Dan Millman

Before his name became linked with Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman’s life was shaped by movement. Born Daniel Jay Millman on February 22, 1946, in Los Angeles to Herman and Vivian Millman, he grew up with an older sister, Diane, and with a body in almost constant training. Modern dance, martial arts, trampoline, tumbling, and gymnastics were not side interests for him. They were the early language of discipline, risk, timing, and recovery.

At John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, Millman was recognized as a Co-Senior Athlete of the Year, and during his senior year he won the United States Gymnastics Federation national title on the trampoline. At the University of California, Berkeley, he kept rising. As a freshman, he won the 1964 Trampoline World Championships in London, earned All-American honors, and won an NCAA Championship in vaulting. He represented the United States at the 1965 Maccabiah Games, winning four gold medals in gymnastics, and in 1966 won USGF championships in floor exercise and vault.

Then, in September 1966, just before his senior year at Berkeley, a motorcycle collision with a car shattered his right femur. The injury required surgery, a bone marrow transplant, and a steel nail in his femur, later removed after the leg healed. Millman actively pursued rehabilitation and returned to gymnastics as co-captain of the California team that won the 1968 NCAA Gymnastics Championships in Tucson, Arizona. He was the last male athlete to perform for the college on the high bar, and his best-ever routine with a perfect landing clinched the team title. That year he was voted Senior Cal Athlete of the Year and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology.

Millman’s career kept close to athletics, teaching, and inner training. In 1968, he served as director of gymnastics at Stanford University, where he coached U.S. Olympian Steve Hug and helped bring the Stanford team to national prominence. During that time he trained in aikido, eventually earning a shodan, or black belt, and also studied tai chi and other martial arts. In 1972, at the invitation of sports activist Jack Scott, he joined a program of athletic reform at Oberlin College in Ohio as an assistant professor of physical education. A travel research grant from Oberlin took him to San Francisco, where he completed the Arica 40-Day Intensive Training, and then to Hawaii, India, Hong Kong, and Japan, where he studied disciplines including yoga and martial arts.

In 1985, Millman began producing audio and video programs and presenting seminars and professional keynotes. His work is generally connected to the human potential movement. As an author, he became best known for Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives, first published in 1980. He credits the inspiration for that first book to a gas station attendant he met who reminded him of Socrates, the name Millman gave him. In 2006, the book was adapted into the film Peaceful Warrior, starring Nick Nolte, distributed by Lionsgate Films and re-released by Universal Pictures in 2007. As of 2015, Millman had authored 17 books published in 29 languages, and later titles continued the Peaceful Warrior thread, including The Hidden School and Peaceful Heart, Warrior Spirit.

Millman and his wife, Joy, live in Brooklyn, New York, after previously living in San Rafael, California. They have three grown daughters and five grandchildren. The appeal of his words comes from the way they join physical practice with questions about purpose, attention, and daily life. He writes and speaks like someone who has known competition, injury, repair, and study from the inside, which helps explain why readers still turn to him for language about happiness, effort, and the art of living awake.