SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz of Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Northern Virginia. I am so delighted. So often I talk about two lawyers helped guide me into Tai Chi. The late Victor Crawford, who was a fellow trial lawyer who told me about doing it. And when I asked Vic to tell me about some Tai Chi teachers three years later, he sent me a bunch of pamphlets along with a note saying you're about to open some amazing doors. What an understatement that was. And I chose Glen Echo Tai Chi. It was near where I lived at the time. And my first teacher there was Ellen Kennedy. And on the show today is Len Kennedy, who's a lawyer. That's the second lawyer who helped guide me into Tai Chi. And uh let me tell you something, before Len starts talking, he certainly made the point to me because I asked him a lot of questions. I don't know if he thinks I asked him too many questions, but he certainly showed me how it doesn't take more than four ounces to move you because he just did a side move, which was, I think, was just part of the basics, and I went off balance. But of course, since then I've been doing a lot of uh push-hands practice where I learned to root better and uh and and do the go on the counteroffensive. With that, Len Kennedy, please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Uh John, it's a great uh pleasure to be here with you. Uh Vic Crawford was a mench. He was a great human being uh and fun to be around too. So uh, and in a way, I think he was very uh uh almost the the essence of uh of the Taiji community in a certain kind of way, and certainly in the environment uh that Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Robert Smith, created in uh in Bethesda, you know, in the in the mid-60s. So it was a wonderful community. Many have contributed to it and continue to, even though the Smiths have passed on. We try to carry on the lineage. But I'll tell you a little bit about myself, and if I go too far, reel me back in. Uh, you know, I I'm a New Yorker, a Brooklynite, and uh went to public school in New York City. Uh I think I got a great education, ultimately went to uh majored in economics, a big part of my life and interest. Uh, almost became an economist, but an economist talked me out of it, the late great Alfred Kahn. So that was a good a good thing. Uh so I've been in Washington now. Oh, well, let me just say a little bit. Ellen and I met at a Tai G class that was taught by the Smiths. So, how's that for a real story? And that was in 1982 or three. And uh, I started doing Tai G in 81, and she started doing shortly thereafter. And it's just one of those things that sort of slowly blossomed. We now have two girls who are one is in graduate school, one is just is out of graduate school working. So the time goes fast, but it's all been, in our case, sustained by and uh grown with our experience in Tai Chi. And even though our kids they took some classes, they're not really practitioners, but they talk about qi, the internal energy that we try to nurture in Tai Chi. And I think they're very sensitive people as well. And that's another thing that uh Taiji seeks to develop. And sensitive, not in the sense of being hypersensitive. What Taiji wants to do is to allow us to open ourselves up so that we can discover an inner calm. And from that inner calm, which is enhanced by being relaxed, we learn to move in that space. And recently, I've been saying the essence of Taiji in a certain kind of way is to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yes. Well, that's that's what a that's what a Zen Buddhist monk, uh Claude Anshan Thomas, said a few shows ago. He said it's important to uh uh be peaceful in our unpeacefulness.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Exactly. Exactly. And uh, you know, there's a quiet place there, but when we're tense, it's hard to find it. And I think, you know, if we look at human beings ourselves in emergencies, you know, you act, you you do what is required in the moment. I've had that happen in my life, I know others have. And maybe the nerves and all that stuff comes afterwards, right? Or in the work context, if you have a big meeting, then the tension builds up. And the in all those situations, we do the practice of Taiji and try to follow and embody the principles to prepare ourselves for the difficult moments and as well for the happy moments and to be open and present so that when an incipient happy moment is happening, that we don't shut it down by missing the opportunity, or including the opportunity to help. So one Sunday morning, about 35 years ago, I was a little bit late. I'm on my way to class driving uh through northwest DC. I'm cutting over to get to Reno Road, and I just feel a something. I can't exactly say what it was. So I pull over my car to the curb, and I got out of the car and I went, I looked to the corner, and there were two ladies there. Maybe they were in their 70s, maybe a little bit older. One had fallen. So I went over and I asked them if there was anything I could do to help them uh with the situation. I said, Oh no, we're okay, everything's fine. Thank you very much. And so, you know, and I I went on to my class, and I can tell you, I had no conscious sense of seeing the fall. It felt more like feeling that something had happened, and that something in that feeling led me to believe I needed to do something, which is what I just described. And I attribute that totally to Taiji and being relaxed, you know, and which gives you a greater ability to sense what's going on, what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

So so your car didn't contact this woman at all?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

No, no, no, no, no, no. I I was in my lane driving. Right. She she they had crossed, they had gotten out of their car and they were both on the sidewalk. And I guess maybe I saw them in my peripheral vision, but I saw not only them as two bodies, but like one falling. And so I that seemed like something, you know, a person could have had a heart attack or stumbled or hit their head or something. So I just wanted to help.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

