Black Belt Blog - Mas Devin
October, 2025
It’s said our training is a river, a line that flows from teacher to student. From our teachers and from our teachers’ teachers, from the first teachers, to us, then from us to our students and onward. This line marks the river of knowledge and experience that connects all of us who practice a shared martial art.
I began my training at six, young and chaotic, without direction and lacking structure. Like meltwater rolling down the mountain at Spring's first melt. My parents brought me to One With Heart, where I began to find that structure and direction. In the routines and rituals of training, I learned to bow in and out of rooms, in and out of classes, to my teachers and teammates. Those practices showed me what it meant to honor and show respect for the spaces I inhabit, the practices I engage in, and the people in my life. I learned to persevere through tough experiences by getting knocked down in sparring but standing right back up for another round. The clearest memories I have of my early training, however, are of the feelings that those experiences brought. I remember showing up for class, seeing people of all ages and walks of life, and the feeling of camaraderie, that this community stretched far beyond my little world, and yet I was still a part of it. Meltwater finding its way into brooks, into streams, into rivers that flow from teacher to student, generation to generation.
Metaphors and similes aside, with all the impact Pukulan had on me, I still drifted away in my teenage years. Busy with sports and school, I lost touch with my training, but never lost the place in my heart where Pukulan and my time training reside. I graduated and moved away to college. Amongst the many new people, I’d meet some who trained in martial arts of their own. I’d tell them “I used to train when I was a kid” and I’d hate the way that sounded, like this thing that had been so important to me was something I’d left behind. Fast forward to 2020 and a global pandemic throwing all of our plans into disarray, I found myself signing up for an online intro class over Zoom with the school where I used to train, One With Heart. I chose to start over as a white belt because I felt it had been so long that I’d need a fresh start. But when I told my instructor that I had trained up to the rank of green sash, she asked me
“Well, do you still have your sash?”
“Yes, of course, it’s in its sash bag.”
“Then you are still a green sash; you earned that rank.”
After that, I joined the advanced class and shortly thereafter started assisting in teaching the kids white belts. My return to training was a ginger first few steps into a marathon of the last five years. I started working at our summer camps, and I became one of the instructors of The Transported After School Program. As I stepped into this new phase of my life, I reflected that once again, One With Heart was bringing me that sense of structure and direction. Only this time, I was also bringing that to students of my own, making my journey a full circle, joining that line of teachers and students, that river of knowledge. I marveled that after more than ten years away, I was welcomed back to training as if no time had passed at all. And I was comforted that this thing that had been so important to me was not something left behind.
With all the chaos of our lives, having a place like One With Heart has given me an anchor of purpose and community throughout my life. It has been an honor to bring that to all of the students and teammates I’ve worked with. Every day brings new challenges, but I’m reminded of what a good friend once said to me,
“You’re not dumb, you’ve just never done this before.”
With the support of community, every lesson in life is easier learned. I am forever grateful that One With Heart is that type of community that gives support and direction throughout our lives, no matter the twists and turns those lives take.
-Mas Devin
