A new venture by Mark Luckey, Extentia’s longtime partner and dear friend, Grounded In Hawthorn, is a journey through martial arts, ancient philosophy, and cutting-edge neuroscience to develop physical strength and mental resilience. Always desiring to do something that combines the unique art of yoga and karate – Mark, a 3rd Dan in Battistello, Shukokai Martial Arts along with Sasha, his wife who is also an established yoga teacher have materialized the idea with Grounded In – a school holiday, accelerated beginners program based around the Shukokai basics.
Focused, integrated, structured learning that addresses physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development – the program incorporates a ‘resilient mind quest’ to bolster student’s resilience, self-confidence, as well as mental and emotional wellbeing. It also combines Stoic and Japanese Philosophy, built into the class format, to give a further unique angle that amplifies the benefits of Martial Arts training and the mindfulness quest.
The early days of lockdown due to COVID-19 were devastating as the business damage became apparent. Mark, however, decided to keep a positive outlook and make COVID a silver lining and a growth experience. In this process, he reached out to some colleagues around the world which resulted in a group of 4 people from different walks of life getting together – Mark a sensei, Paul Taylor, a Neuroscientist, Exercise Physiologist, and Nutritionist, Umeed Kothavala, Extentia's CEO, an IT firm in India, and Stuart Evans, a local real estate agent from Australia. They met over a zoom call, each fortnight – discussing topics relevant to opportunities during the lockdown. This is where Paul’s app, ‘the resilient mind quest’ came up, to which, the group happily became a part of, along with several others from their respective companies. This was then followed by introducing the app to elite Martial artists across Victoria and Australia and 1600 travel agents and their families in the Australian travel industry at a heavily reduced rate.
With a great reception and positive feedback of the app, Mark then decided to collaborate with Paul and materialize his idea of creating a program that combines the ying and the yang of karate and yoga. Mark and Sasha discussed a way to pivot and survive out of the current COVID situation which gave birth to their first actionable, agile project-oriented rollout idea ‘Grounded in Hawthorn’, a critical aspect of which is ‘the resilient mind quest’.
We spoke to Mark to know more about Grounded In, the idea behind it, the vision, and the road ahead. Read all about this one of a kind program here: Grounded in Hawthorn
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