And that reminds me of what Wolf Loenthal said, and there are no secrets. Uh he gave two or three examples. He said that he was uh uh sleeping with the girlfriend of his, and uh somehow he caught her punch. Uh she was angry at him. She caught her punch while he was sleeping, or she could punch him. And there was another one, I don't know if it was Chiang Man Sheng or someone else, and I think it was someone else where the servant said to this uh Tai Chi master, uh, I was wondering why there was this dead rat against the wall. You know that story, right? No, I don't. And he said, Well, I I the only explanation I could think of maybe is while I was sleeping, maybe a rat crawled against me and I just threw it against the wall. Right, right. The other one was the Chiangmen Shang one night, it was so hot in his home, so he was he was sleeping on the uh, I guess in the living room with his family, and uh in the in mid-sleep he caught the banister falling down on them.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Wow, wow, that's incredible. Well, and and I've heard many such stories, and I I've had my own share of them. And and I do think one part of it, in the Taiji Classics, which is 50 principles that the great masters have put together over hundreds of years, one of them says about being in a situation with a partner, if they don't move, I don't move. If they move slightly, I move first. And and we do we use that and we think about it in connection with what we call Tui Show as a two-person interactive taiji practice, but it actually applies to life, it applies to the most important and intense meetings you're in with uh, you know, people of all manner of authority. And and believe it or not, you you hear these things, if they don't move, I don't move. What does it mean? And really, you when one practices is open-minded, and you stick with the process, you have small experiences that lead you there. Well, my second year in Taiji, I was a government lawyer at the Federal Communications Commission. Uh, the usual kind of thing that happens at government agencies, organization A in the agency is disagreeing vehemently with organization B because they both have some equity or interests in whatever the policy debate happens to be. And I was a lead lawyer on um my division's part, and I had an adversary, and he, you know, we were both being good advocates for what we wanted. And typically in these meetings, the temperature would rise as well as the voices as the meetings went on. Well, at one of our major meetings before we had to go present to the commissioners and their offices, he and I were doing that dance that we would frequently do. And for some reason, as things got hotter and the meeting went on longer, uh, I felt calmer all the time. And he would get a little bit more, let's say, uh, aggressive or assertive. And typically I equal that, you know, because I grew up in Brooklyn. So you you play that game. If they want to get loud, I'll get loud. If they want to be intense, I can be intense. But without any planning, I didn't have any of that kind of response. What I did feel was we say, sink our qi in Tai Chi, internal energy. I just suddenly felt my feet connecting, adhering to the ground. And at the same time, I'm engaged in the conversation. I wasn't trying to do that, it was happening. And as it was happening, I also had the perception that when he was pushing hard, that wasn't anything to worry about or to resist, but to move out of the way of it, to let it go off-center and respond in an appropriate way. And this is a quintessential Taiji response, Taiji reaction to something that could be a change.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

And should I ask the Western question about uh what whether you did achieve uh beyond that in the outcome of this meeting?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Well, uh, so it a couple of things. First, my boss said to me, Hey, Len, that was a good meeting, but what was that thing you were doing in the meeting? And I said, uh I I lied, you know. I said, I wasn't doing a thing. What are you gonna tell your boss? This Tai G thing suddenly happened to me, so I just went with it, you know. But uh, you know, we felt pretty good about that meeting. Why? Because by not having, you know, the head-to-head butting on every single issue, we got a little issue, some issues off the table we didn't care that much about. And I think we felt we were able to make progress on other things, you know, because sometimes if you want to take, you should give. And uh get, give.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

For the listeners to get an idea of how devoted you have been to teaching, I'd like them to know a little bit about how when you were teaching, and if you're still teaching, uh how often you were not having a 40-hour uh work week. So you went to undergrad school where?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

For now, arts and sciences.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

And that's also where you went to law school?

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Law school, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Was Art Spitzer already done there when you were there?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

I didn't know I don't.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

He was the the legal director of the uh uh the DCACLU for many years, but he may be older than you. Okay, yeah. Um and then uh then you went to the FCC from there?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, I I went to a large firm uh in Baltimore, out of law school, Venable, which is was then Venable Bacher and Howard. I was in the litigation department, which in those days in a large firm was a fancy way to say I drafted and read interrogatories and documents and and papers. And uh an odd thing happened a couple of years in because uh one summer in law school, I interned at the Environmental Defense Fund. And the lawyer who was there became the general counsel of the Children's Television Workshop, which produces Sesame Street and all those other programs, right? And he wanted to have a young lawyer to go. So I went up to New York to work with him at Children's Television Workshop, a nonprofit, you know, producing good, high-quality content, we thought, for young children and to help teach English and second language and all of that. But my true heart's desire was to be in and around the use of law and economics, which is what I'd studied in school. And so when I had the opportunity to do that at uh the Federal Communications Commission, I took it, which got me all involved in, you know, the breakup of the bell system and all of those. People can't remember that now, but it's old ancient history when we had one huge monopolistic telephone company.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

So, how long were you at the FCC?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

So I did uh I did two stints at the FCC. The first one was a long one for about five years. I was a staffer. I worked on policies both on the domestic side, meaning U.S. telecommunications, trying to open up what later became the long-distance telephone market as a competitive market. Uh I worked for a couple years on the international side, trying to get break up the international monopolies overseas so that we Americans could get better and cheaper service and making calls in Europe and uh and other countries. And then after that, uh I became a uh a legal advisor and then later senior legal advisor to uh a commissioner uh that was appointed by President uh Reagan. And for the audience, I assume no, but for those who don't, uh certain commissions in the government have five or three members according to the law. And uh typically the party in power uh has the right to have a majority on the commission. So if the Democrats are out of office, uh not only in the White House, and the Republicans would have control nominally, and uh vice versa. So uh, but anyway, I mean a lot of the issues weren't really hyperpartisan. It was more like how do we solve these technical problems in the field of communications, a little bit more partisan on things like mass media, children TV, public TV. So I did that, and then as often happens, you know, we lawyers go to the outside, we get that siren call and desire to go work in industry. And I went to a firm, Dalonis and Alberton, which had been a longtime firm providing uh communication services to cable companies like Cox and Comcast and and others, uh, Gannet, and also uh broadcasters and publishers. So they were on the media citizen service side of the business, so to speak. And so I represented some of those companies at the FCC and helping them get into other businesses like the cellular business, the telephone business. Cox has now like a wonderful cable system out in uh Arizona and in other markets as well. So they wanted to compete with the telephone companies, and the telephone companies wanted to compete with them. So I helped uh make that happen. I also did a lot of work, uh, some at the commission, but particularly when I was on the outside of helping companies get spectrum to offer cellular service. And um and that became a dominant theme of my uh my career. So it's up to that point.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Did you uh do any uh did you do any trial work where you're representing a client at the uh uh court level or an adjudicative uh level on uh in the regulatory uh area?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

