I got my black belt First Dan at the age of 12 and I was the youngest in my training centre. I practised karate till a few years ago and it has helped enhance my flexibility, stamina and mental toughness.
My father is a Japanese Shotokan karate master, so I have been training karate with my family since I was three years old. I got my black belt in karate at 13 and got introduced to judo and sumo shortly after.
I started training in martial arts when I was 7 years old. I got my first black belt at 13.
There's a number of years that went by going from a white belt to a black belt. And I think, in a similar respect, years go by with your maturation process, and it's just as important to be disciplined with that as it was in karate.
Last week I lost my temper in my karate class. Man, I'm not doing that again until I'm a black belt. Because I can tell you there's a difference between taking karate and receiving karate.
I was in martial arts starting at the age of 14, and I got my black belt by the time I was 18. Soon after, I was teaching an entire school, with about 150 students. It was unbelievably intense because of the self-awareness part of becoming a black belt.
I have observed and taken part in some mental health first aid training, and I have met many mental health first aiders, and I am convinced that even a few hours' training can make a real difference.
I kept the first Rickenbacker I ever got, a little short-scale John Lennon-type model. And I've got a couple of 12-string models, which are really nice, and I've got a Pete Townshend model, which Pete gave me a few years ago. But that's about it.
Karate is Budo and if Budo is removed from Karate it is nothing more than sport karate, show karate, or even fashion karate-the idea of training merely to be fashionable.
My training in martial arts was kind of a crash course in how to look like a black belt. I know the moves of a black belt - my kicks, and my stretches, and my punches and all that.
I took a year of karate. It was like obligatory... every kid was taking like one year of karate and one year of piano in my town. It was Bruce Lee and Liberace. But I was not a white belt. I graduated. I had a colour belt - but that's all you need to know. It could have been black, it could have been yellow, or it could have been anything in between.
I gave it up three weeks before my black belt, foolishly. I got to my third brown belt and must have trained for 18 months but never went for it. I was nearly 18 and got this thing in my head about, ' Who are they to grade me?' Trying to be a rebel when I should have done it. It's my only regret, not going for a black belt.
Elvis was a seventh-degree black belt in karate. My dad knew that he couldn't dance like Elvis or sing like him, but he thought maybe he could try karate, and he fell in love with it.
I was not a fashionista. I played Division I basketball. I'm a black belt in karate.
A few years ago we said, 'Hail Guru Ram Das and heal the world.' It looked like a joke at that time. Heal with what? Now the Age has come when your own psyche can be in flow and beam on the other personality, and in the cross-exchange you can heal a person just by walking by his side. For this we have to have a mental clarity, and we have to have a mental projection.
I'm a black belt in karate. I grew up on the outskirts of Paris, and it was rough.
I took karate classes for a few years. Taekwondo. I'd love to do a movie role where I could do some karate.