Episode 2: Dominyka Obelenyte
This week’s episode I interview a young woman who I’ve known for quite some time. What strikes me the most about our relationship is how much it has evolved in the 13 years we’ve been a part of each others lives. She was brought to me as a promising juvenile athlete in need of some female mentorship. What she got is…”Asian Mom”. Hahahaha.
Dominyka was outstanding as a 12 year old and she only glows brighter as she grows. Part of what compelled me to ask her to be my guest was the vast territory we’ve covered together in addition to the evolution of our roles. She began as a student, became a training partner and peer, then transitioned into a beloved friend and brilliant human. As I pondered on who I’d like to have on this series and what perspectives of the apprentice and master relationship I wanted to expose, it occurred to me that our journey is not a common one. What I mean by that is I think more often than not, many students with great potential evolve away from their teachers as they ascend into their own place of mastery. It’s not only something I’ve observed, but something I’ve personally experienced.
So I thought it might be of interest to share some dialogue around what happens between a student and a teacher as they grow independently and with each other. Where are there strains and tensions? How do you celebrate one another? Does the student make the teacher or does the teacher make the student?
This can be delicate and uncomfortable space to explore but I knew Dominyka would be down for it. We’ve developed a lot of trust with one another and I think we turned out ok…
Right Dom??
:)
Please enjoy this really special episode.
Full transcript:
Emily Kwok:
Hi. Welcome to The Master And the Apprentice, where we explore the path from apprenticeship to mastery. Today, my guest is Dominyka Obelenyte. I hope I pronounced that right. She is an incredible young lady who I've had the pleasure of knowing for, gosh, I'm going to say more than a decade, right? Something like that.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Yeah. Coming close.
Emily Kwok:
Yep. Coming close. She is a BJJ black belt world champion. She's a teacher, an artist, a creative strategist, and newly Ivy league grad. She's also known for winning gold medals at every belt level and also a four-time black belt world champion, two times in her division and two times in the absolute. Welcome, Dominyka. Thanks for joining me.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Thank you. Thank you. What a grand introduction.
Emily Kwok:
Well, you've earned that introduction, right? I can't just make those things up. So that's all you.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
No. I edit my own Wikipedia page. That was all fake [inaudible].
Emily Kwok:
I didn't know you could do such a thing. I should have mentioned that in our intro too, that you're capable of editing Wikipedia pages. That's not easy to do. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation because as I am in the space of exploring the path from apprenticeship to mastery, one of the things that I thought would be wonderful for us to dig into is the fact that you and I have known each other for a long time. And the way that we were introduced was when you first came to me as a student. And since then, you have gone on to take your craft in jujitsu to the world class level, do extremely well, much better than myself. And not only that, but you've also invested yourself in the creative arts and you've now graduated college, and you're still so young, and you're well on your way to achieving so much more.
Emily Kwok:
And I thought it would be really nice for us to talk about our relationship because I think it's something that isn't usually deeply explored, how students and teachers can grow together, sometimes distance or grow apart, but still maintain a healthy level of respect for one another, and on the other side of it, still play important roles in each other's lives. And so I'm really grateful, actually, that you and I have this relationship to begin with because I don't think it's a stretch for me to say that we've probably seen more than not, relationships like this usually go awry. Do you agree? Disagree?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I completely agree. I think it's also quite extraordinary that we've probably seen each other be emotionally vulnerable, physically victorious in the things that we were trying to take on at certain points in our lives. We have taught each other and learned from each other. You've submitted me and I've submitted you, and it's just a relationship that's been balanced out continuously. And it's very interesting to see a relationship like this play out because you don't always see a push and pull between a master and apprentice. Sometimes you just see an overbearing relationship, somebody trying to control somebody or guide somebody along a certain path. And I think with us, it's been a lot of growth alongside one another and influence alongside one another.
Emily Kwok:
I love that. I couldn't agree with you more. So maybe we'll start at the beginning. And if you wouldn't mind, I wanted to talk about when you started training with me. You were 13, 14 years old, and at the time, your father was greatly involved in your jujitsu life and had really wanted to encourage you to train with women. And for the audience listening, Dominyka's father is a powerful and scary force to himself. And he had approached me multiple times to train a young Dominyka who, gosh, you were an adolescent then, and you were shorter than me, I think at that time, or maybe just my height. You're now towering over me. And what was interesting was the way in which our relationship began, which I would say in my eyes felt very delicate because I recall when we first began training together, how emotional and how fragile you were at that time. Would you mind taking us back to where you were at that time in your life, how you felt about training and how you felt about this new person that was introduced to potentially teach you something about Brazilian jujitsu?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Yes, of course. Wow. What history. So I began jujitsu as a result of my father's influence. And at the time, I believe that I was competitively starting to achieve something. I was starting to achieve a level of mastery at my very beginner level as a 13-year-old. And I think my dad was trying to give me a female role model to model myself after and to encourage me to continue the pursuit of jujitsu because I was so blatantly against it. I was so ferociously against training and continuing along this path because I just hated jujitsu. And I didn't hate it because of the art itself. I hated the relationship that I had with my father because he acted as a coach and a manager, and it became very overbearing to have that kind of energy with me all of the time. I couldn't escape it. Even when I went home, it was there.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So I think what my father noticed was alongside my disdain for the sport and my lack of interest in trying to do things or motivate myself to train on my own or pursue role models, he thought he would put me in the way of somebody who could really get me to the next level. And that's how I came to Gold Gym, which is where I believe you were teaching women's classes at the time. And he enrolled me in those women's classes. And then I quickly noticed that the levels were quite different, that I think I was at a little bit of a higher level than the women that were there. And then he immediately decided that a better relationship for me with you would be one where I would go through private lessons with you and be able to have a little bit more of a mentorship quality and be able to interact with you more one-on-one. Now... Yes.
Emily Kwok:
I was just going to say, how did you feel about that?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
To be honest, Emily, I didn't feel much at the time. Besides, I feel pretty comfortable saying that I was a very depressed kid and I felt very much like I was a raft or just some kind of floating shrapnel caught in the ocean and the waves were just taking me wherever. I didn't really feel like I had a lot of control over my life and I really didn't feel like I had any choices that I could make on my own. So I was kind of going along for the ride, but I immediately knew that there was going to be something different because I had never had a female coach before. And my first instinct... So this is a curious tidbit that I'll share. I never really had female role models when I was younger in jujitsu, even in the sense of celebrity. There were no world champions that I looked at and was like, "I want to be like her."
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I was always training myself to beat them. I was always putting myself in this mindset of, "One day, I will have to compete against this person. And I can't create this relationship where I idolize them. I have to always disdain these people and keep them at arm's length so that if the time comes where I actually do have to compete against them, I see them as a fierce rival and not as a friend, and it doesn't compromise how I act in competition." So when I met you, I was quite intimidated because I respected you a lot, and I was terrified.
Emily Kwok:
Everybody' scared of me, Dominyka. This is always [crosstalk].