That's a good question. A lot of administrative area. Sure. A lot of policy that was made back then. Almost every major question was litigated. Frequently, uh the battles occurred in the first instance at the agency. So if there were federal issues, we'd be at the Federal Communications Commission. Those were in the old days, they were, you know, proceedings before administrative law judges, but in the 70s, the commission started to conclude that some of these proceedings didn't really require ALJs. That was a very cumbersome process, and then they could be appealed both to the commission and ultimately the courts, and the commission decided, and the courts upheld the commission's right to hold these uh dockets as rulemaking proceedings. Sometimes they were adjudicatory where there was a party on the other side. Almost all of the work I did was uh paper proceedings where you'd file the equivalent of briefs and arguments uh in front of the respective offices at the FCC, and ultimately those decisions would be taken to appeal, in effect, to the Federal Communications Commission. And on the telephone side, in particular, those decisions would be appealed to the Court of Appeals. So I ended up working on every major decision, you know, got up to an appeal somewhere. Uh and and I ended up working both when I was at the firm and and my and then when I was general counsel of a couple companies, you know, we had litigation all over the United States and the Supreme Court, the courts of appeals. I was on the many of those documents. I was not the lucky guy who got to go in and and argue those cases for the reason that you know that's really a specialty, as you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Uh and was it from Dow Lonus that you went to Nextel?

SPEAKER_01 18:43

So uh so from Dal Lonis, yes. Uh so people often ask, you know, lawyers, well, how do you get your business? Where does business come from? And you know, the the the dean of the communications bar is Dick Wiley of Wiley Ryan. He's well known. And you know, he says, said to me once, well, then if you do good work, you're gonna get business and uh it will come to you. And so when I when I was inside the government, of course, what I was doing, some companies felt I was hurting them, others thought we were benefiting them. We thought our job is to find out the best policy for the public, because that's what the Communications Act said. And I did that, and I was a vigorous advocate, as you might well imagine. And but I also tried to be a nice guy about it at the same time. And uh so what when I was at Dal Lonis, I got to work with clients. It was a lot of fun seeing it from that side of the table. And we did work on things, and uh and I ended up becoming a real wireless expert. I mean, I was helping and doing things to set it up at the FCC, but now you're making actual business decisions. What do we do in this market? Do we buy this system there? Do we build our own? What does it take to do that? And a lot of strategy work as well, which is great because when you get that broad exposure to a client, then you can really figure out how to help them accomplish and fulfill their goals. So I'm a servant-oriented kind of guy. I like helping people solve their problems.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Right. And didn't uh Sprint end up taking over Nextel?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

We like to say it was a merger of equals a merger if you wish to say.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

And is it true that you had never had any idea that that would happen when you join Nextel? And how on earth did you weasel your way or get to be Sprint's general counsel rather than Sprint's existing general counsel just uh replacing uh you?

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, who uh so that that's Tom Gherky, he's a great guy. Uh we knew each other slightly in the industry, and so here it is, you know, in these merges of equals, uh we had a process, and the process was after the deal closed, we knew at the time of the close who the CEO was going to be, where our CEO was gonna be relative to theirs, and some of those positions were allocated. And then after the close of the deal, it was negotiated in the negotiations, the process was set up that for the top 60 people in the companies, there'd be a uh a bake-off, if you will, for who ought to get the position. So you're gonna have one CFO, one general counsel, one, you know, uh chief operating officer. So each of us had to meet with the head of HR and the CEO of the other company. And that was the process. Yeah, it is wild. It's it's very stressful. You know, usually you're doing these transactions all about the client. Suddenly it's about you. And I'll I'll just say at one point on the call, we had, you know, maybe 20 people from our call. This is just our side, a whole bunch of investment bankers. And, you know, after a meeting with the Other side, it came well, they want to get all these positions. And somebody said, Well, if they're going to get those positions, we ought to get these, one of which was general counsel. And it worked out that way.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

So uh so how how many years were you with Nextel and Sprint Total? And is that, and did you then go to the Consumer Finance Protection Board?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Yeah, so I was with uh I I joined Nextel. Interesting thing about careers in 2001, the year in which the dot-com boom became a dot-com bus. That was eye-opening because you have a whole set of expectations. So this is going to be great. The company's wonderful. And it turns out to be one of the toughest years to be in business, and particularly in the telecommunications industry, in the last 20 or 25 years. But the good news was we survived that. And then if you ask, well, why did we survive it? We had $6 billion in treasuries, in the, you know, in the bank, so to speak. And so we were able to finance our plan while others couldn't. But we went four years as general counsel of Nextel, which I'm I'm glad we had that much time. I mean, we were growing at 25% a year, so it was huge. Staff, a lot of demands. And honestly, I got to learn a lot of things about being an inside general counsel that I didn't know. And if we had struck that merger maybe like a one or two years in, I don't think I would have gotten the GC job, honestly, because I didn't know enough relative to the competitor on the other side. But uh, you know, it worked out pretty well. And it worked out pretty well for him. He became the CEO of a telecom company, and then uh he had some other great jobs. So I was, and then so it was four years at Nextel, four years at uh at Sprint Nextel. And that, by the way, in that year, that was the largest merger. That was a $35 billion merger. And in that year, I was named General Counsel of the Year by a national organization that reports on corporate affairs to directors. I was one of several. And it was in part for that deal in our industry at that time. Uh so, but after about the eight years there, we had a new CEO come in and you know, he relocated our headquarters from uh the reston, DC metropolitan area to uh to the Midwest. And he said, Len and the other members of the team here, you're welcome to commute. Uh, my wife who grew up in the Midwest, not far from Kansas, and our daughter said, we don't want to move to the Midwest. You can commute if you want. And I just decided I didn't want to commute. Now, by then, we're in the the second, the great financial crisis. And, you know, so I worked out a deal with them. I said, Hey, uh, Dan, I'm happy to stay here, help the company find a successor. We worked out a mutual mutually satisfactory deal. And uh, so I ended up having a sabbatical after we found our successor. And then for about a year and a half or two years, I actually spent time studying the financial crisis, what happened. I gave some talks at it at Cornell at Adelphi University, published a paper on it. And uh, and somehow or other, out of all that process and other things, when they were looking for general counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, my name came up in a cabinet meeting at the White House. And uh, you know, they reached out to me and they said, Would you do it? And uh I was talking to my sister about it because I frequently talked to her advice, and she said, Well, what are your concerns? I said, Well, I just don't want them to know I'll do this job for free.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Okay, well, uh, we can get back to some of this work stuff, but I want to talk about the Tai Chi.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

