Tag: Mirav Tarkka

Tiger in the Sheets, and in the Streets? Will That Drive Your Man Away? – Mirav Tarkka

Is it just the looks that count?

When I ask men “what makes me sexy in your eyes”? I hear everything except comments about my body. It is not your breasts, legs or other physical features that make you sexy, it is your confidence. From the Mona Lisa to Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie, to women whose beauty isn’t that “clearly out there” (like me!), if you are confident, it passes layers of cellulite, fat or so called “ugliness”, you will be attractive, because a woman who is confident in herself, loves herself, is in control of her life and her surroundings, and doesn’t wait for prince charming to save her, is sexy. Now, what does that have to do with self defense?

Can he handle you?

When a woman takes “a man’s role” and trains herself to be able to protect herself and her loved ones, many things can happen to the man’s mind: he feels emasculated. Isn’t he the one supposed to protect her? He feels less of a man, but at the same time he also admires her, and trusts her more to be able to do that job. Men’s reactions to this vary but the problem today is that most men feel less of a man instead of pure admiration because of their weakness and fear caused by their life experiences. This is contributed to by factors like the media, parents, socialisation and so on…. resulting in a man maybe trying to take away your power (in radical terms: becoming an aggressor, humiliating you, belittling you and so on) which in his mind can be compared to a “fight” reaction. On the other hand there can be the “missing man”. Every strong woman has had loads of those. Men who escape when feeling overpowered. They might find another woman, an intense job, or just act very coldly. They become absent; missing. Sex becomes horrible, almost as if you are forcing him to have sex with you. He isn’t there any more.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder

There is the rare man who would admire your increasing power and journey, and encourage it. You become like 2 race horses, riding side by side, regardless of whether the man was sitting on top of you before (you are the horse) trying to control you with his power, and then fell off your back because you wouldn’t surrender. The 2 race horses do it cheerfully, encouraging one another, admiring, persuading to continue, to grow! (or go!) He finds you as sexy as possible, and you do too, and the sex- the sex is incredible. A fascinating, breathtaking , powerful sensation, instead of the half asleep one you had before (the missing man).

A woman who is powerful, and empowered does that. What do you prefer? To live in a secure “comfort” zone where your prince charming is with you because he feels “on the top” but the minute the game changes he is gone? It is not real? Or to be with someone who lets you be who you were meant to be? Free, strong, sexy?

Lose the fear factor!

There is another, perhaps surprising connection between sex and self defense. A person who practises sd has less fear of death, knowing there are less chances that would occur. A study I did as my theses for my psychology degree showed that the more there is a fear of death, the more casual sex appears. Casual sex can be amazing, yes, but it doesn’t have the debt a real and good sexual relationship has, because to be in sync with your partner sexually, he has to know your body, your likes and dislikes, as so do you. As you reach your peak of sexuality, you start to understand that you can have more than just a physical orgasm, you can have an almost spiritual one, with the right partner. It is rare, difficult to find, but not impossible. And you don´t find it by “trial and error”, you find it by getting to know that person on a deeper level. The better, deeper sexual relationship happens with the more steady relationship (monogamy). Now, the less fear you have of death, the less partners you have (your need to leave children after you is lessened) therefore the sexuality and sexual connection is increased. You see, it is scientific! So if you practise self defense, you fear death less also on a subconscious level, therefore have better sexuality in your life.

And that, my friends, is yet another reason why you should learn to protect yourself. Just for the sex of it!

https://miravselfdefense.com

The Missing Link in (Almost) Every Self-Defense Class – Mirav Tarkka

You made the first step, physically, and enrolled into a self-defense class.

