Peaceful Heart, Warrior Spirit

Author and athlete Dan Millman will speak at the Bearsville Theater on August 9.

Dan Millman, former world-champion athlete, university coach, martial arts instructor, and college professor is perhaps best known for his multimillion-selling autobiographical novel, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which was recently adapted into a feature film starring Nick Nolte. In addition to his writing, Millman travels the world, leading seminars and giving talks about what it means to be a peaceful warrior.

Two weeks before Millman was to fly to Yugoslavia to compete in the 1966 World Gymnastics Championships as a potential Olympian, he was severely injured in a motorcycle accident. Doctors said the odds were against his ever returning to gymnastics. Not only did he return, a little more than a year later he and his team took the national collegiate championships. He was co-captain of the NCAA championship team and was inducted into the Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

He went on to teach athletics at Stanford University and Oberlin College, while continuing his explorations of spirituality and enlightenment. His journey, with several different mentors along the way, led him to develop a singular approach to leading a meaningful and fulfilled life.

—Kim Wozencraft

Kim Wozencraft: Peaceful Warrior was a phenomenon. What brought you to the task of writing the novel?

Dan Millman: It came out of a desire to teach. I realized one day that as I improved myself it was only one person, but if I could influence other people, that could make my life more meaningful. I started teaching what I knew, which was gymnastics, and that evolved over time as my interests changed. I went from a talent for sports to a talent for living, and my goal was to share what I had learned, but not all the metaphysical gobbledy-gook and cultural entrapment that goes with some of the esoteric manuals I had studied over the years. So I started writing. It took many shapes, and finally I decided to base it around this old guy I met in a gas station. I called him Socrates. I’d read a couple of Castanada’s books, but didn’t want my story to be out in the desert with all these terms—that’s not very universal, how many people can go out in the desert and meet a shaman?—so Socrates became the perfect way to convey the story. There was a cosmic vibe for sure, and I did meet him in a gas station at about three in the morning. I didn’t know how to write a book, really. I mean I went to Berkeley, I wasn’t dumb, but I’d never really studied writing much, so I based it on autobiographical material: first person narrative, some of it’s fiction, some of it’s just straightforward reporting of what happened to me.