Black Belt Blog - Mas Guru Agung Janesa

Passing the Torch: One With Heart Changes Ownership After Four Decades 

As the founder of One With Heart, I am excited to announce a change in ownership of the school. I have sold the school to Quinn Reece who has been a student, instructor, and leader at One With Heart since 2008. 

This transition allows me to focus on what I love most: teaching. I will continue to teach and be able to fully commit to my role as Head Instructor.  Yes, I am limitless, but after fifty years of training, there is a realization that I have just this finite amount of time. I’m enjoying not being responsible for running the school but still participating in what I love best. Teaching and mentoring students has always been the greatest inspiration and motivation to me.  

Training in Silat Suffian Bela Diri has reinvigorated my own training and introduced short staff, knife, machete, and tekpi to the curriculum at One With Heart. I intend to take all the knowledge I have attained and be free to shape teaching into the future. 

When I started in late 1970, there were very few women or children involved in martial arts. I was looking for self-discipline but also a challenge. Martial arts and running my own school since 1981 have provided these in spades.  

I was part of a feminist women’s martial arts movement and a member of the National Women Martial Arts Association. We were in contact with women across the USA and Europe.   

This is how I met my partner, Marian, an educator and a Black Belt who developed the women’s self-defense teacher training program for OWH. She was a contributor to a 2-year teacher training course in the Netherlands. This was groundbreaking as women across the continent shared information, looked at personal experiences, socialization, and created empowering self-defense, which helped form a missing piece of women’s empowerment movement. 

The opportunity for women has vastly changed in these past decades, but the backlash we are currently experiencing shows me that we need to continue these programs. I feel that Quinn and the Black Belts will stay on course and continue to deliver these life-changing programs.  

Quinn has been a leader in our community for years and embodies the vision and values that One With Heart was built upon. They first walked into One With Heart 18 years ago after enrolling their children and witnessing the power of the school’s community. With no prior athletic experience, they found strength, healing, and purpose through martial arts—and quickly became a key part of the school’s leadership. Their journey from parent to student to instructor and now to owner is a reflection of One With Heart’s transformative mission. 

I trust them completely to steward our mission into the future. 

- Mas Guru Agung

A word from Quinn: “It’s an honor to carry this legacy forward. One With Heart changed my life, and it’s changed thousands of others, too. We are fiercely committed to cultivating an inclusive, healing-centered space where martial arts and self-defense are tools for transformation.”