Bruce Lee, Ballroom and Win-Win Conflict Resolution
09:52pm MST, 6 Mar 2007

I studied martial arts for years. Often I've had people make comments to me about how fighting and (partner) dance are "so different" because one is about conflict and the other about harmony. But really it's all the same. The difference is that harmony is much more challenging in martial arts.

Bruce Lee was one of the century's best martial artists, and also a ballroom champion. He recognized that "you and your opponent are one"--when you truly understand conflict, you see the unity, you even see the underlying harmony. At the highest level all martial arts seek this to some degree. You see this when Muhammad Ali slipped punches, and most Judo combinations are based on it. The entire art of Aikido centres around this concept, Aikido meaning essentially "the Way of harmonizing energies."

And once you dig deeply enough into this, it greatly helps your understanding of the nature of conflict itself--that every conflict is merely a harmony that hasn't yet been found. Often this is because the actors in the conflict misunderstand their own needs and goals. They think they want the same thing--but really they don't. When you find what is essential to each party, when you find what really benefits them the most, that's when you truly find the win-win agreement.

A woman spinning toward a man can hurt him--step on him, elbow him in the face. Or he can hurt her as she stumbles into him. But through dance you understand how to coexist in space, to coordinate through time. The man and spinning woman integrate themselves into a single shared movement, to create the harmony that we call dance.

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