Tree of Many Branches
…Ultimately, the greatest weapon an individual possesses is the sword he carries within. An individual’s greatest power is his sense of selflessness. In light of this, there remains very little to attack."
Tree of Many Branches
…Ultimately, the greatest weapon an individual possesses is the sword he carries within. An individual’s greatest power is his sense of selflessness. In light of this, there remains very little to attack."
Effective self defense practices are 90% attitude and 10% technique. Countless self defense programs exist around the United States that place an inordinate amount of emphasis on technique training, and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that the efficacy of any of these programs, whether the instructors are aware of it or not and whether addressed directly and knowingly or indirectly and unknowingly, is absolutely proportional to the effect they have on the mental disposition of the student being trained. In the matter of personal defense, the cold, hard reality is that most non-practitioners of the Arts underestimate the level of commitment to physical violence that an assailant is armed with and that is inherent in an attack or assault. And in truth, a self defense instructor can teach ten or ten-thousand techniques intended to empower an individual in the substance of defense but, if the mentality of the student is not spoken to in a precise and straightforward manner, these techniques will inevitably wither into a bag of useless tools that will promptly spell disaster for the person faced with a life-and-death situation.
Instruction in the art of self defense must hit at the core of a warrior’s mind. The instructor must be able to successfully dispel the victim – or potential victim – mentality that the student will bring to the training forum. Teaching prevention is of great importance, yes, but even here what the instructor is effectively training is a heightened state of mental awareness. Preventive measures are fruitless without it. At the core of a warrior’s mind are the concepts and philosophies instilled at the very heart of the study of budo – the way of bringing an end to conflict. By its nature, this study implies spiritual, mental and physical components, all of which are essential to the reality of defense in practice, and none of which are expendable. Of these three, physical techniques are the easiest to learn and the simplest to teach. It is the mental component which is the toughest to tackle, and yet it stands as the single most significant factor in determining the outcome of a dangerous confrontation.
A student in the art of personal defense must become aware of the types of potential attacks. This is of vital importance. I cannot tell you how often a person will unwittingly allow a potentially dangerous situation to escalate by mere virtue of failing to spot the threat. Many will wait for confirmation that an attack is imminent, and quite often by then it is, sadly, too late – the attack is no longer merely imminent, it is in full bloom. However, given the right attitude – the correct mental disposition – the personal defense student will not only acknowledge a danger cue and thereby know that when assault is impending, but should be more than capable of instilling fear upon his assailant. He should be able to take the initiative and attack the assailant’s intention. No confirmation needed. There should be no need to be struck, punched, grabbed, choked or thrown in order to confirm that an attack is in progress. Well trained, the student can recognize even the slightest signs of aggression – be they as small as a twitch, jerk or even a blink, for that matter – that in the context of the confrontation should indicate without question, that an attack is in the making. Well trained, the student should know how to throw his attacker off the mark, should know how to deny himself as a target, should be capable of expediently breaking his attacker’s concentration, and should, in this manner, be able to freeze his opponent’s mind no differently than this attacker would paralyze him with fear given the right advantage to do so.
These abilities are all infused in the mind. They are all mental abilities – a deploying of the mind as a weapon. There is no denying that techniques are important for follow-through when and if this becomes necessary, but the mind strikes first. Weapons, whether they be weapons of the body such as hands, fists, elbows, knees or the like, or other such implements such as sticks, knives, batons, firearms, etc., strike in direct succession, but the mind must strike first.
In the face of a dangerous predicament, a person so confronted must be able to gain access to effective counter assault skills. Focus is central to a favorable outcome, but this focus must be broad and panoramic which requires a resolute mind-set.
This is not the time, in other words, to rely on tunnel vision for it will subtract much from what the person will strategically need to make use of in order to mount an effective counter assault. But given that tunnel vision is a direct result of an increase in heart rate as a fear response to the threat in a physical assault, the first level of combative training must address the mind and this cannot be overemphasized.
It is not uncommon, for instance, for an individual met head-on by an armed assailant to center in on the assailant’s weapon, even though this could be a deadly mistake. I am not saying that the weapon should be disregarded, however. What I am saying is that the defender must not regard it to the exclusion of everything else. There must, per force, be attention to the environment, for example. Such attention could allow the defender to use the environment in a tactical manner for the sake of defense. If the mind attaches to any one given thing over all others, then freedom of movement and execution of technique is compromised in that the body is as frozen as the mind is fixated. The results can be potentially disastrous. The defender is flirting with ultimate defeat which in a real-life situation could mean death.
Mental agility, commitment and determination give rise to spontaneous responses that can easily tip the scales toward survival. The ability to adapt or to change as the circumstance requires is always within reach. Movement is free and not compromised. Techniques needed can be employed proficiently and competently.
