Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus
Irony, Aswad. That's what that is! And proof that we cannot protect ourselves against the genuine nightmares.
I may have given the wrong impression of what I try to teach.
In terms of the mental, my most important lesson to teach is that fear should be a transient thing. You should never live with fear as an ongoing factor in your life, because it's toxic to your health (as LaTigresse rightly points out). A lot of women in major cities here live in fear because of the miniscule risk of rape, a fear that is fuelled by the media. I try to teach them how to fear only in a situation where the risk is immediate, and how to let go of that fear when the situation is past.
Transient fear is a natural thing. If a stranger is positioning himself, you should experience some level of fight or flight. Your awareness leads to detecting the situation, and your body responds by making sure you are prepared to take a hand in how that situation unfolds. Then you do the bare minimum required to avoid the problem, the adrenaline subsides and you go back to your baseline. This, I have found, helps to avoid things like pathological anxieties, because it fosters an innate and natural relationship to a facility we have to help us. Gives it a useful purpose so it doesn't recalibrate itself to the point where it triggers more or less randomly.
So I spend most of the time on physically healthy exercises, healthy attitudes, good habits and a few exercises that make a disporportionate difference in the outcome of an undesireable situation. I don't expect the people that choose to learn something from me to end up facing a lot of trouble here in this exceptionally quiet country. And so I don't teach most of them more than what could be considered reasonable. Perspective is important to me.
An example of one of the few exercises I do teach, is the simplest escape available: pulling away from a grab using the anatomical weakness of the thumb. That's gotten my Ars out of a situation where a man probably intended to sexually assault her. Doesn't take more than a few minutes to learn, and it tends to stick pretty well. Most guys aren't expecting resistance, and are expecting to be in control, so it's disporportionally useful in breaking their train of thought and taking the control/power element out of something that is arguably tied to that element for most of them.
While I know perfectly well how to inflict inordinate amounts of pain, harm or injury, those skills simply aren't relevant to the average person. I'm just interested in making sure they have an idea of what it feels like to operate under an adrenaline rush (useful in case of an accident or fire, too), that they know how to discourage and run, and that they know that the likelihood they will ever need to make use of these things is very small. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have an idea of "I can handle more than I thought I could", either, so long as that idea doesn't extend to the point of an unrealistic perception.
I don't subscribe to the notion that the average person around here should attempt to stand their ground on principle or whatever. I prefer for the majority to only resort to violence if they haven't been able to avoid someone putting them in a situation where the alternative is intolerable (e.g. date rape is one of the classic examples). Most of the time it's a better choice for the average person to simply run.
Of course, for those that have a stalker or the like, I take a different approach.
Fortunately, though, those are pretty rare around these parts.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Completely off topic - 
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