Living the Balanced Life: Getting to know Budokon founder, Cameron Shayne

By Lacey Neher
Photography Scott Campbell (figgyduff.com)

For a PDF of this magazine feature click here

The way of the spiritual warrior is the literal translation of the word, Budokon. California based trainer, Cameron Shayne, founded Budokon in 2000 with one goal in mind: balance. By fusing yoga, martial arts and meditation, Shayne has blended three crucial components that lead to a balanced and healthy life.

Since its inception, Budokon’s popularity has grown exponentially and everyday numerous people from all walks of life practice it as part of their physical and mental fitness routine. Shayne has personally trained Olympic athletes and Hollywood celebrities alike. One of those celebrities is Courtney Cox (Friends, Cougar Town), who had this to say of Budokon; “Cameron Shayne’s blend of yoga for toning and martial arts for power is an unbeatable combination. I have found a workout that’s fun and effective!”

We were honored that Budokon’s “Kancho” (or creator), Cameron Shayne sat down with Chikara and granted us an inside look into his fitness innovation and his life.

Chikara Magazine: What is Budokon?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: Budokon is the integration of yoga, martial and living arts all into one system. We obviously focus on bringing a person into a full balance in their lives. We use the yoga as a means to look at architectural structure, physical movement, and range of motion issues. Martial arts we use as a way to help a person confront things to look at. The living arts of course, is equally confrontational because looking at your belief systems, your reactivity why you have been choosing what you have been choosing since you were a kid, and obviously why you eat what you eat, and why you treat the environment around you the way you do. It brings all of that into and under a microscope and has them take a really good look at it in order to correct and adjust and polish until that person is living as much of a suffering free life as possible.

Chikara Magazine: Budokon has such a strong base in yoga and martial arts, how does one benefit the other?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: You cannot be a successful martial artist without full integration. You cannot be successful yogi without the benefits of martial arts. Which can be a shift perspective on polishing your posture and on polishing a transition until it is effortless and that is the objective.

Chikara Magazine: So what got you started in martial arts?
Kancho Cameron Shayne: Just as a kid you know, I was fascinated by martial arts watching Kung Fu theatre. I really loved the mysticism behind it. I was always fascinated by the mediators; the monks would be meditating then jump up on a roof so they could fight a hundred guys. I was very fascinated by that concept and I think also as a kid wanting to be able to protect myself. As a kid, I was definitely a victim of bullying a lot because I was skinny, I was nice, and I was an easy target for people who were just in general kind of an asshole. After thirty years of fighting, it takes a lot to get me angry but, I’m sure it could happen.

Chikara Magazine: Is Budokon a good introduction into a martial art for women who practice yoga?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: We definitely get a healthy mix of martial artists who are first time yogis. We also get first time martial artists that are yogis. The yogi practitioners, they have an attraction or have developed a passion for the martial arts. So, it does happen quite often. It is rare that we get people that are yogis and martial artists at the same time. But I do get them.

Chikara Magazine: How has Budokon changed your life?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: Well, I think it has changed my life in a number of ways. One, that it has given me a purpose in my life. It’s nice to feel that you are waking up every day with a purpose, with a reason, with something to contribute. I feel that I can leave the world behind something that was a contribution to it. As a physical practice it has definitely changed my physical body because it given me the gift of awareness and strength. It’s done for me what no other martial art did for me or any other yoga practice did for me. Mentally it’s brought an awareness of my weaknesses.

Chikara Magazine: Did the response to Budokon catch you off guard?  It seems to be pretty well received.

Kancho Cameron Shayne: You know that is a good question. It is interesting because when I started teaching, the people who I started teaching it to were friends before I taught it to anybody else. So, they were the people that were encouraging me to teach it on a large platform. I really didn’t think anybody would care but, what I really underestimated was the number of people that were like me. People who were both martial artists and yogis… or people looking for this hybrid system. And people who were martial artists and yogis too, who had experienced a kind of mediocre martial arts or mediocre yoga schools. We have pioneered something and it is very appealing to people, which is giving people a true holistic art form, so that they can live that way. The Budokon way.