Dominyka Obelenyte:
It's true. For the audience, everybody is terrified of Emily when they first meet her. They are very intimidated by her presence, especially if she has her hair tied back in a little [inaudible]. That's where she is most ferocious. But I just was very intimidated by you. And I think it's because quite honestly, I felt like you saw the position that I was in very quickly. And at the time, I was doing a lot of acting. So I was doing a lot of pretending, like my home life was really good, I was very satisfied with jujitsu. I was pretending to play the role of somebody who really enjoyed the life they were living. And I think that that kind of illusion was shattered as soon as I came into your realm because you saw right through that very curated experience and that curated relationship that my father and I had in front of other people.
Emily Kwok:
Wow, man. I distinctly remember meeting you. And I just remember feeling like I wasn't sure what I could do to help you because as composed and as respectful and as sweet as you were, I also saw somebody who was afraid to be there, afraid to admit that they weren't so comfortable, was sort of how I felt, afraid to be vulnerable, and afraid to speak for herself. And that was something that really struck my core because when I was 14, I had had an altercation with my father where he kicked me out of the house. And I took that, I think, deeply as a betrayal of some sort. And I would say maybe since the age of 14, emotionally felt like I couldn't trust anybody to look out for me. So I was going to look after myself.
Emily Kwok:
And so when I met you, I saw a young woman. And after training with you, recognizing that you were quite talented, and I just thought to myself, "Wow. How do I help this girl own herself?" because I felt deeply saddened and scared because I was just like, "I don't know that she loves this, and I don't know that she's in control of what this path is." I distinctly remember training with you and you kept crying in the middle of our rolls. Do you remember that?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Yeah. So I was doing that a lot with people that were stronger contenders than I was, and it wasn't necessarily that they were exercising extraordinary strength against me. They usually were moving very respectfully. You interacted with me in a very respectful, very technical way. And the reason I would cry so much is because I would constantly be looking to my father for reassurance. And you could tell by the look on his face whether he approved or disapproved of what I was doing. And my home life was pretty chaotic. And I wouldn't say that it was like this life where I came home and I was just beat all the time, but it was definitely to the point where I was terrified of ever disappointing my father because I was terrified of what would happen when we would get home and the kinds of language that would be used with me and the kinds of just... yeah, just the kind of physical force that would be used against me.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And it was the fear of the thing was worse than the thing itself. So when I would notice that my father disapproved of something I did in training, I would fall apart. And this is obviously completely terrible for an adult to witness because as an adult right now, I wouldn't know what to do if I saw a kid in that situation. I wouldn't know how to help them, because I wouldn't want to coddle them and reinforce bad technique and bad patterning within jujitsu. But I wouldn't also a want to create a situation where their home experience would be negative as a result of what was happening in that moment right then and there. And I was doing this a lot. I was losing my cool a lot.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And something that you mentioned, you said that I was afraid, that you noticed that right off the bat. And I would completely agree with that. I think at that moment in my life, I really thought that I was lower than dirt. I thought that I was just basically nonhuman and that everything I did was wrong. And I could only rely on the people that I trusted, which were my family and the superiors around me to guide me through my life. And if I didn't agree with them, or if I did something wrong or not according to their wishes, I returned to that place of complete inner turmoil. So it's really difficult. It was very difficult for me to have certain interactions with you...were... I don't recall perfect instances of this, but I definitely recall you talking to me about ownership and having a sense of agency, especially as a teenager coming into adulthood, trying to find herself and trying to demand respect from people who are so close to her life, her parents and her family.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And I remember thinking that you saw exactly what was happening, and you were trying to give me these tools of empowerment. And I just wanted so badly to reject them because I knew that if I stood up to these people who were keeping me in this kind of contained box of emotional fragility, that the outcome would be uncertain. I might have no relationship with my family, there might be a huge blow up, and I didn't want to take any of those risks. But you were gently pushing me towards that direction. And I credit the person that I am today in big part to those interactions that I had with you when I was 13 and 14 because they were kind of the match that lit the flame of confidence and empowerment for me.
Emily Kwok:
When I would do that, and when I saw you, I have to say, I felt so strongly that you reminded me of myself in so many ways. And I remember being 13 or 14 and feeling like nobody believed in me and that I wasn't capable, even though there was something even deeper that made me think I want to be somebody, I want to do something, but nobody believes that I'm capable of doing anything. And so when I would see you like that, I would almost think of like, "If I could do this over again, or if I can make a change in somebody else's life to help them from feeling the same way that I did, I'm going to do it right now." And I know you remember this. And I remember as a new teacher... I was a young teacher at this point; I had just started creating my own programs... that I would find moments where I felt that your father was being incredibly hard on you. And I would see my father.
Emily Kwok:
And I know that you remember the moments that I would step in and I would stand up to your father. And a couple of times, I kicked him out of the room so that he couldn't yell at you when we were training. And I remember having a conversation with him one day when we opened our school in Princeton. And I said, " You need to trust that your daughter is an intelligent, responsible, bright young woman who's very talented at jujitsu, and you need to trust that she's going to be okay. If you keep pushing her and if you keep trying to control her, you're going to drive her away. I promise you this because that is me." And I said, "This happened to me, and I'm telling you that she's capable of doing so much in this life, but you need to help support her. And if you keep pushing her this way, it's going to hurt her and it's going to hurt your relationship."
Emily Kwok:
And I said those things knowing that I might lose you as a student in some ways because your father was the one that was driving you an hour and some change two, three times a week to come see me. But I felt that somebody needed to help you. I don't know if it would be to say protect you, but to at least drive some awareness into the harm that I felt was coming to you, because nobody was allowing you to truly invest in yourself. And I just remember hoping and praying that the message would get through because I was like, "I know that this girl's going to do incredible things if people can just back off of her a little bit and let her breathe." And so it's really... I don't want to fast forward too much, but it's so cool and incredible that we can sit and have this conversation today, knowing that you did come out the other side accomplishing everything that I thought you would, and even more so. I just think that's a testament to how resilient and powerful you are. And so I want to commend you for being able to find that within yourself when it wasn't easy. So maybe if you wouldn't mind taking us a little bit further down the road. There was a point where I recognized as your teacher that I myself would not have enough to give you. And you were coming to train with me, private lessons, multiple times a week, and sometimes you would stay and train with my students, but you were also greatly guarded and protected.
Emily Kwok:
And I think that your father didn't want you to get injured and wanted to make sure that you had good training partners. And it was around this time in 2010 that I started training at Marcello's. And I had said to your father, "I would really like it if Dominyka could come with me to Marcello's. I think she needs more training partners." And it probably took me six to eight months to convince him that you should come with me to New York, because I felt that regardless of what I could teach you, if he wanted you to perform in different competitions, that you would need to be exposed to more people than just myself. So walk me through what happened when you started coming to Marcello's and when you now had more than one training partner. What did that feel like for you?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I will absolutely do that. I did want to highlight one thing for anybody listening who currently has a master-apprentice relationship or any kind of teacher-student relationship, that I fundamentally disagreed with everything Emily was doing at the time that it was being done. But when I was 13 and Emily would say to my dad, "Stop pushing her. You're going to break her. You're going to destroy you all's relationship," or, "You need to leave. You can't sit here and yell at your daughter in the middle of this training session." I would say, "Emily, what are you doing? Stop. You're making it worse for me."
