yourself in to allow yourself to broaden your horizons in that way, there is no downside to it. I got myself into it because I was teaching and I got some really interesting life lessons from people on the spectrum. And at that point I realized, so I got lucky, I was, I realized that there was more to life than the conventional ways that I bonded myself. And I then began this exploratory journey. I think I'm a better, I'm a better person for it. I still have a long ways to go. But at least I'm armed with asking myself the questions and trying to reserve judgment as best as I can so I can immerse myself in theories that are well different than what I'm typically comfortable with.

Jeffrey Besecker: I don't feel I have to add anything at this point. I want to thank you, Josh, for this wonderful opportunity to just sit back and listen and soak in your wisdom, both about our experiences with neurodivergence and your perspective on life, my friend. I know every time we get together, I just feel like that wellspring of knowledge and wisdom is opening up. So thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Josh George: No, and I, like I said, thank you for having me on Jeffrey. This is like having the conversations with you. I find I walk away and go, wow, I need to think about this more and that more. Cause just there's always, as long as we're open, there's always nuggets of wisdom that we can all walk away from.

Jeffrey Besecker: We had such a great conversation. I'm going to find a way to tie that in and share that conversation also, but thank you so much for joining us and sharing your unique approach today. Okay.

Josh George: Thank you so much for having me, Jeffrey. Take care. It truly has been an honor. Thank you.