The word self-defense usually conjures images of how to deal with physical violence. I imagine a class where the martial arts instructor goes over attacks and attack scenarios along with techniques and/or drills to deal with them. As I learn methods to defend myself physically I also like to remind myself that violence never happens in a vacuum.
There are warning signs, choices to consider, escalations happening, body language to evaluate…etc. The actions I choose, based on my awareness of incoming sense data, can help keep me safe, though no action, or lack of action, can keep me safe from violence 100% of the time. Preemptive awareness provides the key to early intervention, providing more choices and additional time to choose a course of action. Try the following preemptive awareness techniques.
- Chin up! – I see people who walk with their head down or gaze towards the ground. They fail to see what’s happening around them, both wondrous and terrifying. You want to see him/her/it before it’s on top of you. Whether it’s a dude wanting to jack you with a sock full of quarters or a piano falling from the second story window, you want to see it before it’s too late.
- Look around! – In addition to getting your gaze off the ground, look up, down, left, right, behind you! Scan your surroundings, not frantically, but casually and occasionally. Take note of people, places, things, dangers, beauty, silly children, escape routes, makeshift weapons, sales going on at the local butcher shop, whatever’s happening out there. Collect the data, just in case…
- Eagle Vision – Use it! Don’t fixate too much on what you attend to with your gaze; continue to take in the whole scene. If you there’s a piano being hoisted by a rope and pulley system to the second floor, don’t fixate on the piano dangling above your head and bump into the guy holding the rope! I’m not sure where this idea of death by a piano from above came from, but you get my drift. This is especially important when something is going down or if there are stirrings in your surroundings that need more attention. Don’t get funnel vision and miss a bigger picture.
- Listen up! – Hear what’s happening around you, around the corner, in the other room…etc. It may help to turn the music down in your headphones or in your head. In addition, if you use a cell phone you may want to end a call if you’ve got a blip on your radar. Your eyes can’t take in 360° of a scene, but your ears can. Use ‘em!
- Intuition – Use your intuition as your guide. Never ignore a gut feeling just because you’re walking in a public place that you’ve walked through hundreds of times. Don’t freak out either. Have your senses on special alert if your intuition is firing, just as precaution. Maybe it’ll turn out that your gut was telling you that the street vendor you’re used to seeing on a particular corner was absent that day, maybe something more.
Using these techniques doesn’t have to come from a place of anxiety or paranoia. If you’re struggling with anxiety about such things you may want to check out Five Little Known Ways to Relax. You may go your whole lifetime and never get a blip on the radar. It’s pretty safe in my neck of the woods, so why bother with these techniques? Here’s why I use them.
- It’s fun! Ever read a spy novel or see a spy movie? Check out Barry Eisler’s John Rain books if you haven’t, and pretend you’re John Rain while walking around town. Juvenile, perhaps, but it adds some oompha and delight to my commute to and from work. Make a game of it!
- It’s a deterrent. By looking aware, criminals may be less likely to think of you as a good, easy victim. Part of their strategy is surprise, take it away from them and they’ll be less likely to waste their time with you.
- It’s meditative. By engaging our environment with our senses we live and take ourselves off of autopilot. We’re here and now. Reach out and touch a tree as you walk by, smell the flowers, see and greet the people, stop and pet the dog, splash through a puddle, avoid the puddle, listen to the crash of the piano falling safely in the distance. Be deliberate about how you engage your surroundings.
Depending on your surroundings, you’ll want to adjust the intensity knob. For instance, as I’m sitting in front of my computer at home, I don’t feel that it’s necessary to scan my environment. However, if I hear a crash in my back yard, my awareness will be roused and I’ll check it out.
For a more in-depth look at this subject, check out a work I consulted for this article, Surviving Armed Assaults: A Martial Artists Guide to Weapons, Street Violence, and Countervailing Force by Lawrence A. Kane.
Be aware out there! And please feel add your techniques and share your experiences right here, in comments.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Thanks for posting this. Can you tell me why using what seems like peripheral vision seems like “Eagle Vision”? Hope to see you at the event!
Greg
September 11th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Greg,
Good question and a tough one too! The periphery is a part of eagle vision. I want to use my periphery without losing sight of the big picture. A step further and I want my body to be “hooked” into my vision and react reflexively to it. Erle Montaigue, in his Internal Gung Fu Vol. 2, states in, regards to the example of the eagle hunting a mouse, “if the mouse moves, so too does the eagle.” In the context of fighting he says, “You must see the whole body of the attacker, and not just look at the peripheral that is attacking you. In this way it does not matter what portion he is attacking with, your body will reflexively adjust to the attack.” So back to the article, I think what I failed to get at is not only do I use my peripheral vision, but at times I’ll also utilize the reflexive actions associated with Eagle Vision. Simple put: Peripheral vision + reflexive action based on peripheral vision = Eagle Vision. Once again, this is just my interpretation of what I’ve read, learned, and experienced. Thank you for prodding me for more clarification. I hope that helps. Also, feel free to share you understanding.
-Jason
September 13th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
While using peripheral vision, I hook the attacker or attackers. I latch-on energetically. It’s delightful, and I get immersed in shadows, sometimes seeing the tender points on an attacker in his shadows.
September 20th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I like not having a violent heart as a means of avoiding violence. I mean by way of intention though, by making my heart soft and kind even those who would injure me find themselves unable to attack. I never worry about being attacked because of this, I do not provoke people to violence nor involve myself with those who do or are violent.
I don’t like the terms used to teach eagle vision, but the technique of it is rather sound. I use the part of mind that sees, hears, etc to level and direct intentive awareness. One can train to do this by eagle vision type practices, but by focusing upon not the visual field but the aspect of mind that interprets the visual field. Like eagle vision for the blind I guess, it works a lot like eagle vision but it is found in feeling not in vision, maybe its linked to the way the WTBA perfoms eagle vision. Eagles of course have 2 foveas! Imagine if we did!
October 7th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Training violently does not imply seeking violence. Oh contrare, it means avoiding it. Partly because one’s spectrum of options becomes wider, one may choose how to act and understand capacities of the perpetrators.
No one avoids violence by putting their heads in the sands. The politics of America imply deep seating undercurrents of violence…hmmm…that’s another topic I suppose.
Certainly a case can be made that knuckleheads could really amp up violent tendencies by studying this art. They’d just get hurt.
Eagle vision, or predator vision, does not utilize foveae; rather, it’s a kind of peripheral vision that one attends to. We use rods, not cones, to see with this kind of vision. Visual acuity is reduced, but sensation and response times unfold in profound ways.
I we had two foveae, we’d be twice as slow.