Tar Heel of the week: Kicking negativity, he instills strength

DURHAM -- For Nathan Ligo, karate builds more than one kind of strength.

It's not just the strength that allows you to kick through boards or even concrete blocks. It's also the kind that helps you hike up a mountain bearing your own weight in iron, and the kind that moves you to bend your life toward the goal of making others stronger.

Ligo has made it his life's work to teach karate to all kinds of people, and especially children who most need its life-changing power and discipline.

At his nonprofit karate school, students referred by the courts and mental health agencies kick and punch alongside other children and adults who signed up on their own.

His school, Ligo Dojo of Budo Karate, started four years ago on West Parrish Street in Durham. He will open a second location this week in Chapel Hill, in a shopping center on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.

The idea was born decades earlier, when karate helped Ligo transcend his own childhood problems. He has since trained and competed in Japan, Korea and Eastern Europe.

"Having gone from weak and unhappy to moderately strong and content was such a transformation," says Ligo, 40. "I thought the only future for me was to try to help other kids to a similar transformation through the same activity. I've been pursuing that ever since."

Ligo's happy childhood was disrupted by a series of divorces. His parents split when he was 5, then each remarried and divorced again. As a result, his childhood was spent between Chapel Hill and Davidson, near Charlotte, moving nearly once a year. The continual movement took a toll on his confidence.

"I didn't fit in anywhere," he says. "Ultimately, by the time I was a teenager, I was kind of a weak, unhappy kid."

He had started to experiment with drugs and alcohol when a great karate teacher, Seong Soo Choi, set him on a different path. Choi was the nephew of an acclaimed Japanese karate master, the late Mas Oyama, who pioneered a type of karate focused more on actual fighting than the stylized movements that were dominant at the time.

At 19, Ligo travelled to Japan to study under Mas Oyama, becoming the first American to go through his rigorous, live-in training.

Ligo interrupted his studies briefly in 1991 to help Choi open a new school in the Triangle. And he publicized it in a unique way - by carrying a 155-pound barbell up Grandfather Mountain. Before heading out, he solicited donations for charity.

The hike itself was intense. And the response to his feat, from the media and the community, bowled him over. If his journey started as a publicity stunt, it ended up as a turning point. He saw, he says, that he had the power to make an impact.

"I was setting an example of someone who was willing to bleed a little bit in order to try to do something positive for the community," Ligo says. "And I thought, I might affect 100 people, but what if they made another thousand people willing to sacrifice? It's a landslide effect."

It was this experience, he says, that put the idea of a nonprofit karate school into his mind, though it would be years before he was ready to start.

From dream to reality

Ligo's first attempt to put his plan into action brought mixed results. He started a residential program for young men with criminal pasts, modeled after his training in Japan. Several of his students went on to excel at competitions, but many slipped back into bad habits.

The current school also started off slowly, but eventually received funding from the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council to teach at-risk youth. The dojo now runs on grants from about a dozen sources, including the city of Durham, the Governor's Crime Commission and the Triangle Community Foundation, which awarded Ligo Dojo its "What Matters Innovation Award" earlier this year.

"He has been in inspiration to a lot of people for years, and now he has found his niche," said State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, who serves on the board of Ligo's nonprofit.

Ligo's students span a wide range of ages and stations in life, including several graduates with doctorates who have returned to the program as teachers. In a recent class, the age range was 6 to 44. By design, the groups are not separated.

"All of the groups learn from each other and learn through the activity that everyone sweats the same," Ligo says.

Ligo says karate's long tradition of teaching character development sets it apart from other types of exercise - aerobics or soccer, for instance - resulting in both physical and spiritual growth.

Teaching kids respect

Another crucial part of karate, Ligo says, is the senior-junior system, whereby more experienced students mentor the less experienced, no matter how small the difference between them. This system benefits troubled youths who need strong role models, but also learn from becoming role models themselves.

Sandra Perez Lopez has seen the change in her 10-year-old son, Aurelio, who is now a brown belt. Lopez, 29, brought Aurelio to Ligo Dojo two years ago, when his younger brother was going through several serious operations. She said karate helped him to stay balanced during the family's darkest hour.

"It kept him focused and made him strong," Lopez says. "His teacher gives them a lot of advice about how you should be great in life, and he wants to be like his teacher."

So far, Ligo has reached hundreds of students. He hopes his efforts will multiply as they go on to open their own schools - a natural growth pattern in an environment where all students become teachers.

"It's like a chemical equation for growth," Ligo says.