Numbers of self defense training programs rely heavily on the development of techniques which are based upon gross motor skills – those skills which involve principally the large or major muscle groups of the body as opposed to fine motor skills which often require hand/eye coordination. A straight punch is, for instance, a gross motor skill, as is a simple, uncomplicated kick. This type of training is based chiefly on the results of research involving human physiological and psychological stress responses to an event of such extreme consequence that survival is at stake.
These training programs offer techniques and strategies that are in keeping with these responses and, in many cases, do a relatively good job of addressing the concerns associated with personal defense issues especially when these techniques abide by principles which are universal in their conception and execution. Nonetheless, what I do wish to draw attention to is the substance of what triggers the symptoms associated with these physiological and psychological stress responses, and that is, namely, the mind.
In order to drive this point home, you must take into account that there is no uniformity on threshold levels of stress responses in humans. Perception and perspective is a very personal thing. What one individual may consider an immensely dangerous predicament may be just another day at the office, so-to-speak, for another individual. Consequently, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the dilemma of human emotion and response to the perception of an event or circumstance where a person’s life is in peril.
What you can do, however, is understand and address human nature. You can underscore that which sets off an increase in heart rate and breathing rate and thereby decreases the performance of motor skills. After all, these are fear or, even, terror related responses to imminent danger, and they begin in the mind. When a person has been viciously and brutally attacked, the foremost attack is a mental one. There is nothing speculative about this. In substance, this person has been overwhelmed by his attacker. By the same token, in the unlikely event that an assailant is having an off day and has thus elected as prey someone who knows how to displace him mentally, how to attack his vulnerabilities, and how to break his concentration and capture his mind-set, then this assailant has in turn just been crushed by the very same weapon he forcefully counts on to overpower his intended victim.
The importance of a well-trained, well-founded, and determined mental resolve having been established, then, I can now speak of what defines realistic and viable techniques in the practice of personal defense.
It must be remembered that what makes a technique reliable is that it must be rooted on universal principles (see Technique & Universal Principle). This having been said, there are three requirements for consistently dependable techniques. They must:
Techniques that achieve all three universally transfer natural and instinctive tasks into unshakable defensive tactics that are consequently easy to learn and simple to execute, even in the face of grave danger.
They take the best of what has been learned through years of research and study into the psychological and physiological effects of stress-related-to-survival issues, and yet move one step beyond the normal defense capability commonly offered by training using the gross motor skills concept. I call this the Universal Task Transfer Concept which refers expressly to the universality of their particular application.
Look at this way: the reality of a brutal attack, in all its raw and blood-curdling fiber does not allow time for the person so enmeshed to rely on recall for the execution of defensive tactics. You simply cannot have a bagful of weapons that require one technique if you are attacked one way and another technique if you are attacked another way. The amount of muscle memory required to access this armory of defensive weapons would require years of training and perhaps hundreds of repetitions in order to accomplish a natural, unfettered transference of them from training to literal execution. This is, for many, completely unrealistic. Few have the time, the patience, or even the interest to do so.
Learning defensive tactics is not equal to the practice or learning of the martial arts, although most properly trained martial artists would themselves be more than capable of defending their persons both physically and mentally. Nonetheless, the fact remains that counter assault tactics can be learned by anyone given suitable instruction. How quickly these tactics are learned, how effectively they can be executed, and how solidly reliable they are, is acutely dependent upon a few – not an arsenal of – techniques which are firmly founded on the Universal Task Transfer Concept. Natural movements are tweaked and are themselves the carriers of the counter assault movements. The tactics can be applied universally, and do not require a prescribed attack for a fitting response.
There is little doubt that the business of self defense training is consumed with developing techniques. There are so many of them out there that an entire industry of would-be instructors and trainers has been created, each with their own magic methods that are sure to give you a quick resolution to any altercation. Even those people who are keenly interested in the art of self defense are likely to get lost in the melee. This is unfortunate. This state of affairs gives the impression that the more techniques a person knows, the better off he is, and this is manifestly not true. To rely strictly on technique is to throw open the door to the probability of surprise – should an assailant penetrate an individual’s arsenal of defenses with a vicious attack for which he has no available defense technique, this person is in serious trouble. And there will likely be no second chance – no time to recoup. A practicing of technique after technique after technique is simply information overload, a mistake that, in the real world, could prove fatal.
Depend, rather, on what works. Methods are tools for understanding concepts, and concepts must be universal in order to be workable and easily accessible.
Ultimately, the greatest weapon an individual possesses is the sword he carries within. An individual’s greatest power is his sense of selflessness. In light of this, there remains very little to attack. People with evil intentions keep a respectable distance. The mind coalesces with the forces of nature as the weapon of true power, and everything about this individual, from posture to assuredness of step, projects the expression of warrior and not victim. And this, then, is the decisive defense. The outcome of the battle has literally been decided before the swords are drawn.
