To Connor Hwang, born November 30th of 1992, there always seemed to be something missing in his life. His mother, Sandra, did what she could to raise her son with the opportunities she didn’t have growing up in Seoul, South Korea, but it was a task that only seemed to grow more and more difficult without the presence of his big business entrepreneur father, Brian Oliver. Perhaps Connor had noticed it right away, even when he was too young to comprehend the alphabet, let alone have a significant grasp of the English language enough to convey his concerns and his problems, becoming one to often act out, loudly and frustratingly so, for seemingly no reason at all in an early hunt to find that missing piece – an attitude that only got more and more troublesome as he grew up.

While in his early years, he was prone to tantrums, it evolved into spats with other children, sometimes even fights that shouldn’t have broken out even if Connor was always upfront and honest about the reasons he punched a kid in the nose or tackled them to the ground, putting more stress on his mother who was already struggling with being a single mother in a city big enough to eat her alive even without the high rises in New York City. She found some moments of solace when Connor actually listened, sometimes intently, to stories about super heroes and their super villain foes and sometimes even of the father that had left them behind though there was always a question whether or not that made him more and more restless when there seemed no controlling his temperamental nature. As with many children, though certainly not all, there was improvement the more he grew and matured, still an upstanding student where grades were concerned when he actually took the time to apply himself, but there was a last straw to everything, and all it took was one too many fist fights on school grounds for Sandra to take matters into her own hands instead of relying on the so-called authority of the Portland education system.

With a brother in San Francisco, California who she knew she could entrust with making sure that Connor stayed on the right path where she was unable to, Sandra and Connor moved to (neighborhood) where Nathan Hwang owned and operated a martial arts dojo. It was a fresh start in a new environment with new peers that hadn’t already cut themselves into stone with constant ridicule and teasing over the marital status of his parents or his ethnic background – anything that they could have picked on Connor about – and an opportunity to put bad influences behind him, putting him on a path his mother could be proud of. Chores were quick to become a part of his daily life whether it was at the house, his uncle’s dojo or the restaurant that his mother came to purchase shortly after meeting another man she was fond of. Meditation and other discipline studies were also a focus, as taught by his uncle, on top of continuing his studies that he had left off in Portland, this time with far heavier expectations to not only bring home solid grades in his courses, but be on his best behavior.

It was, however, no quick or easy process to take the troublemaker that had been Connor Hwang and mold him into someone so calm and collected, he’d sooner take a diplomatic approach to conflict rather than automatically resulting to an exchange of blows. Just as there were those well-to-do friends that no one would have minded staying for dinner, there were also those bad influences that he would eventually take to fraternizing with in teenage and young adult rebellion. If there was free time to go out and socialize, perhaps even get himself in trouble, he did, something only made worse when he moved to Boston in 2010 to attend the University of Massachusetts and there was no long someone there to helicopter over his grades or what he did with his time or who he hung out with. There was freedom that hadn’t been had before and Connor had all intention on taking advantage of it for as long as he felt he wanted to; but like all things, even that became something that hadn’t been entirely worth his time, finding it only more and more wasted as he came into his own being.

He found other hobbies in those moments, ones that had been born from his studies with his uncle, and focused more readily on martial arts and other studies of combat like kyudo, bojustu, and kenjutsu that required something more centered than he had ever been. It seemed to be that missing piece of the puzzle that had been his life, particularly when it came to archery and parties were soon to be replaced with hours out on the field, perfecting his shots and dealing with the pain in his arms from the tension and the bruises from the snap of the string with a poorly straightened arm. His temper, he found, wouldn’t help him get any better in any study he hoped to excel in, turning more to the meditation techniques he had been taught as an active aid rather than simply a chance to rest, even nap, in the silence of his own mind. It was a focus that would spread to everything – not just combat studies – and when he returned to San Francisco in 2014 following graduation with a bachelor degree in communications, he had a brand new head on his shoulders.

Putting his martial arts knowledge to work when he returned, Connor took up an instructor position at a MMA training center in San Francisco while teaching at the dojo on the side where his students, at least on the martial arts side, were mostly young students who could benefit from the discipline just as he once had. It did very little for his communications degree, but they were occupations where he could do what he loved and feel at peace the most. The paycheck certainly didn’t hurt either, able to move out of his mother’s home to get his own apartment in (neighborhood) where he could more easily commute to work and home and avoid those awkward interactions with her husband when Michael and Sandra had married in late 2016.

For some time, things remained this way, but with the prospect of opening a second dojo in Los Angeles in 2017, Connor jumped at the opportunity to take over the dojo full time, putting his position at the MMA training center to rest so he could focus on something more in his wheelhouse than pure adrenaline combat. Within the year and a half to follow, Connor has expanded the location to include meditation training and various programs for children and adults alike to benefit from the same discipline he has.