So let me say one other thing. Yes. Uh I I've met a lot of amazing people in uh professionally and otherwise, and in my life. And Elizabeth Warren is without question the the most amazing, very, very smart, very caring, very tough, uh, very honest. I'm I'm an amazing person.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

And and you met her before or after you were with the uh CFPB.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Well, her team found me, and you know, and I had to shoot, I had to go through my interview with her, and then I went through my interview with the Secretary of Treasury and those people, you know, because CFB was launched inside of the Treasury Department. So I remember the first time. So I had to go in to talk to her, and so I'm talking to her about a variety of things, and she says something, and I, you know, sometimes you have a kismet moment, something amazing happens, and I said, Elizabeth, I can do this job because I'm not afraid of the people we're gonna have to fight with. And I don't need this job. You know, I can be the real person that you need to protect the agency and the public in the way that Congress wants, so that what happened in 2007 and 208, the loss of houses, the bankruptcies, and all the rest doesn't happen ever. And I would have done that job for free, actually.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Well, well, there you go. But they paid you anyway.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

They did.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

They did. How did you find out about uh Tai Chi Kwan was it through the uh the Bob Smith folks at first?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah, so uh great question. I moved to uh DC in May of 1980. So you're in that phase of you're in a new town. I knew a couple of people here. Back then in the Saturday Post, the Washington Post, the back page, they'd have things going on in the area that you might try. And I saw a listing by Bob Smith, very small, rare Chai Chi practice, rare boxing films. So he had the anyone in the public could come, no charge, you get a free class, free lesson, and then they would go to lunch. And but before the lunch, we saw these rare films from China, including of Professor Jun Manjing, and other people, because Robert Smith, in addition to teaching Taiji and learning Tai Ji, learned two other arts called Xing Yi and Bakwa, that are kind of cousins of Taiji. And actually, I studied all three of those things with him. And out of that one class, the first time, it was just something about it, the air, the people, the openness. And by the way, there's a great short film they played by Alan Watts called Buddhism, Man and Nature. And I recommend it to all of your listeners. It's 11 minutes. You can find it on YouTube, the famous Alan Watts, who probably knew as much about Asian arts as any Westerner. Uh, it's just extraordinary, and it almost puts you in the mood for a Taiji experience. That was my takeaway, even from the film. And so I that was uh Friday, uh Saturday, June 6th, I think was a day. And so uh I signed up for class the coming Tuesday, and it's you know been doing it ever since.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Bob Smith was the first uh first Western student of uh Chiang Man Chang.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

That is correct. That is correct.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

And I didn't know until you emailed me today that Bob's uh wife uh taught with him. I didn't realize that part of that.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yes, in fact, she learned Tai G from Professor Jen Manjing as well uh in Taiwan, where that where they were. And and actually my I so it was a little bit people make different choices. So I was at the same time, my first Taiji teacher for the full Tai G course was Mrs. Smith, and I took that course, and you know, I finished maybe in a little bit less than a year, and being the kind of person I am, I took it again. And uh, and then she asked me, as she'd asked other students from time to time, to be an assistant in her class. So I was an assistant in her class, and at the same time, I was studying these other arts, Shingy and Bakwa with uh Mr. Smith. So I was getting the full dose of everything they offered, and it wasn't uh it was a tremendous thing.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

And what was Bob's wife's name?

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Alice.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Okay, so I uh I learned the full uh 37 postures from Ellen and you and um I would sometimes join for the um I think they would do uh just general practice on a Saturday or Saturday morning.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

And then we moved and I ended up uh doing the practices with David Walls Kaufman around 2008 to 2009, and we we were living not far from where Julian Shu was teaching on on the weekends, and that's where I really started learning to do the push hands and uh and I went to several of Benjamin Lowe's uh classes. Um so what I'm interested in knowing from you is how important has the martial aspect of Tai Chi been important to you? Because that that's very important to me, as well as the other uh you know essential aspects of it.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