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So on the one hand, this inner me who was waiting for myself to blossom and turn into a complete human being was celebrating the fact that somebody was trying to give me agency. But the me who was more interested in survival and just getting by day by day without getting hurt or getting yelled at or having a more corrosive relationship with my family, I absolutely hate it. So it's just to say that we don't always get what we want, but we get what we need. And in that situation, I was just completely against what was happening, but it led me down one of the greatest adventures of my life. So it has to be said that sometimes, you don't really understand what you have until you're looking years down the line. And then you notice how those little moments that you were so against actually helped shape and mold you the most. So
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Against actually help shape and mold you the most. So when we ventured into Marcello's, I was met with a grand room of all kinds of training partners, all shapes and sizes. Still not a lot of women. Definitely four or five more than I was currently used to, which was zero or just Emily. And I remember right off the bat knowing that this place that Emily had directed us to go to was a place that was going to be a new home. I really enjoyed the energy there and I really enjoyed just the multitude of personalities that could exist in one room. Marcello's, I think, really showed me what jujitsu could be because up until then, I had been a part of gyms that were really rough around the edges, let's say. Lots of cops, lots of firefighters, lots of British guys.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
One of my main training partners in my school in New Jersey reeked of cigarettes all the time. He was a construction worker. And one of his favorite pastimes was getting into mount on me, a 12-year-old, and he was probably somewhere around his 30s. And then he would explain to me how to escape from mount, but not actually let me get to the escape. So it was very frustrating to say the least. I think the idea my dad had was, "How do we get her to a place where she's not training with people who are going to make her hate this even more?" And at Marcello's, that's kind of what I found. I found pretty extraordinary folks that were closer to my size. And even though they weren't close to my age at all, they were ripe with insights and ripe with life advice. And it was kind of this giant family of individuals adopted me and started to guide me into kind of the most foundational years of my life.
Emily Kwok:
Love that. When I started going to Marcello's myself, part of what drew me there was that it was such a pure sense of joy around training jujitsu. And it wasn't about lineage. It wasn't about politics. It wasn't about control. It really felt like it was purely about celebrating the art. And so when I started training there and I realized my own limitations in being able to teach you, I just thought, "If this place is good enough for me, then I have to imagine that it's going to be wonderful for someone like Dominyka. And outside of the fact that I remember bringing you there... And to some degree, nobody knew what to do with you because you were so young and the school didn't have a youth program. And it was like, "Okay, don't worry. She'll train with me and she'll train with our training partners."
Emily Kwok:
And you blossomed so much there, right? I don't think it was that much shortly after you started training there that you won your first gold medal. I think it was at Pan Ams. I remember [Tatchi] called me and you were a blue belt. And she said, "Dominyka just won." And I was like, "Wow." And it was really cool to have more people to celebrate your victories and what you were accomplishing. And so it's no joke when people say it takes a village because it really did. And I should mention to the audience that I think sometimes when you are trying to raise or teach someone who you feel has a great amount of potential, that in principle, I don't think as a teacher, you serve the student well if you hold them back for your own glory or for your own gratification.
Emily Kwok:
And so in bringing you to Marcello's, to some degree, I knew that you were going to kind of go sow your own oats and be exposed to people who were probably technically better than I was. But I was just like, "If there's anything that I can do for her, it is to give her the resources and the infrastructure to grow as an athlete and as a person, and I can be here for what she needs me for, if I can be a training partner, if I could be something else." So as much as I was sad to let you go, I also felt like it's what you needed in order to achieve the things that I thought you would be able to achieve.
Emily Kwok:
So I was really happy for you when you were starting to find yourself in that sea of people, and also in that sea of people be able to distance yourself a little bit from your father. Would you say that when you were training at Marcello's, do you feel that at that point, did you start to enjoy jujitsu any more? Or was it still sort of an abrasive presence in your life?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So again, just highlighting that little point you made that is actually a huge point of allowing me to sow my own oats. I think often the demise of a student-teacher relationship is this quality of ownership that usually the instructor or the coach or whoever in the hierarchy of, I guess, mastery is higher up or is higher ranking. They want to control their students' abilities and reap the benefits of what happens. So I don't think that there has ever been a time in history where you have tried to take ownership of anything that I've ever done or placed yourself in the forefront of my achievement. And so often in jujitsu and outside of jujitsu, I see people essentially putting pictures of themselves as, "My student did this. But look at me, I am this grand master. I am this grand instructor. It is because of me that these people achieved."
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And you take this backseat approach where you're like, "Well, I had a hand in helping you get to a place where you were then able to achieve what you wanted to in this great way," but you also don't demand any kind of physical credit or tangible credit for it, which creates this incredible relationship of trust because now I feel your primary interest in helping me were simply that, to help me and not to create a name for yourself, or to get anything from the situation. You probably just saw a little Emily within me and wanted to provide that little Emily with a different experience than you had growing up, and in accord, help me achieve what I wanted to.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So I think for anybody listening that is trying to become a mentor, is a mentor, someone who is a mentee, look for situations where somebody is trying to control you and notice what your relationship is really about because oftentimes, these kinds of little slippery situations slide under our noses, and only later or do we see these kind of blow-ups of ego, in a way.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So backtracking now into your original question, I think that when I actually won that first medal, it was a world's medal. And you're right. I had a whole slew of Marcello folks by my size supporting me. And not only that, I had a whole team alliance behind me, this whole organization of wonderful, smiling, cheering, crazy Brazilians rattling the stands. And I was a part of that. I was a part of this giant conglomerate, and I felt like I was a part of something for the first time, that I wasn't just one in a sea of nameless faces, that I was actually one cog in a machine that was working perfectly.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And yes, you are absolutely correct in making that speculation. Being at Marcello's helped slowly to teach me how to find my voice. I think what helped was being around so many different types of individuals and noticing who I wanted to be like and who I didn't want to be like. Interacting with adults was also helpful in just establishing, honestly, conversational aptitude. I was able to hold actual social conversations with adults without sounding stupid or veering off in a direction that no one's really interested in. And that bolstered my confidence.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
But I was also able to start distancing myself from my father when I started to be able to go to these lessons by myself. I don't know why I was allowed to do this in the summertime, I think when I was like 15 or 16, but I was allowed to go to Marcello's by myself to train at least once a day. This was never before even heard of. My father did not trust me to go by myself to any situation because he thought I would either not attend training or that I would be so unfocused and so distracted by other things in my life that I would perform poorly.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So when I was finally able to train in a room by myself... or not by myself, but without the watchful gaze of my father, I started to notice the beautiful qualities of jujitsu that were completely unfamiliar to me before. I started to see just what kind of exchange of vulnerability existed between training partners when they were in this situation. Remember that I came into jujitsu when I was nine years old. So I never really thought that touching another person in this way was in any way strange or just unfathomable to some people. I thought that everything we were doing was perfectly natural.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And then the more I trained without this kind of gravity of competition over my head, or this gravity of you must perform, you must win the round, you must dominate your opponent, the more fun I was able to have. And the more I started to see my training partners as friends and compatriots and not just enemies or rivals, which was exactly the mindset that I had before. So it was a very healthy shift in mindset for me going from, "I absolutely hate this sport. I would do anything to quit it. I'm really close to just losing my mind if I have to do this another day," to starting to actually cherish the role that it played in my life and the kinds of individuals it attracted to me because of it. And I'm sure that you saw a change happening at that time. Did you not, Emily?
