François Deniau is a 2nd degree judo & Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Megaton/Royler Gracie, former BJJ European champion, BJJ pioneer in France and Gozo (Malta) where he teaches freediving & bjj. He is graduated with a master in Sports Sciences (risks management) at the University of Lyon (France). His intention in these pages is to share the most of the meetings and experiences he shared during 40 years of practice. This work has 2 axis : one is holistic through all the practices or experiences possible. The most recent experience is for exemple what we have shared with Tom Duquesnoy around the connections between martial arts, dance, yoga, breathing techniques, meditation etc. The second axis is Profundness, related to the capacity of abstraction, the quality of observation, the control on our emotions, the dissolution of the ego through the realisation of the Self.
Holistic
We are experimenting a globalisation in everything. Every practice tend to connect to other ones and everyone is seeking for these connections, drawing a global picture, adding a piece that is working synergistically with the other one. We are all doing the same thing, ecxept we are drawn to one particular path. In these pages we are building a tree around a general topic which is martial arts. We find in every approach a platform, like brazilian jiu-jitsu is connecting with yoga or unconventional practionners and masters such as Tom, ex UFC fighter who turned into a dancer and yogi.
Abstraction
Our quality and capacity of abstraction is appearing more and more with meditation, any type of yoga and breathing exercises, dance, any type of activity that requires concentration, focus and goes back into some form of meditation, contemplation or even extase like the Sufi pratice. Arts in general, the subtilty of our senses, the exploration of consciousness, the use of psychedellic, Ayahusca, any journey motivated by the pure expression of the Self, is telling you that you are not only this, the drop, this limited conception, but the ocean, the whole, the unlimited, indicible and indescribable.
For this freediving is a good example of a practice that is making you « going deep into yourself » like an automatically induced meditation, almost an altered state of consciousness (experienced described for deep freediver dealing with narcosis effects and bloodshift). The body and the mind seem to disappear, a total let go leading to an indescribable feeling.
Life
To close the circle it’s all about Life. To have the most of it we have to move within to get back to our inner child, this warm place that opens to immensity. When you go deep into the unknown you experience all kind of obstacles, it can be your fear, you may think that it is dangerous, that you may die. This could be misunderstood as a suicidal behaviour to freedive deep in the unknown for example, where is looks so dark, where you physiology changes and where death seem to be like a ghost, where your mind is going into any kind of representation when in fact you find peace in the disssolution of everything. Life is more apreciable, in every aspect, from the mollecules of oxygen to the laugh of a child, when you create a little death every day of something, a recurrent emotion, a little resistance or let go of a worry, an echo of the mind, a stiffness in your body… Life is trhiving with a desantanglement, a destruction, a reset, a daily a re-alignement.