So uh let me just say a little bit about uh Ben, uh who is uh Professor Zhen Manjing's senior student, as you know. And uh Ben was an extraordinary person, and his personal story was he went to see Jen Manjing in Taiwan because he was ill. He couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without having to basically lie down in bed for a while to recover. And the professor said, gave him medicine, and he said, you know, we have a problem. You're not strong enough to take the medicine, so I have to teach you taiji so you could be strong enough to take the medicine. And Ben said, Well, wait a minute, professor, Taiji is a martial art. How can you teach me a martial art? I can't even walk up the stairs. And so the method in which he taught him, he said, Come to my house every day. And he got Ben to the point. Ben would come to his house and he would stand in the beginning posture as a standing meditation for like an hour a day. And then his homework was when you go home, do another hour. And slowly over time, he built up for that. And then after doing that, he was strong enough to be able to be taught tai chi and to learn taiji and to become an extraordinary uh taiji participant, uh, you know, uh player, as we we say. And so, and Mr. Smith would invite Ben Lowe and other teachers here. So Ben Lowe would come every summer here, usually after when he was having his East Coast camp in Frost Valley, New York. I went to about 10 of those camps. So that's a week of six hours a day of Taiji with Ben and people from all over the country. And uh, you know, so that was that was extraordinary. So I feel, you know, and then later, after Ben retired and and and passed away, I would do the same workshops with Lind G. Williams, who's Ben Lowe's senior student, who started in 1974. So that's been a you know a long time. So um martial arts and taiji, it's a great question. Taiji has many ways, and I have a little phrase, I think you may know it, that Taiji is a skill and an art and a way. And a way is a profound thing. Uh, but we start with the skills, and we start with the taiji principles, which are about relaxation and relaxing and learning oneself and uh and breathing. And we do this, as you know, through certain basic postures. There are 37 of them they repeat. And uh we do in Taiji, in one sense, is moving meditation. Uh, and the moves that we make in meditation can become the moves that we make in a situation if we have to use our taiji. And but you also develop certain things. I was once, I don't know if Adam Simorgan, Milliana House, is a pizza place also uh at a bar. And I was there one Thursday with some friends, and you know, some at sitting at the bar having beer and pizza, half-night beer and pizza, and so there's like some noise behind us, and I felt like something was gonna happen, and I was gonna reach out to kind of separate these guys who are about to come together, and something said, Don't do that, Lenny. And I didn't, and some person came flying in, you know. So it's a little bit like the experience with the lady. What is that thing telling you? Hold your horses, yes, you that inner voice, that inner sense of, hmm, is my impulse really the right one? And uh, you know, that's the essence of Taiji as a martial art. Uh, it's taught differently than other martial arts because we call Taiji an internal art, whereas other arts are we would describe as external, that they rely upon brute force. And Taiji really works from a different place, someone somewhat like the way in which judo was intended to work and Aikido, which are two Japanese arts, but it's really how you interact with your partner and knowing what to do. And when you really know what to do, even in threatening situations, you don't have to do it with Taiji. So Mr. Smith had a judo student named uh Bill Paul, who's a West Coast judo champion, and he learned some Taiji and some other things as well. He created a nonviolent system of self-defense that he would teach nurses and people in institutions who guards and others who had altercations to manage or to deal with, to learn how to cause, subdue people without hurting them. And he taught us that method, you know, then and certain things about human interaction. So one thing he would say in the West, most people feel comfortable when you have three feet of space between you. If it gets closer, people get tense. He says most people twice as much space they need in the back. So he did a study for his, you know, thesis at at Harvard School of Education, where he went to sort of say, well, you know, the problem you have with the aggressive personality is in every normal situation, they feel as though you're in their space. You know, you're pressing them. You might not be conscious of it, but that's what they feel. So it's something about human interaction. And I think from his judo experience and what he knew of Taiji, he figured out some techniques to kind of ease the situation. So one of them would be you're in, you know you're in somebody's space, so you're more conscious. Don't do things that the other person might well interpret as aggressive. And in fact, give space, don't take it away, because taking it away feels like the beginning of a threat. So there are all kinds of things like that that apply. And I grew up in a kind of tough neighborhood in Brooklyn, you know, so you you learn some things about that. And, you know, and there the the art, I think, of it was um, it's kind of like I said to my younger brothers, you're not going to be a pushover, but at the same time, you're not the guy they want to mess with. You have to communicate that message.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Was there an aim of that um that that uh nonviolent self-defense uh that that that uh man called it?

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Bill Paul. Uh I don't recall that he had a name for his system, but there's been some writings about it, and I can send uh find that his uh information and forward it to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Well, some of the great things I remember, I there were a lot of great things with with your uh teaching me. One was you had us doing uh standing uh one day, and uh I I think we went for we went for quite a long time. It was at least 10 or 15 minutes. And and while we were doing this, uh I you reminded me of the dentist when the the dentist is talking. You can't you can't talk back, your your your mouth is full. And so you're asking us these, I guess, these rhetorical questions like how do you deal with change? I mean, that's that's a great one. You accept the change, do you work with the change? You would often say we wouldn't have to do standing meditation for this. No hurry, no worry.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Did you coin that yourself?

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Yeah, I I think I did. Uh uh I I have another one I use in teaching sometimes with with when we're moving, go slow and let go. That's letting go, letting go is the essence of relaxation. Now we can all visualize it if you make your hands into fists, you're holding on. So we want you to let go. Now, there's a way you can let go even with your hands as fists. There's another way you can let go by opening your hands, and that feels even more as letting go. But we have to Taiji is retraining our bodies to get back to states we knew as children before all the tension came. And and it's tension we're not even aware of. You know, it's just there, and it blocks our ability to feel whole, it blocks our ability to relax, it blocks our ability to breathe comfortably, which is incredibly important to relaxing and being upright. All of those things are built in.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Right. So so we have uh when we when we use the power of the child within, uh, that helps us uh to be fearless and playful.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

And absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

And I think in Wolf Lowenthal's um Th Are No Secrets, he was talking about. I don't know if it was Chiang Man Cheng or another said that that a baby uh lost in the wilderness cannot be harmed by a spear because it has no fear of the spear.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Right. And and you'll get that same message in the the the short video from uh from Alan Watts, you know, to be in nature. Uh, you know, my I have a friend who is an acupuncturist, and she would say, Lynn, you Westerners don't know just how to sit down on the bench in the park and you know, admire the plants, the trees. And I I'll confess, the first time she said it went, I was just like super busy lawyer. I said, where's she going with this? You know, but there's actually something to it when we allow ourselves to be there. So I live off of McBartha Boulevard near Glen Echo Park, and I walk up and down and on the canal and all these places. And if you put yourself there, you see amazing things from the eagle that flew over my head on the canal 15 minutes before and as uh the election was being called for for Biden, you know, in 2016. And people just spontaneously, there was an eruption, you know. So uh, but there are other things. You you the air is different, the water is different, the wind on your face is different. And so we need to open up to our senses. And and nature is one of the great natural openers. I mean, it's very hard to do it with people unless you're in a process like Taiji or yoga or body work or people who are specially sensitive. Now, you know, Ellen's mom, who is uh an artist, uh, and she and her husband and Dick, I mean, they did a lot of walking and nature. They had gardens of plants that had been raised in four different states and that kind of thing. So very, very close to nature. And she'd say, oh, Len, look at the sun being reflected off that leaf and the tree and whatever. In the beginning, I really I thought, oh, well, that that's interesting, you know. But actually, after many years and many conversations and relaxation, you do see, I mean, really see, opened up with a free mind. And that is spectacular. It's really spectacular. Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

And you speak of MacArthur Boulevard, so further up the road at the Billy Goat Trail, yes, stunned that one of the first times my uh son was hiking there with me, he was around six or seven years old. So that would have been around 12 years ago. It was the fall, and he went right to this area that was covered with leaves, and he very intensely just started clearing off the leaves, and that was the area with that where that big heart-shaped rock is that you get to not long after you finish the scramble, right, is you're going south. Right. That's just one example of him being so intuitive. And the only Tai Chi he's done is pretty much just mimic me a little bit, right? Uh, but I I do it in his presence. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Maybe that uh it does affect them, and because they have fewer really deeply ingrained patterns and habits, they're more available to what's out and they're freer. They really feel freer. And you can see it in how they move, how they laugh even, you know. And we have to, you know, kind of remember, gee, I feel a little bit mechanical with that laugh. Let go. Get that belly laugh. That's the other thing that was extraordinary about you know Robert Smith. For for someone who had had, you know, the jobs, the positions, he was so incredibly well read. He was a poet, he was a writer, he had been involved in martial arts, but you couldn't have met a nicer person, you know, anywhere, just soft-spoken, not trying to hog a conversation, always eager to tell a joke or learn a joke. And and he used that method. I mean, more than once he would say, when I was in my early, shall we say, stiff days, stiff is not good for a Tai Chi audience, he would say, I'm gonna keep telling jokes until Len Kennedy smiles, you know. And it worked, you know.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

Okay, Len, getting back to the standing, is I think I mentioned in the email. Is it just my imagination that several times that I've been doing the uh standing at the end of the 37 postures in front of a mirror, that I've started seeing my body becoming translucent? And even starting to disappear to the point where I get startled and uh my body comes back, and I say to myself, maybe I just sort of stayed with it, but I wasn't sure if my soul was going to leave my body.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Only just uh an optical illusion. Only you know what you see and experience in standing or sitting when you're really into it. And you know, my my my advice and wisdom, if it's that, on it, accept the experience, relax. There's nothing in Taiji that's gonna hurt you. And and Taiji is there for, and you know, and look, we all have moments in life where we're we're stunned, we're shocked, we're we're even frightened. And and I'll give you an example. So I was practicing four years in. Uh, this is actually published in the Washington Post way back in the 80s. Uh, so I was practicing in a park in near Tacoma Park, a big field, just minding my own business. The guy walks in on the other edge of the park with his large, large dog off-leash. The dog sees me practicing and starts bounding in my way, barking, barking, barking furiously. Comes within, you know, three feet of me, barking furiously, and I'm just down now, hands crossed in front of my body, and you know, just one leg in front of the other, kind of a Tai G waiting position, even though we don't call it a position, but that's what it is. And, you know, the dog is barking furiously. I'm not saying anything, I'm not moving, I'm as still as a statue, no fear, no heartbeat, nothing, no adrenaline, nothing. The guy comes over, he gets his door, says, Oh, I'm sorry, this he doesn't usually do this. I say, Hey, no, no problem. Uh, and so he puts his dog on a leash, they go, they walk out, you know, the park. I finish my workout another 20 minutes, then I go to uh, you know, I get a half a block from the park. I said, holy cow, that dog could have bitten me. You know, like all those reactions. They didn't come in the moment. There was just stillness in the moment. And and that's why the baby, you know, in the in the forests among the animals, stillness. Stillness is a real thing. And there's a Japanese saying that the stillness and stillness is not real stillness, right? We're alive underneath that. We're holding.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Yes, it may have been you who said when we're standing once, uh, when you're standing still, what's moving? The blood, your acting, your own.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Lots of things. Absolutely. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

The name of the show is Beat the Prosecution. I understand you haven't done uh criminal law work on either side. Uh, besides what you've already said, do you have any specific suggestions for criminal defendants and criminal defense laws that incorporates what you've learned in Tai Chi and anywhere else?

