Christian Anderson: Exploration, influences, and creating

Movers Mindset

Christian Anderson's unique interests are wide-ranging; from martial arts and weapons training, to parkour, to art, to creating his own weapons and training set-ups. Christian shares his inspirations and process for learning and creating. He discusses teaching, landscape architecture, and his specific influences and role models. Christian unpacks his personal martial arts, weapons, and movement practices, and how all of them are creatively interconnected.

Christian Anderson is a parkour coach, athlete, teacher, martial artist, and movement artist. He created his own parkour teaching program, pursues weapons training, and is an artist in other mediums, including drawing, music, videos, and bladesmithing. Christian earned his bachelors in Landscape architecture at North Carolina A&T University.

Introduction

• Christian Anderson; parkour coach, martial artist,
• Instagrams: @adept.anderson, @adeptations
• For more information visit moversmindset.com/podcast

Learning and creating

• Artistically inclined from a young age - enjoyed drawing and design, developing an eye for things
• Magnificent Seven scene recreation
• Inspired by Kirosawa?, wanting to recreate more
• Creating videos of his work; Mirakawa dummy video
• Getting out of your own way creatively

Prioritizing

• Moods, ADHD; doing many things, following interests
• High value targets, interim "break" projects
• Recharging focus, splitting attention to avoid burnout

Recharging

• Go to the woods; relationship with greenways
• Hiking (to disappear into the woods), being alone
• Driving at night, road trips
• Anime convention road trip story, staying awake

American Rendezvous

• Working with other coaches, no need for extra exotic
• ARDV stories

Coaching children

• Kids unconscious attitude towards moving
• Learning by absorbing, but keeping focus
• Connecting to kids interests to motivate them
• Spirit is easier for kids, adults tend to analyze

Samurai movies

• Akira Kurosawa - Japanese filmmaker
• Rashomon - story told from multiple viewpoints
• Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress - story of going to the library as a child
• Harakiri, 13 Assassins
• Samurai Rebellion, Yojimbo

Landscape architecture

• Seattle, Freeway Park, Lawrence Halprin
• Mother's gardening planted a seed
• Interest in making things, switched from engineering to landscape architecture - checked all the boxes

Role models

• Innate curiosity, supported by his mom
• Brother, playing football, learning the love of training
• Uncle working around the house, fixing things, usefulness
• Absorbing his surroundings
• Rabbit aside

Practices, visualizations, mantras

• Vision board and posters; imagery is important
• Outlining inspirations for training, design, and more
• Finding role models in fictional characters, but something to live up to

Creating space

• Supporting your training with your life and vice versa
• Inspiring people to create their own space
• Mom's garden as her space; Guerrilla Gardening TEDxTalk
• Personal spaces of forest oasis nesting spots

Underrated Martial arts

• Ninjutsu historical background
• Throwing weapons and shuriken

Travel

• Japan, Eastern Africa, Brazil, exploring food, weapons, culture
• Much exploration through martial arts
• Learning about culture through their weapons and martial arts

Martial arts resources

• Youtube tutorials (many, many)
• Book: Japanese Throwing Weapons
• Start with half spin, bull shuriken or spikes

3 Words

• Insatiable, balance, exploration

--- Hello👋 I'm Craig Constantine.

In the Movers Mindset podcast, I talk with movement enthusiasts to learn who they are, what they do, and why they do it. I'm interested in the nature and philosophy of movement and in exploring themes like independence, self-direction, and human excellence. My interests color each conversation and provide some structure to Movers Mindset. But since I like to take the scenic route, every conversation ends up going somewhere unique.

The purpose of Movers Mindset is to create and share great conversations with movement enthusiasts. Each conversation feeds my insatiable curiosity, but I share them to turn on a light for someone else, to inspire them, or to give them their next question.

I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted.

--- Thank you!

My personal mission is creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion. And Movers Mindset is one of the things I do in service of my mission. Drop by https://craigconstantine.com/ for my weekly email, my other podcasts, writing and more.

The Movers Mindset project grew from conversations I started having as part of my personal journey rediscovering movement. The project started late in 2015, and it was initially simply a web site that shared others’ writing. The project grew, and in 2017 I started the podcast. I’ve worked extremely hard, but none of this would have been possible without so much help from so many people.

Thanks for listening!

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