Emily Kwok:
Yeah. So what's funny is I would say since the time I've known you, I don't think that you ever sounded like a child in front of adults, right? Maybe there were times where you were quieter, but you always conducted yourself really well. And you also would come to these camps that I would run at the time with Felicia [Oh] and, and Val Worthington, and then later, [Henet Stack]. And I remember you coming as this little kid, and when I would see you at camp and you would be playful. I just remember getting so much joy from that because I was like, "Oh, she is a kid inside." And what I started to see was you kind of started to become your own person. And I think this was also what you were, sort of blue belt, purple belt, brown belt.
Emily Kwok:
This was also a time where I think technically, you started to come into your own as well, because for those that don't know, Dominyka is a brilliantly, unusually tall young woman. And so a lot of the techniques that other people might show were a bit awkward for you because your body was not necessarily built like everyone else's. And I think that people probably see... And I think I've even heard you define your style and game as a little bit unorthodox now. But I think that during this time, I was able to witness you making jujitsu your own. And I consider that to be a really important time because if you think about being able to perform at the highest levels of anything, you usually find that the performers in some way have their own style or have their own way of interpreting movement. And this is something that I really saw you start to develop at this time.
Emily Kwok:
How did that feel for you technically when you were growing so rapidly and trying to make sense of moving around in your own body, and at the same time, trying to define your style so that when you would go compete, you could really go after people with your dominant performance, your own game? Can you walk us through that? Because I'm not sure that a lot of people reach a level where they have the opportunity to explore their movement that deeply.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Yeah. I was built like a newborn giraffe. I did not know how to use my limbs properly. And up until the point of... Before I met Emily, I was training largely with JT Torres. And for anybody in jujitsu, you probably know him. He's an ADCC champ. Just a very talented individual. But also not very tall. Quite low to the ground. And he was very interested in showing me the way of wrestling when I was younger, when I was around, I don't know, I want to say 11 or 12. I'd do privates with him once in a while into my later teenage years. But I always felt so awkward doing these motions that were low to the ground or were speedy blitz type motions. And wouldn't you know it, when I came to Marcello's, the individual that was teaching classes, Marcello Garcia, had this very interesting koala bear shape where he also... Oh, don't kill me, Marcello.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
His body was like a trunk, and his limbs were not much different. And his ability to stay low at the ground and to kind of clinch into movements that required a lot of speed and precision was rival to none. That's why he was so great and so legendary. But it didn't fit my model at all. My arms were super long. I was pretty skinny and very tall at the time. And I didn't know how to move. I felt like I was being taught choreography for a dance that I was reading off a recipe sheet. I just couldn't understand how to move my body like others in the room did with so much ease. And after some interaction with Emily and some interaction with another coach who was present at the time, [Enrique Hizende], I started to realize that maybe the game that everybody was playing at the gym was not the game that was fit for me.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So then what happened is I started to undergo a process of specialization and I started to focus on only moves that fit my body type and occurred naturally, which is something that I try to teach my own students a lot, that if it's taking you a long time to force yourself into a position that seems pretty cut-and-dry to others, it might just not be the right call for your body. And what ended up happening is I developed this very intricate system of guards that were basically reliant on my long limbs and creating space away from my opponents and breaking down their posture in a way that I was more easily able to control them and entrap them, usually with my legs. So my legs were really long and they were probably the strongest part of my body at the time. So I was able to really redirect my strengths to create a system of techniques that were really efficient for a competitive game for somebody with my body and with my skillset.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
And what also followed was a sort of mindset shift that was competition-related. So instead of being so interested in playing this game of interactivity between myself and my opponent, I was more interested in forcing them into my zones. So instead of letting somebody pull me there, or instead of countering somebody's grip, I would just completely be impossible to move until I was placed in a position that I felt comfortable in. So what this created was a stubborn quality around my game that a lot of people tried to change, but it really helped me in competition because my opponents would not be able to get into their strong positions. I was only letting them play where I felt comfortable. And naturally, where I felt comfortable was somewhere where they felt uncomfortable. So that's this kind of new, systemized approach towards training that led into how I approach my competitive game, I think really set me up to for victory when I started to compete in these larger tournaments like worlds and Pan Ams down the line.
Emily Kwok:
So you touched on a number of interesting things there that I kind of want to probe more deeply. And in my own journey, I would say that I feel like the moment in which sort of a student or an apprentice starts to become their own master is the moment that they are able to take the lessons that they have imitated or copied or tried to integrate. When they observe those things and they practice those things, then as you've explained, they start to see what works for them and what doesn't work for them. And essentially, I think they go into a place or we go into a place where you have to create your own system, and you trust your fundamentals enough that you trust that you know what you know.
Emily Kwok:
And I think that this is a really important stage because initially, when they say... what is it... imitation is the greatest form of flattery. I feel like when we're often learning and taking things on, it's the only option we have in the beginning, which is to learn something new. And especially if we're going to honor whatever it is that we're learning, that we want to try to do as our teachers do or try to do as everyone else does. Or let's look at art. You might try to draw something that you've seen before, right, or that another artist has drawn. And when we get to the point where we have enough of a handle or a grasp on what those fundamentals are, I feel like that's a really transitional moment because that's the moment when you start owning your voice and owning your movement and saying, "I have something meaningful to contribute. And I think I understand the foundation enough that I can find my own way through this. I can navigate my own path."