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Sure, a couple of things. Well, uh I had a work study job in high school in the 77th precinct in East New York and Brooklyn. So I worked with uh a lot of police there. It was an interesting job, you know, basically just doing paperwork. But you see in the paperwork, actually around us all the time, there's a lot of crime. And you even see the stress on the policeman, which, say, the normal citizen doesn't see, because you hear them talking about things. And they would say things, okay, Lenny, people call me, when you go home, don't walk this way, walk the other way, and don't go, you'll go home, don't you know, wander off. So they were giving ad advice, and you know, and I think in a way, even before I ever knew it was anything, that helped me learn something about police, that they were people. And uh, you know, I think, and working with uh Bill Paul and his system, who worked a lot with policemen and others, they're under enormous stress that we cannot possibly imagine. In the U.S., they don't get as much, you know, what I would call social service help to mediate and ameliorate those problems. But in places like Norway and Britain, they do a lot to lower the internal temperature of what the police feel. So I think, you know, and and they by assumption and experience work in either I'm the boss, you're not the boss, which means I'm the boss, and if you act up, you're gonna get what the boss gives you. So you have to have a psychology of, yes, I'm a person, yes, I answer your questions, but that doesn't mean getting in your face. I'll give you another incident. So in the mid-70s, when there's kind of tough times going on in New York with the police, my dad and I were coming from my grandmother's, who was visiting her, my uncle and his wife. And so we get pulled over by the police in Manhattan. And um, you know, so one policeman walks to the right side of the car, passenger where I was with his hand on his pistol, and the other side comes up to my dad, same thing. And and my dad, you know, got out of the car, was staying there, and he just like put the door behind him, and the light, you know, and the car inside went off. He said, Open the door. So he opened it, and they had a conversation about it. And it was very calm, very polite. And he said, No, officer, we were visiting my mother, referring to his mom, my grandmother. And um he said, You drink? He said, Yeah, I had a beer, and uh and we're going home now. And it was, you know, resolved on that basis. Now, I I had, I guess I knew it, but I never really thought about it. When my dad was in the Korean War, he was a military policeman. So he learned about the psychology of the policeman. Uh, it was responsive, it was polite, it wasn't anything nasty, it wasn't anything wild. And so we got stopped and you know, we were led on our way. And I think each person has to find in their situation what's the right way for me, even if you're frustrated, even if you're unhappy, and how to manage that situation. It's not only for interacting with the policeman, but in truth, we know in the whole legal process, which can be frustrating, not because people are trying to be, but you know, resources are limited, stress is there. I think it's incredibly, incredibly important not to let emotions get out of hand uh because then they escalate. You know, so when when they it's a little bit like uh Mrs. Obama said, you know, they go low, we go high, or they escalate, you de-escalate inside. You know, you don't have to fall on the floor and roll over, but don't receive that energy. You know, if you receive it and and resist it, is like push hands, okay? Then they feel your tension. And your attention gets increased by their counter-tention, even when it's not physical, emotionally, psychologically, that's going on. You have to recognize that for what it is. And you can use many things. Uh, you can use your breathing. The easiest thing anybody can feel, feel your feet. And just practice sometimes. You're on the subway or whatever, you're driving on the beltway, feel your feet, relax your body, relax your breathing. I say that to myself many times. And what I noticed coming back from a class once, uh, you know, it was a really good class. I had to get on the beltway and somebody cut me off. And, you know, my reaction was, oh, I guess that person's in a hurry. So what did I learn? I learned something from the class that I didn't know I'd learned until somebody cut me off on the beltway, and I felt good. You can feel good being cut off. Oh, that person's in a hurry. Uh, I hope they get there without being hurt. We have to change our mind, you know.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

This was great uh to get that perspective from your combination as a lawyer who doesn't hasn't done criminal law, who practices Tai G, um who's who's well advanced. I mean, this this reminds me what you're talking about with dealing with the other drivers. I was driving down, um, I think it was down down Route 50 one day near Carlin Springs Road, and for some inexplicable reason, the car coming from the opposite direction just cut right in front of me and then went right over to the side. Maybe he was drunk or whatever, in which case he could have been a potential client. Right. And uh I was totally calm about it. I think the only way I was able to be calm about it was number one, I was alone. So the only person in the car who might have gotten hurt was myself, but I was I was so aware of it that I I knew we weren't gonna collide, but he came so close. Right. I knew we weren't gonna collide. I I was able to avoid a collision with just uh a slight uh a slight change in in in in holding the steering wheel without even putting on the brakes. I mean, what you say makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

And and and it's hugely important, I'd like to follow on on that, John. All of us, whether we're practicing taiji or not, can learn something about relaxing by reflecting on the situations that we've handled well, just like you described, and then maybe some others. Oh, in that other instance, I was a little bit different. What was the difference? It's like in my early beginner days, wanting to intercede on in that million owl situation when I told Mr. Smith about it, he said, What were you doing in the bar? So, you know, we life is a learning opportunity, and we we ought to make it, should try to make it healthy and helpful. And and that just means a certain kind of reflection. And Tai G or other practices give you automatic practice. You're thinking about it in some quote, limited taiji sense, but it's applicable to your whole being, your whole life. Think about any big remember taking the bar exam? If I had known Tai G, I would have been a lot better. Talk about being uptight, you know. You could say I've I've stuffed my head, but that's not the best way to get it out, you know.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

Well, here's here's how I practiced the bar exam. Well, first of all, it wasn't one of the more easier ones, it wasn't Virginia, right? Uh, which ended taking and passed a few years later. But the second thing was I was staying across two blocks away from the Bromo Seltzer building. I never knew about the Bromo Seltzer building. Right. And so I had this ritual where both mornings I took a walk around the neighborhood, I walked up to the Bromo Seltzer building. So this was like three years before I started learning Tai G. No, five years before, and I just put my hands on the Bromo Seltzer building, realizing that if we have a belts producing uh theme for this beautiful tower, uh life can't be so too serious. So I did just fine.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

