In May 2025, I received an ASD1 diagnosis. I was in my late thirties. The diagnosis didn’t change anything about how I train — but it explained nearly everything about why training has always worked the way it has for me.

The Mat as Regulation

What I now understand as sensory processing differences made early dojo environments overwhelming and, paradoxically, clarifying. The structured input of martial training — the rhythm of drilling, the clear feedback of contact, the defined rules of engagement — provided something my nervous system craved: predictable structure inside which genuine presence was possible.

This is not incidental to the philosophy of Kokoro-Jitsu. It’s embedded in it. The kokoro — the heart-mind — works best when the environment is honest. The mat, more than almost any other environment I’ve encountered, is honest.

Depth, Not Breadth

ASD tends toward deep, systematic engagement with areas of interest. The way I’ve approached martial arts — not dabbling in many things but going deep into each tradition until I understood its internal logic before moving on — turns out to be consistent with how I process everything. I just didn’t have the language for it until recently.

It also explains the synthesis drive behind Kokoro-Jitsu. Not collecting techniques — building a coherent system. Pattern recognition across traditions. Finding the underlying principles that make different approaches to the same problem all partially right.

The diagnosis was not a revelation. It was a translation. A way of putting words to something I already knew from the inside.

I train the same. I teach the same. But I understand the “why” more clearly now — and that clarity is its own kind of black belt.