Feeling proud of yourself, but also a bit scared, you walk into the gym. Most probably it is all full of men, most probably the instructor is a man. “OK, cool, because a man will probably be the one I will be attacked by” you think to yourself. The class begins. An active warm-up, presentation of a threat, and a solution. “How will I remember this under stress?” you ask the coach. “It is a matter of practice. The more you practice, the better your skills will be” the coach answers. “OK, but … what do I do if I freeze? If I don’t remember? If I am too scared?” “Well”, the coach answers “you have to practice so many times that there will be no place for fear”.

Obviously, he has no idea what fear is. He also has no idea what it means to be a woman.

Being a woman means you will be a much more probable target for rape. It means you are ALREADY considered a weak and easy victim, because you are one (sorry to be in your faces like that, but it is true). It also means, that at a psychological level, when you are attacked your brain goes in millions of other directions, instead of the male brain that goes in….one. A woman’s brain can think seven thoughts all at once, while a male’s brain thinks one at the time. At a time of stress, you might be thinking about what you are going to make for lunch, your shopping list, your house work, your hair, the new eyeliner you wanted to get on the way, it is pay-day and so on.  Meaning it will take you so much longer to react to real time danger, and to use your intuition properly to avoid that danger, so no amount of repetitions, tornado kicks and knees to the groin will help if your mind shuts down or even slows down.

It is very likely that your instructor doesn’t know that. Doesn’t even understand that. The understanding of the body as a unit of physical, mental and emotional components is not a common one, unfortunately,

Luckily, you have me to help you. Your mind is, and always will be, your strongest and undefeated weapon. There are so many ways to train it, to train yourself psychologically not to eliminate fear, but to work with it, as well as your memory, your inner power and your calm (most important to avoid panic). You can be the weakest, most unfit and unskilled person but with an oiled up mind and good situational awareness, not to mention the energy field you create around you by using your mind in a certain way, you will be much more likely to survive and even avoid certain situations, than a martial arts specialist.

To be honest, most people who actually practice martial arts are falsely confident and ruled by their ego, lacking the capacity to tune themselves to the situation mentally and psychologically, ending up badly injured or even dead in a street situation.  As much as you can be a world champion fighter, there is not much you can do vs. a knife or gun attack, for example. But with the “correct” behavour and thinking, you can either avoid getting into danger in the first place, or talk your way into survival (NLP manipulating).

So what  I am saying is, yes by all means train physically, make your body stronger and your skills better, but try to find a coach that understands the importance of mental training. If you can’t find one, or even combine with one, you can use my mental training methods with your class or within your every day activities.  Remember that the only power that can never be taken away from you, is in your mind.

Is That Your Stiletto, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me? – Mirav Tarkka

There she goes, walking into the bar with her tiny skirt and 12 cm heels.

How can she even walk in them? Her hair swinging free down her back, her perfectly made up lips, colour matching her heels… all eyes turn to look at her as her perfume distracts even the sober men in the place, even the taken ones, even the  disinterested ones…. everyone but him.

He looks at her with possession. He wants to own her, own her body, take away all her power to feed his. He walks up to her and firmly grabs her wrist. Looking at him surprised, almost entertained, she releases her wrist, twists his arm behind his back, brings him down to his knees then flat on his stomach…. when he begs her to let go of his arm, because his shoulder is about to pop out, she laughs, whispers something extremely clever to him, stands up and places her nail hard stiletto on his back while he cries in pain. She then walks away, flicking her hair behind her shoulder and redoing her lipstick without even looking at a mirror.

That is how you imagine it, don’t you?

Well, the reality is totally different. In reality, you would be the one on the floor, probably trip over yourself, slipping on a wet surface, breaking your heel and – if you are lucky enough to be able to run away with your heels – causing damage to your feet and spine. You will look anything but sexy, believe me. “But what are the chances this can happen to me?” you might be thinking to yourself.

Actually, pretty high.

If you wear heels on your way to work, if you wear heels walking the streets alone,  if you are like me and wearing heels for you is just painful, you can’t wait to kick them off and they just make you clumsy and slow,  you are at higher risk.