Chikara Magazine: What is the belt system of Budokon?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: It’s red belt, to blue, to purple then to brown. I chose red as our first belt. The first belt is when a person becomes a Budokon conditioning teacher. They can teach the techniques in order to condition another person.  I wanted them to have a significant belt on. So, I thought red was a color that felt significant and had some power to it.

Chikara Magazine: How long does it take to get a red belt?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: Usually six months to a year for a student to get their first belt. Because we split it up in their training. So, if a student did a training in January, I wouldn’t let them do there next training or their next testing until probably the summer. They are going to need those months to study in practice because you don’t want to show up and do what I just did earlier without being prepared for it.

Chikara Magazine: How will Budokon be remembered in a hundred years?

Kancho Cameron Shayne: I like to see it remembered as the kind of art form that is like the Princeton of yoga and martial arts. The Harvard of martial arts. The place where you want to go and get trained and you want to step it up in your life overall. That when someone says Budokon, that is what you want to do. It’s the absolute gold standard for education in the fields of martial arts, yoga and meditation in living arts. It is where you go when you want that total experience.

We thank Cameron Shayne for taking the time to talk more in depth about Budokon with us. For even more details on the Budokon fitness system visit www.budokon.com

Budokon Instructor, Celine Burlock’s Take on the Fitness Art Form.

Celine Burlock is a Budokon instructor. She fell in love with fitness art form three years ago and she now leads classes and workshops dedicated to Budokon. Burlock has practiced both yoga and multiple martial arts extensively. After discovering Budokon which integrates yoga and martial arts Celine fell in love, and a month later she found herself flying to Montreal to learn from the master, Kancho Cameron Shayne.

Burlock shared some of her thoughts on Budokon with us.

Chikara Magazine: Why did you choose to teach Budokon?

Osu Céline: One of the things that I found extremely frustrating for me was this notion of staying on the mat. I never wanted to stay on the mat and I felt a lot of fire and energy staying on the mat. So I wanted to go around the mat all the time. It was the martial art spirit in me that wanted to explore more of its facets. So, and yet I also loved Yoga. I was always wondering where I could do both at the same time and I never thought something like that existed. One day I just found this article and it went from there.

Chikara Magazine: What kind of response do you get from the students that are participating in your workshops?

Osu Céline: The feedback that I’m getting from what they are saying to me is that they really enjoy it; some of them find it is a great challenge for them. It really takes them to place that they didn’t think they would go. Even though it works, it is challenging.  A lot of them come out and say they feel more empowered by it because; they are doing something they never thought they could do. In some, they choose to do it once and never come back. It’s not for everybody, and even though I do believe it is, you can get something out of it. Definitely.

Chikara Magazine: Do you think Budokon is a good mechanism for self defense?

Osu Céline: Especially for us women. We for example get attacked, we are on the floor. From just what he (Shayne) taught us, we can move and transition from the floor back on up is a new resource that I feel a woman can benefit from practicing Budokon

Chikara Magazine: What would you like women most to know about Budokon?

Osu Céline: I think I would like every woman to know that Budokon is actually a system and a practice that actually makes us evolve from different aspects of our life so that we are fully integrated. This is what I have discovered for myself when I talk to women; some of them feel they are intimidated, they are unsure. What I would like them to know is that through that practice you can conquer all of those feelings that stop you in your life. Because, if it stops you right now, guaranteed it is going to stop you somewhere else as a metaphor. So I’d like them to know that.

Chikara Magazine: How has Budokon changed your life?

Osu Céline: It changed everything in my life from the core in to the outside. Within my family and within my career. You know right now, I teach in a public school almost full time and I am also an entrepreneur of a successful health food store. I raised three wonderful young men and I’m married. Some people say like, “How do you do all these things?” I’m like wow! where did I get all the energy and the resources to do all these things? I think it is the person that I am becoming through my practice of Budokon.