Watch Your Six: How Spiro Demetriadi Is Training Warriors to Win the Battle for Their Minds

He had the house. The two BMWs. The three-car garage and the pool. By every visible measure, Spiro Demetriadi had built the life people work decades to achieve.

Then, within a year of his divorce, he was renting a room from a Christian family — no heater, no AC, no kitchen. No more wife or three kids in the home. A quiet that felt nothing like peace.

"You can imagine going from all the laughter and beautiful craziness of a family to being alone," Spiro recalls. "That was depressing."

Most people would call that hitting bottom. Spiro calls it the moment God finally had his full attention.

From the Mat to the Mission Field

Long before that rented room, Spiro had built an extraordinary career at the intersection of warfare and community. A military veteran and first-generation Greek-American from Connecticut, he came to Southern California in the mid-1990s and found his way into the orbit of the Gracie family — the Brazilian jiu-jitsu dynasty that co-founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Rorion Gracie, the UFC's co-founder, handed Spiro a specific mission: take the Gracie self-defense curriculum and sell it to law enforcement and the military. It was a harder sell than it sounds. In an era dominated by karate, kung fu, and striking arts, the idea of ground fighting was practically foreign to most officers.

"I will never forget the common response," Spiro says. "'I will never go to the ground. I will never fight on the ground.'" He would push back: what happens if the fight goes to the ground against your will? Do you know how to defend yourself and retain your weapon?

Most had no answer. So he and the Gracies put them on the mat — gently, but honestly — until they understood what they didn't know. After a little humbling, many became students to what is now known as Gracie Survival Tactics (GST).

Over twenty-five years, Spiro provided training to thousands of military and law enforcement personnel. He helped launch GracieUniversity.com, now the largest online self-defense martial arts academy in the world. He later partnered with international counter-terrorism expert Alon Stivi to co-found ACT CERT, which provides active shooter prevention and response training for workplaces, schools, and houses of worship. He also provided night vision devices and low-light/no-light tactical training to law enforcement SWAT teams.

He was good at helping others find their lane. He just hadn't fully found his own yet.

The Room Where God Spoke

After about a week of shock and sadness in that rented room, something shifted. Spiro made a decision — the same kind of recommitment he had made in his mid-thirties when he moved from growing up Greek Orthodox Christian to truly living in the Word. He went deep into Scripture and began to ask God a direct question: what is my thing?

The answer came clearly: spiritual warfare.

God told me, 'You are going to get in depth into spiritual warfare. That is your thing, Spiro.' Spiritual warfare is really one of the main things of being a Christian. It is the battle between good and evil, the battle of thoughts coming at you all the time.

Drawing on twenty-five years of curriculum development experience, Spiro asked God whether to build a quick course or go deep. The answer was unambiguous: deep, deep, deep. Four years later, he completed the Spiritual Combatives Master Class — an online course with over 160 lessons and more than twenty hours of video content, available at spiritualcombatives.com.

Then, about a year later, at three in the morning, he woke up with a book title fully formed in his mind: How to Kill PTSD Before It Kills You. He emailed it to himself and went back to sleep. Then he wrote the book.

The foreword was written by Medal of Honor recipient and retired US Navy SEAL Edward Byers — a man Spiro describes as "an ultimate true war hero, like you see in the movies, but in real life." At least two people have privately told Spiro the book saved their lives.

If you ask Spiro "what do you do' his answer is direct. "I train people to win the war for their mind, so they can overcome fear, doubt and negative thinking and build an unbeatable mindset."

What Spiritual Warfare Actually Means

Spiritual warfare is conflict being waged in the invisible, spiritual world that is manifested in the visible, physical world.

Spiro is not clergy. He is quick to say so. But few people explain the mechanics of spiritual battle with the precision and practicality he brings — because he has spent a lifetime thinking in terms of tactics, training, and readiness.

His core analogy of the battle we all face is disarmingly simple. Can you stop birds from flying over your head? No. But can you stop one from building a nest in your hair?

The birds flying over your head represent Satan and demons vying for your attention by directing ungodly thoughts at you. Until you die physically, you cannot prevent negative or evil thoughts from coming at you. Those thoughts could be extreme. But the thoughts I mostly look like: 'I am not good enough. Life is terrible. That business deal will not go well.' Those negative thoughts are not from God. God is encouraging. It is when you let them in that the trouble starts — when you allow the bird to create a nest in your hair.

This, he says, is the same dynamic he encountered on the jiu-jitsu mat decades ago. Law enforcement officers who swore they would never go to the ground were going to the ground constantly — they just didn't know what to do when it happened. Today, countless people are being taken down spiritually every day and have no defense, no training, no framework for fighting back.

"Do you know how to defend yourself?" he asks. "That is what spiritual combatives training is. It is God's Word. It is a training system to know what to do when you get taken to the ground spiritually, so your weapons — your faith, your mental resilience, your ability to stay grounded — don't get taken away and be able to overcome the attack."

Spiritual Combatives is close quarters battle being waged by you against any enemy who wants to utterly destroy you in the invisible, spiritual world that is manifested in the visible, physical world.

The Practical Battlefield

Spiro draws a sharp and helpful distinction between worry and concern. Worry, he explains, is the emotional spiral — dwelling inside the problem, rehearsing it, letting it define you. Concern is rational; it asks, what do I do about this? Jesus didn't suggest we avoid worry. He commanded it. And Spiro takes that command seriously.

"If He commanded it, then it is possible not to worry, because He is not a liar. How do you not worry? You get into the Word, you practice, and you watch your thoughts."

He also distinguishes negative thinking from godly warning. A gut feeling that something is wrong in a dark parking lot is not anxiety — it may be the Holy Spirit. Discernment matters. Spiro teaches people to notice the difference.

His second book, U-Turn Your Life in 3 Days, was built around the simplest of biblical images: the resurrection. Three days to reverse course, stop heading in the wrong direction, and begin moving toward life. "Does everything get solved once you make that U-turn? No. But at least you start heading in the right direction."

One Word for Every Christian Leader

When asked what he would say to Christian business leaders navigating the pressures and uncertainties of professional life, Spiro doesn't reach for a productivity framework or a motivational maxim. He reaches for the language of the people he has spent his career serving.

God has your six. That is a military and law enforcement term — six o'clock is your back. It means God has your back. If you have faith in Him, no matter what you are going through, you will come out on top.

He lives it himself. Every day, he asks God for guidance — not just in the big decisions, but at the small forks in the road. He tries to walk in a way that doesn't embarrass the One he follows. And whenever he meets someone who is smiling on the outside but empty on the inside, he looks for the moment to speak life into them.

"Every day above ground is a wonderful day," he tells strangers. It sounds simple. But for a man who states that about twenty veterans a day die by suicide — and wrote a book that has quietly kept at least two of them alive — those words carry the full weight of a calling.

Watch your six. And watch the thoughts you let in. The battle is already underway.

Ephesians 6:12: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against power, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Spiro Demetriadi's books are available on Amazon. His Spiritual Combatives Master Class and other resources are available at spiritualcombatives.com. Active shooter and counter-terrorism training can be found at actcert.com.