Emily Kwok:
What do you think about that? Do you feel that at that stage in your development, that your game was start to take itself to a new level, or did you feel that you were still drawing largely upon the influence of others? Because I find that that's a really lonely space as well to exist in, because there's really no one there to tell you that what you're doing is wrong or right because you are steering your own ship and you're also taking it to a place that maybe no one else has gone before.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Man. I really love that last thing you said. Loneliness has been a big highlight in my life in these really unexpected ways. I definitely felt pretty isolated having this unorthodox type of aim in an academy where the norm was essentially everything Marcello was teaching, and there were very few breakaways, especially when competition was concerned.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
The competitive team were pretty much there because they were interested in being carbon copies of Marcello Garcia and doing everything he did to succeed. And I was kind of this offshoot doing her own thing, young girl who would not really listen. I think I was pretty rebellious in nature, but I didn't notice it, if that makes any sense. I thought the things I was doing were just kind of natural, but I would get in trouble for doing them all the time. I would get in trouble for not doing the moves that I was supposed to be doing. Marcello would show us a sequence to drill and I would just reject it. I would try it once, and then I'd say, "This does not feel right for my body. I'm going to do something else because I'm not going to waste my time." And then when he would inevitably walk over and try to fix what I was doing, we'd have a little bit of a tiff. And this happened almost every single class for quite some time. And then I just figured out a way.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
... for quite some time and then I just figured out a way to keep a watchful eye on him. As soon as he walked over to my corner of the room, I would just drill what he showed and then immediately start drilling what I wanted to drill as soon as he was not within eyeshot, I guess, so that was really interesting.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
What was even more interesting is because I was living in this weird subset of figuring out my game, starting to enter into adulthood more and make a little bit more of my own decisions, I did feel like I was floating in outer space, like I was walking the line between two worlds, one world, which was like the promise of freedom, the promise of comfort, and the promise of existing within a community that had now made itself into this secondary home for me, or would I be just stuck in this existence where I only did what my family told me to do and I robotically followed their demands into whatever it is I was supposed to do next. When I say this, it sounds very simple.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
It sounds like, "Well, if you feel more comfortable and you feel more at home and more at ease in this other universe, you need to leave one behind." But, at the time, I had achieved a lot of success doing what my parents told me to do. It was their intense ferocity in how I would conduct my life that got me to earn really good grades that inevitably earned me a spot in a top university that helped me achieve my world championship medals. This mindset that I had was, "Well, if I don't listen to what my parents tell me to do, if I don't follow the outline they've laid out for me, I'm going to fail." It's a natural thought to have because, almost every single time at that point, when I didn't heed my parents' advice or I didn't heed their warning, I was met with failure. I didn't know, at the time, that that failure was a result of me being so afraid of doing the wrong thing that I would put myself in the state of paralysis and do nothing at all, which isn't really failing, it's just not doing anything. It was a really interesting point of time in my life, it was a place where I was getting ready to make a lot of decisions that would later have great impact on my future.
Emily Kwok:
Yeah, I can only imagine that when... you are coming of age, not only as a young woman but you are also coming of age as a professional athlete. I have to imagine how overwhelming and confusing that time must have been because I think so many of us don't really stop to question why we make the decisions that we make and to be at a stage where you do begin to question those things so young, "Is this right for me? Is this something that I want or is this something that someone else wants for me?" I think some people spend their entire lives trying to figure out when they should listen to themselves and when they should listen to the people around on them. I'm wondering if you have a piece of advice then to people that might be at that intersection themselves right now or for the aspiring athlete who is training at a school under a very reputable or experienced instructor. How do you handle finding your own way when you are under somebody else's roof? If you knew then what you know now, what would you tell to somebody who doesn't fit the traditional mold and needs to figure out their own path but wants to maintain a level of respect or wants to not stir the waters too much where they are?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Wow, what a good question. Well, you know what I would say? I would say that, deep down, we know exactly who we are and what we're capable of. Sometimes we don't want to hear it, sometimes we don't want to hear that we are capable of greatness because it honestly is easier to say that you're not.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
It's easier to accept the path more traveled, it's easier to default, it's easier to be comfortable, and it feels nice. It doesn't feel great, it feels nice. When we're put in positions where we have a mentor, or a coach, or an instructor, or some superior figure that we're expecting to guide us through life, it is so easy to hand over the reins to that person because you assume that their level of achievement can directly translate to you.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
If you directly follow in their shadow and step into every footstep that they stepped years before, you will achieve the same things, but that's not true. Even in a historical sense, nobody right now in America is campaigning for the right for women's votes because we already have it. We want to always upgrade and optimize the thing that we are trying to achieve. We're not trying to achieve what has already been done. We are trying to achieve at a newer, higher level. We shouldn't be replicating, we should be innovating, and that's so difficult when we have relationships with superiors because the superiors that achieve before us have an ego. It's a beautiful thing to have because you do want to be proud of your accomplishments. They were extraordinary, but the accomplishments of the future will be grander just by nature. It's difficult to accept that somebody might want to take what you did and translate it into something that will then be greater. They will turn it into something that is more useful, or more impactful, or will get them to even a greater sense of accomplishment, and that can bring a lot of relationships to a grinding halt. It can destroy a lot of how people view one another.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
What I have to say to those people that are in situations where they are learning from somebody and they are getting a lot out of that relationship and they also want to achieve at that level of their instructor, or even far greater, don't reject what your instructor is giving you, but also don't take it as the word of law. Don't look at it as your religious manifesto, your Bible. Don't look at it as the car that will get you to where you need to go. Look at it as a stepping stone into what you need. Highlight what was useful for them and see if it applies to you. If it doesn't, then see what does apply, see if the opposite applies or see if a tiny little change might make it better. But, at the same time, don't offer disdain or disrespect to your instructor unless they are offering you the same. There should be an even playing field when we're talking about these relationships.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Again, I never felt disrespected. I never felt marginalized by Emily or the other instructors that I had that were absolutely completely impactful towards my game and my understanding of jujitsu and in my later accomplishments.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I always felt like there was a shared mutual respect present. If that is not present, then the whole relationship is compromised. But, I think taking what is available to you, and using it, and turning it into something that's useful for yourself by adding your own voice to the mix is what's going to get you to that next level. All this to say is just remember who you are and listen to your internal voice because that will truly guide you to where you need to go next.
Emily Kwok:
What a beautiful answer. As I heard you speaking, I also thought to myself how much courage it takes to do that because it's easier not to or it's easier to let things fall by the wayside. To maintain some ownership over yourself while you are taking all of these other influences and motions on, it's not an easy thing to do. I think that's a really important lesson. I want to fast forward a little bit and get through to the point where you receive your black belt. You're now one of the premier females on the competitive team representing Marcelo Garcia, representing Alliance, which is a dynasty in jujitsu.