Right. And well, I remember mine the after the first, the second first day, I don't know why I did this, it's July in Washington, D.C. And I went for a 13-mile run. It was about 90 degrees and 90% humidity. I mean, but I just needed to get whatever all that it tension, stiffness out of my body. You know, fortunately, I was able to get back and I didn't hurt myself or pass out in the heat and humidity. But uh good.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

As is common, Lynn. There's so many things I want to cover that I'm not gonna get to cover because I think we only have a few more minutes left here. So, what I'd like to hear from you is things including uh am I correct that uh you did uh carve uh time out very carefully to be able to teach? Because that was when you were also working long hours in your work and you had your two daughters and your wife who was teaching Tai Chi too. So was that out of pure devotion? I take it yes. What's your special sauce? What is your saying at the end of the uh email you sent me? And do you have uh anywhere that you want people to reach you, at least to uh uh for Glen Echo Tai G if you're still teaching?

SPEAKER_01 56:02

Lenkennedy at gmail.com works. Uh people say, how could you get your own name as an email address? Answer. My daughters maybe get an email before I knew what it was, uh, so it was available. Uh and at the bottom of those emails, I do have that tagline move daily, breathe deeply, live fully. And we can all do that, and you don't have to do tai G to do it. And I believe if we do it, it will bring us tai G experiences. I'm calling them tai G experiences, but they're basically human experiences of optimum psychology, as the guy Flo, the Polish uh scholar, you know, would call it. We're looking to find flow, to feel it, to experience it, to be inspired by it, to use it to handle difficulties and challenges. Uh uh, what was your first one?

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Uh, because I feel like I'm was it purely out of devotion? Well, I guess out of learning too, that you really carved out this time on you you would teach one uh on weekends, one weekend day a week for several weeks out of each year, I think.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Many, that's true. So here's the thing. Uh, you know, got started doing Taiji before being married. Ellen was doing Taiji. We made time for other things. We made time, you know, to go to church. We made time to be with our girls and have vacations. And on all those things, you know, we classes would either be, if it was in season, then we'd have someone to be there for us. But usually we'd make our schedules uh meet what the class was and still do the things we have to do, take our trips, take our vacations, visit museums, see family, family first. And this is actually something Mr. Smith, you know, made available, you know, uh his wife, his children, they were in that community, and and he didn't ignore them, even though he did many things. And he also did other things where he, you know, he had to be there. And I, you know, I will say I feel, and I think lawyers are particularly prone to this. There are times when I worried, gee, am I just really doing too, you know, too much at work? And then you have an embarrassing moment like this. Like one morning, um, you know, Julia is maybe a little bit older than two. She can speak and say, Okay, bye, baby. Daddy's going to work as like seven o'clock, seven fifteen in the morning. She says, bye, daddy, I'll see you tomorrow. I feel really bad. I feel really bad. So after that, they were like, hey, how come you're home early? Oh, no, I just thought I'd get home early, you know. So we have things like that. It's very easy to be overcommitted, and I would say to all, and we all work uh in one thing or another, find the Chinese talk about the middle way. Meet your obligations. It's plenty possible to do that, but also um, you know, your work obligations, but think about your family obligations. Here's the last close. Uh, five years ago, I read Anna Karinina by Leo Tolstoy. Uh, it is without question the greatest novel I've ever read, perhaps the greatest book I ever read. There's an amazing Taiji experience in it by a character called Levin, where he gets in the zone in mowing. And it's experts say it's the best description of the Zen experience in Western literature, one of the two best. And uh Tolso was a very interesting man, fourth richest family. He was an orphan, he freed his serfs, uh, he gave away his property. Uh, he did lots of things uh that people in his stage and station in life would not have. He challenged the church, he challenged the czar. Uh he called upon people to love one another, follow the gospels like Thomas Jefferson. He rewrote the gospels in the Bible and he learned Greek to read the Bible. So he was a person of extraordinary commitment and he asked the hard questions. Now, there are a lot of things you can read about Tolstoy and Anna Karinina. And when I'm with friends, I always say, if you remember um uh Rex Harrison and My Fair Lady, why can't he has the song, Why Can't a Woman Be Like a Man? And uh I think Tolstoy, what he depicts in Anna Karinina is why can't a man be more like a woman? More whole, more complete, more feeling, more thinking about others, as opposed to self work. And and then the reason he could see it, because there he was, he was living at home. They had 14 kids, and X number died at home, and you're seeing it. He wasn't away at work like me. Bye dad, see you tomorrow. And so the moms and the children have a different experience, and you know, I I'm not one for for regrets, but I I realize now what I missed by being at work, and you know, a lot of times it really wasn't necessary, it's just we we thought we should do it. So spend the time with others, love them, love yourself, be good to the world, be good to yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

Thank you so much, Lynn, and uh David Walsh-Kaufman has aptly said do not let your teachers forget how much you appreciate them. I appreciate you and Ellen so much. It was Victor Crawford, followed by the two of you that helped put me on my Tai Chi journey starting 30 plus years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Well, good for you. Uh, as Churchill said, never give up, never surrender, and uh keep doing what you can. Really appreciate it. You know, and Victor was a wonderful guy. It's a wonderful commit community, and you know, it's just day by day. This is day by day. Don't get too caught up in you know, the future we can't control. Today's the day we can make a difference, and we should go for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:05

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

Thank you. Be welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:07

You have heard from Len Kennedy, one of my first Tai Chi teachers, my first Tai Chi teacher and only Tai Chi teacher, I think, who's a lawyer. This has been John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense floor in Northern Virginia. Thank you again, Len.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.