About

I am Blake Crosley, a product designer and developer in Pasadena. I build software for a living and I am learning jiu-jitsu badly, on purpose, in the open. This site is the record of it.

Why the name

柔 yawara is the old Japanese word for the gentle art: the unarmed grappling the samurai trained before judo had a name. The character 柔 means yielding, pliant, soft. It opens both 柔術 (jūjutsu) and 柔道 (jūdō). I wanted the older root, the one that points back to where the art comes from rather than to the sport it became.

So the site is 柔の道, the way of the gentle art. A small path, walked from the beginning.

What this is

Short posts. What a technique is supposed to do, what it actually did to me, and the gap between the two. No guru voice. I have not earned one.