Emily Kwok:
Did you ever feel pressure to perform at this point or had some of your earlier experiences toughened you up? What were some of the hardships, if any, that you started to experience at that level? Because, I think it goes without saying, I feel often when we are on our way up, so when we are ascending, we have nothing to lose. We're biting everybody else's heels or ankles, I should say. Once we start achieving a level of success, that is when I think it's not so easy because you have to turn around and look behind you because now there's people behind you. They didn't exist necessarily before. What was it like for you to get to a place where you had developed your own unique style, you were doing extremely well with it at the highest levels, forging an even wider path for women that were coming up behind you? What did that feel like? How did you deal with some of the pressures? Because, at this point, now, people are saying, "Dominyka should fight this person," or, "I want to see how she matches up against that person." Also, it goes without saying that you were an incredibly fierce and competitive young woman. I'm sure you had your sights set very high, I'd love to hear what that was like.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Man, in regards to pressure, you had mentioned that if the pressure was alleviated at any point. I just want to say that I feel pressure when I have to make a decision at the restaurant about what I'm going to eat. I still feel pressure when I have to order at a Chipotle because they give you a look like, "There's a huge line behind you, man. You got to choose fast." The pressure has always been there. I've never not felt pressure in my life and sometimes... I remember reading some sort of scientific article when I was younger, in high school, about how pressure to certain kinds of performers can actually be of great assistance, how added pressure, especially from somebody that is of great respect or aptitude to the person, can increase their ability to perform because they want to impress them or they want to create a situation where they're showing that person just how mighty they can be.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I never really enjoyed being in high pressure situations, but I always felt like I could somehow work with them. I could have this symbiotic relationship where I could use the energy of pressure to help myself into a more aggressive and fierce state of mind. When I received my black belt, I had a complete change of how I perceived myself. Anybody that does jujitsu will tell you that, if they have ever doubted their abilities, once you get a new belt, you have a target on yourself. It becomes a little bit sketchy to go into the training room the very next day because you know that there is going to be a larger number of challengers available to you that now want to kick your ass. When you were part of the purple belts, the purple belts all felt like they were one on one. But, once you become a brown belt in a sea of purple belts, then you are the hit. When I received my black belt, I thought that that's exactly how I would feel but with everybody at the gym. Everybody just wanted a piece of the new black belt pie, but I actually didn't feel that way.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
What I felt was more, I guess, at peace, more relaxed. Like I had reached the climax of a long journey and there was nowhere else to go. Now, for those that don't do jujitsu, there's still a ranking. You still receive degrees on your black belt the longer you spend time within the sport. You can still inevitably reach your coral and red belts even though that takes almost decades of experience. But, I had thought that, for the most part, I had achieved the highest level of what I needed to achieve belt-wise and that I could take a little bit of a breather.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
What I did was I actually relaxed. I learned to relax a little bit and I learned to entertain playing more in my training sessions.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Instead of looking at things as competitive matches all the time, I started to try and have fun. I started to try and see if I could actually learn from my training partners instead of just smash them into the ground and try to destroy them as hard as I could. Now, this obviously doesn't apply to everyone.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
If I meet somebody in a room that is really talented, and really high achieving, and I respect them a lot, then I'll want to take their head off because I want to see what I got when it comes to measuring myself against them.
Emily Kwok:
I just remember when fresh meat would walk in the room and I was like, "Oh, oh."
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Fresh meat.
Emily Kwok:
Can we just pause and reflect on... do you remember how you used to train with people back then, you would point to people?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Oh, my God. Emily, I was... okay, I was a piece of shit. Honestly, everybody, I was a little bit of a teenage piece of shit. A black belt, totally innocuous, innocent, from France, just trying to have a nice vacation with her girlfriend. Guy would walk in. I would just stand in the middle of the room and point at them and be like, "You, you. Yes, you. You train with me, not this round, next round... not next... then the round after that. Marcelo, he's not training with me, make him train with me."
Emily Kwok:
Oh, man.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I was so relentless and aggressive that I ended up essentially getting this talking down to by some of the higher ranking guys there that were like, "Listen, you're going to alienate a lot of training partners like this because you just want to train with people to attack them." Then, I remember training... this is so funny.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Lachlan and Olivia Giles visited Marcelo's, I think, when Lachlan was a black belt, Olivia was still a brown belt or maybe a purple belt. They were accompanied by Jess Frazier and Margot Ciccarelli or Ciccarelli. I forget how you pronounce her last name and I was like, "Oh, my God. So much fresh meat, Australian, British. A whole grab bag of fresh meat." I was so excited by this group and I trained with Lachlan. I remember we were grabbing each other so tightly that, when one of us would sweep the other, we wouldn't immediately fall because we were just holding onto each other for dear life, we didn't want to move, we didn't want to compromise the match at all.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Then, I remember Lachlan talking to somebody about me afterwards and just going like, "Yeah. That girl, she really just doesn't want to give you an ounce, she does not want to train to train." I remember thinking that that mindset could be very alienating and I feel totally comfortable talking about this now. But, I think I was a little bit insufferable to you, and to Valerie Worthington, and to all the black belt ladies crew that were black belts way before me because I would always target you guys, I'd be like, "These are black belts. I have to be able to beat them at blue belt, purple belt, brown." I have to be able to best them because I was so competitive. Then, I think Val or somebody, I believe it was Val, at one of your camps, said to me, "Are we going to train like you want to train or are we going to train nice?" I was like, "You know what? This might actually be problematic. I might actually be alienating a lot of training partners like this. It's not going to help me to just try and destroy everybody and try as hard as I could to do so every single time I trained with someone."
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I think I had a major reframing of how to utilize my training partners when I was a black belt. This is something that I say to my students all the time because some of my students are like... well, they won't say this outright. But, I'll see them avoiding training with somebody and going, "Well, I shouldn't train with so-and-so because they're small, I shouldn't train with so-and-so because they're big, I shouldn't train with so-and-so because they're old." Those factors can be as advantageous or disadvantageous as you want them to be.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I have a very difficult time passing small people. When I train with small people, I want to make sure that I'm practicing my passing as much as I can. I'm trying to practice getting out of inversions, getting out of tricky situations that usually favor small people. Now, with large people, I want to see how good of an open guard game I can have against somebody that is able to use so much of their strength and weight to dash my legs to the side. How can I create systems of leverage where they're forced to be suspended in front of me, but I'm not using all of my energy in order to get them to these places? Training with all these different types of training partners allows you to be very conceptual and very innovative with where you take your game next. It can actually help you be inventive and find different variations for things that people may not have come up with yet. I credit what happened in my black belt years to exactly this kind of phenomena that I feel like I'm using now every single time that I train. Now, my question to you, Emily, is did you feel the same shift in a general understanding of how you existed within the body of people that were your training partners before and after you received your black belt?
Emily Kwok:
Man, lots to unpack there. One thing that I want to touch in before I jump into that is you've always had such focus and determination with winning in your jujitsu and... or at the time, I should say. I think that you being able to embrace so many different training partners, really never saying no, I think, was also a way for you to just collect a crap ton of feedback. I've said this on other podcasts before where I got to a place in my life where I felt that I feared feedback. I liken this to maybe how some of your students may feel how, I'm sure, some of my students may feel, which is that, when the goal might be a little bit unclear, you don't ever want to look bad or feel bad.
