Origin Story

Before Bantado was anything, it was a word my children made up while training.

For years, I ran a dojo where I taught Aikido, a Japanese martial art rooted in harmony, awareness, and the art of working with energy rather than against it. My children grew up on those mats. They trained alongside my other students, bowed in and bowed out, and sat through every lesson I ever taught.

And I taught a lot of lessons, not just about technique, but about how I had come to see the world through decades of practice both on the mat as well as throughout my professional career. Letting go. Finding the flow. Recognizing the quiet, aware power we each carry within us. Every time we stepped onto the mat, it was not just training and moving the body, I also focused a lot on moving the mind. This was something I always made sure my students carried with them before they left the dojo.

One night, after another of those lessons, the kids put a name to it: Bantado. In Japanese, do means "the way", the same do in Aikido, Judo, Kendo. They had taken the harmony and awareness at the heart of Aikido, recognized the modern twist I'd been weaving into it through my own personal and professional experiences, and given it a name of its own.

It was part affectionate teasing, part real recognition. And it stuck.

Years later, the name followed me out of the dojo and into this work. Bantado is what it was then, and what it still is now: a way of seeing, a way of moving through the world, shared.