Emily Kwok:
You avoid the things that make you feel uncertain about yourself. But, when the goal is quite decisive and you say, "I want to achieve X," then you know that the feedback can be qualitative. It can actually raise the bar and help you accomplish more. In some ways, it almost drives you to want to work with people that will give you a hard time because they are, in fact, helping you level up to the place that you need to be in. I think it's an important thing to keep in mind when we approach any challenge in life, right? When we have these aversions or when we are gravitating towards something, why is that? What will we learn from it? Because, as I've said before, with your particular career, you were taking yourself to a place that not many people have gone before. To be able to welcome that sort of engagement, welcome that feedback, I think, was probably crucial to your success.
Emily Kwok:
As for what happened with me when I got my black belt, I didn't get my black belt on wonderful terms. In many ways, I look back at that time and I wish it could have been different, but it's not. It is what it is. But, achieving my black belt when I did, I felt, gave me almost a license to truly learn. Similarly, I felt that there was an ease for me in being able to become more playful and really let myself go. What I mean by that is I didn't feel that I had to adhere to a certain amount of things or protocols...
Emily Kwok:
... here to certain amount of things or protocols, because I felt that the black belt, it sort of stamped me with approval to say, "This person knows enough of what to do, that they can't possibly make that many mistakes if they work with other people, so go have fun."
Emily Kwok:
I've said before that I think that going from white belt to black belt is similar to teaching someone to read the alphabet, then to learn how to write a novel at the black belt level. All the levels in between are about making words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters, and black belt sort of gives you the freedom to express yourself in different ways.
Emily Kwok:
So, I've actually now been a black belt longer than I came up. I received my black belt in I think it was 2008, so that's a long damn time, really long time. Some people have been made entire black belts in that time, children have been born and graduated college in that time, like, whoa. But I think that these are some of my favorite years and maybe the best is still yet to come, because I don't feel that there is an expectation or a limitation in what I can and should learn.
Emily Kwok:
I've been around long enough that I've made a great number of friends who are far more talented than I am, and I can really enjoy what it is that they have to teach me. So I don't know, I feel like I'm in an awesome Romper Room with all the coolest people in the world, because there's so much that I can access with my fingertips because I've been in it this long.
Emily Kwok:
So to your question, and I hope I'm answering it the right way or some sort of way, I think black belt has been brilliant, and I think it's a really rich space. I feel like this is where I'm truly learning to love jiu-jitsu for myself, and not living up to or not trying to meet someone else's version of what being a black belt should be. Does that answer the question, Dominyka?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
That totally answers it. I think one other interesting point you added was that having a black belt does give you the freedom to kind of ... I mean, honestly, this is a perspective thing. If you have a bad perspective and if you are very ruled by your ego, obviously you might see your black belt as a hindrance as you can't ever be vulnerable, you can't ever be submitted, you can't ever be put in bad situations by people that are "inferior" to you.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
But I think having a black belt allows you the range, and it allows you the space to kind of be disarmed and allow yourself to be placed in compromising situations, and really give yourself the opportunity to plant yourself in the way of those that might be superior to you technically speaking, or in a very specific way with their technique in a way that you are not yet adept at, and I think it'll give you this awesome opportunity to learn. But while I think this is a access point that for me occurred at black belt, I think it's honestly available to anybody at any level to say.
Emily Kwok:
Love that. Few more questions. So I'd love for you to be willing to discuss what happened post-black belt, and essentially going on a little bit of a walkabout, right? So after you received your black belt, there was a time where you moved away from Marcelo's and you went to a number of different schools and places to experience different things.
Emily Kwok:
If you wouldn't mind, I would love it if you would sort of walk us through what was happening during that time. Because from being an outsider looking in, to me it felt like you had achieved a certain level of mastery with what you were doing, but I think you were trying to either grow or find the right place to plant your seed or rest your laurels, if you will.
Emily Kwok:
I feel like sometimes when we reach a level of mastery or we go really deep within a process, that because we sort of created our own thing, because we are our own force, that force might not always integrate or mesh well with the force that we came from, or the force that we are surrounded by. It's not to say that one is better than the other, but a master is a master in their own right. At least that's how I kind of viewed you at the time, that I felt that you were looking for a place to truly call your own or a place for you to fit in. Were my perceptions false and or what was really going on from your perspective at that time?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So that's a really complicated time in my life, because there were so many things going on. I had gone through my first breakup, I was in a place where I was basically altering between being as depressed as I was at 15 and 14, feeling completely out of control and having no sense of where my life is going to go, balanced out with this intense very manic confidence of I am the master of my own universe, I can do whatever I need to do to achieve greatness, because I already have. I've achieved my dream, not once, but four times. I kind of demanded a certain level of respect or respectful reciprocity from those that I was surrounded by.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
What Marcelo's or the environment at the time was sorely lacking in was just that family feeling, to be honest. I feel pretty comfortable speaking about this. Since Dillon Danis' entrance into the gym space, I feel like the environment was very rapidly changed into something that became more about the social sphere and cliques and uncomfortable conversations and uncomfortable interactions that inevitably led to a space where I no longer felt respected and I no longer felt comfortable training in.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
My day-to-day training partners were wonderful people, but the general group that I used to kind of spend most of my time interacting with that were all competitors, I was slowly becoming distanced from them. With that distance, came this sense of unappreciation I would say. I felt like I was disconnected from this group that were the ones that were spotlighting Marcelo's, and I felt entitled to having attention and acceptance from the jiu-jitsu community because I had achieved these great things, and I felt like I wasn't getting it.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So, what I did instead was I separated myself from Marcelo's in an effort to try and find a place that felt more like home to me. That led to me venturing off into the New York City jiu-jitsu scene and just trying out all these different spaces. At that time, I was also having a really difficult relationship with my family. My father and I were fighting a lot, we were rarely talking, the environment would be extremely tense whenever we'd both be home together. I was still living at my parents' house at this time, so it was very difficult for me to even want to be at home. I tried to spend most of my time outside in the city and not at home.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
It was very difficult to have any sense of agency when I still had my father demanding me to be home at certain times, to not interact with certain people, and setting all these boundaries for me that I thought were completely juvenile and I thought that I had already outgrown them. But his fierceness still created fear in me, and so I decided that if I couldn't battle it outright, I'd have to distance myself from it too.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So I essentially distanced myself from my family, moved out of their household and decided to try and exist in New York by myself and on my own. I received help from a number of individuals at the time, and I received a lot of guidance. Some of it good, some of it bad, some of it ill-faded, some of it very useful and that I still use today. I built a lot of relationships that were later extinguished, because they were built out of impulse and because I thought that generosity, the hand that gave generosity could never give anything negative and that I could never disagree with that hand, but I did.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I was a 20-year-old person that was coming into their own and starting to have this kind of inner turmoil of who am I, what do I demand from the people around me and who am I to become later? What are my next dreams going to be? I got a little bit lost along the way in terms of what I wanted to do, and I became so reliant on what other people expected of me that I just would be in a constant state of paralysis in terms of figuring out what I needed.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Couple that with a really big shoulder surgery that I had to go through that took me out of jiu-jitsu and training for about eight months, I kind of lost my physical sense of who I was, because jiu-jitsu was such a grand definition of my character. When I lost my ability to practice the art form, I kind of lost myself a little bit. This part of my journey is what kind of skyrocketed me into becoming who I am today.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
The person I am today is somebody who has a currently healing relationship with her family and starting to rebuild these kind of castles that I tore down when I was in my early 20s, because I was so frustrated with my childhood and I was so frustrated with the things that I thought I deserved, but never received as a result of achieving my dreams. Now, I'm starting to be at peace with everything that happened and starting to build up new aspirations and starting to understand what this adult version of Dominyka who's no longer 15, what she wants and how she's going to get there without placing blame on anybody, and without trying to rely too much on anybody to help guide her through.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Which is kind of really funny considering I have always hated being told what to do, but now that I am in a situation where I'm able to choose for myself, it becomes the hardest thing to sit down and say, "This is what I'm going to do now." Because you don't have the answers, you don't understand whether the choices you make now are going to lead you into what's good or bad or what's right or wrong for you, you just, I guess, have to kind of hope that the things that you are choosing for yourself will lead towards growth and greatness and will lead towards the greater journey that you were meant to be on.
Emily Kwok:
Man, that was beautiful. I loved listening to that. Two more questions that I want to wrap this up with, because we could probably talk for a much longer period of time. Maybe we're going to have to do this again.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Dude, I was like, "Is this is going to be a two hour episode?"
Emily Kwok:
I know. Two hour? This could be a six hour, but I'm going to throw two more questions at you. What do you think it takes to be a good apprentice or a good student?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Oh my gosh, you know what? I think just being there. I think our relationship, if anything, shows that consistency is absolutely key, but it doesn't have to be a consistency that is reliant on constant seeing of one another, constant interaction, constant anything. It's just the nature of the relationship is for it to be consistent, but not in any specific way.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So I think to exist in the space of the mentor is the most important thing, because I don't think that a good mentor is somebody who claims stake of what your potential is and holds your hand the whole way through the journey, I think a good mentor is somebody who appears in a time of need to offer insight and appears in a time of want to offer kind of reflective advice as well in terms of is this really what you think you want? Or do you think that this is the right decision for you to make? Somebody who is constantly asking you to reinforce your decisions, because you might not be making those decisions for the right reasons.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So I think to be a good apprentice, you just need to be there and you also need to keep an open mind. You might hate what your mentor is telling you like I did when I was 13, you might hate what they're doing at the time, even though it's really helpful. You might just absolutely not understand how to wrap your head around it, because you can't see the future, but you have to just be present for the future that will exist later on, because then you'll get to see what all those efforts were about.
Emily Kwok:
Beautiful. You touched on this a little bit in your answer, but I'm asking this of you, because I think you're in this position now and I'm only going to imagine that you reflect on this, but you've also had experiences working with others. What do you think about the role of a master? How do you relate to your own students or to people who come to you for advice or mentorship? What are the qualities that you try to embody and what does it take to be that master?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I'm not a parent, but when I think about raising my kids, I think about how I teach or mentor my students. I think mastery has a lot to do with your own inner understanding, because if you don't understand yourself and you don't understand why you're giving the advice that you're giving, you are leading people down a path of repetition and I think creating the same patterns that existed in your life for them.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
But if you understand who you are and you practice awareness, then you'll know when you're trying to give somebody an insight that was actually meant for you, or if it was actually meant for somebody else in a situation that you feel really strongly about. So, I think mastery must involve a certain level of detachment.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
If I saw my child failing at something, I would definitely want them to succeed. I'd want them to be protecting and safe, I would want them to achieve their highest hopes and aspirations, I would want them to commit no wrong, and I would want no wrong to be committed upon them, but I know that's not reality. If I obsess over every little detail of their life, and if I think about every little way that I can control their situation so that they may have a more positive upbringing, I might end up creating their downfall, which is what I think was the beginning of my childhood.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
It was such a sheltered and boxed in experience, that had I not ventured out and tried to explore for myself, I probably would've been stuck in a cage of repeating old ancestral patterns. But with the freedom to explore and experience, apprentices get to understand what it is they want and what it is they need from the thing that they are doing.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
The master exists there to guide when they are needed or where their insights are needed, but they exist in this definitely I would say loving manner where they definitely are there to care for and shape and help and assist and aid when they're needed, but they're also there to detach maybe when they're most wanted. Because I think apprentices always want answers, they always want something concrete. "You must do this, you must select A, you must take route C."
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Life is not that simple, life has to come from the decisions you make from within that are being guided by your heart. A master can only be there to help assist with those decision-making processes and not turn them into something that is about their story. So, that's what I have to say. No grand ending of that.
Emily Kwok:
I just wanted to say, are you sure you're 25 and you're not 105?
Dominyka Obelenyte:
I am the great Dom [inaudible]. I have been around for 300 years. Pay me big cash for big life advice. Forget everything I said before, I'm actually a sellout Las Vegas Strip con.
Emily Kwok:
Dominyka, it's been an amazing time getting into this space with you, because it means so much for me to be able to have this kind of conversation with you. It's not often that you can trust somebody that deeply where you could really get deep and personal with them about their experiences and to have them genuinely respect and venture into that space with you. So, I really, really appreciate the trust and the respect that you've given me over the years. I can only imagine that there are a lot of gems that were dropped over the course of the last 90 minutes for people to hold.
Emily Kwok:
Where can people find you if they are interested in getting in contact with you? We talked so deeply about your life experiences up until this point, but we didn't get a chance to even really talk about what's going on with your career now, and also how you have been making a lot of art. That's a whole other podcast, talking about art and the similarities we have even there, where we both studied art for a while. But where can people find you if they want to contact you to come speak on their podcast or reach out to you for a seminar or artwork? Give us the deets.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
So, the deets. Yeah, so I'm going through a little bit of a restructuring with my current jiu-jitsu career. I am still teaching at Hinds Combat Sports in Long Island City. So if you want to catch a class with me, that's where I'll be for all you East Coast folks. Otherwise, I'm always active on my Instagram, which is @domdabomburmom. Great name. Been told to change it many a time by many a Brazil jiu-jitsu practitioner and never will.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Otherwise, if you want to reach me through email, you can contact me through my website which is www.dominykao.com. D-O-M-I-N-Y-K-A-O.com. If you want to take a gander at my art or shoot me a message about pricing or prints or anything like that, you can also take a look at my art website, which is www.dominyka-art.com. That's my first name-art.com.
Emily Kwok:
Love it. Dominyka, thank you so much for being such a gracious guest. I know you won't be going anywhere in my life, even though your body may be going other places very soon, but thank you so much for your friendship and best of luck.
Dominyka Obelenyte:
Thank you so much, Emily, for having me on this podcast. I really appreciate our relationship, as it has just grown me into a whole other person and your insights have always helped me navigate my life and its crazy inconsistencies. Thank you so much for this space, and thank you for having me on.