Or maybe you are like these rare few girls I know who can actually run a marathon with their heels on, perhaps even run backwards! But still, if you can run away fast from your aggressor with heels, imagine how fast you can run with flat shoes?

Are you more likely to slip on a wet or oily surface, or trip over your face when faced with an MMA trained aggressor (always assume your aggressor is very well trained!) when you are wearing sports shoes that are made to prevent slipping (look at their surface!) or when you are wearing a heel with a surface of 1sq/cm “nail”?

I mean, look around you when you are in public. I, personally, am amused to see how women walk like ducks, looking completely uncomfortable, with plasters on their blisters, just to be seen in heels.

Personally, when I see a woman comfortable in her skin, I think that is extremely sexy, and not someone who needs to lean on someone else (or on the wall) to even stand stable!

Now, if you are an aggressor, who would you choose? Someone who is stable, or someone who if you “huff and puff and blow the house down” they fall on their face without any effort? 😀

“But”, you might tell me, “I can use the heel as a weapon”.

Yes, you can.

So your homework will be to practise taking your heel off while jumping/staying stable on the other stilettoed foot, placing it correctly in your hand and hitting the aggressor in places that “matter” (to be short, face or joints) without the heel breaking into your hand, breaking at all or you slipping backwards.

You´d better have steel heels too, the leather ones don’t do the job!

Yes, if you are in a ground position kicking the aggressor in the face or in his kidneys with your heels would do a great job. But honestly, any shoe would do a great job, with a good kick! And dont forget, you wont just stay there to have a conversation with the guy. You have to get up, and run away, get to a safe place (even if he seems dead J ). Again, how far can you get with your heels? Or if you take them off, can you run barefoot? Geting your feet cut by stones, glass, maybe it has been raining, maybe you are in a rocky place…

There is another half-way solution, though. Here come the good old 90’s platforms to save us, shortie ladies! Add 12 cm to your height,  while still having the base surface of a “normal” shoe. Still, even there, the safe grip on your ankle is not the best. I have twisted my ankle numerous times wearing platforms when I was a 15 year old party girl.

WAKE UP LADIES. It is where the fairy tale ends, that the real story begins.

Look, I am a woman too. And I like to look sexy and sleek too,  but my safety comes first. So, when I do rarely wear heels, I put them on at the last moment, in the car (not in the parking place!), in the office,  even in the bathrooms.  I don’t risk it!

As my promo pictures have me wearing high heels and boxing gloves, I got numerous messages from couples wanting to try some “kinky” …. let’s call it intimacy, involving self-defense moves. I get it, totally, I do. And it can be fantastic… in the bedroom!  Photos, movies, Charlie’s Angels….. all that isn’t reality. Your safety is.

You need to think about these things in advance. You need to be able to protect yourself AT ALL TIMES, night or day, alone, at your work place, in the street, in the club, in your car… always.

Dress to kill.

And be smart; that’s sexy.

Lots of love,

Mirav

www.miravselfdefense.com

Why Doesn’t the Kick to the Groin Always Work? – Mirav Tarkka

You know the scene…

Girl walking down the street, a bad guy or more try to grab her, she has her high heels on, a mini skirt and no self-defense knowledge whatsoever, but she manages with a knee or kick in the groin to get him or all of them down on their knees begging for mercy.

While this scenario may work in a Hollywood blockbuster, reality is not exactly like that.

Although most people believe that a kick to the groin is enough to “do the job,” that’s not actually the case. While a man’s testicles might be the most important part of his body as they contain the “jewels of the family,” they are definitely not the most fragile. Made of spongy material, the testicles typically absorb the shock without much damage, and Mother Nature was smarter than that and covered the testicles with layers of tough material protecting the tissue inside.

Although it depends on the surface and tools used against the testicles—for example, a metal nail vs. a leather shoe—to crush a testicle you need to apply a force of 110 pounds (50 kg) per 1 square centimeter (advantages to all “big balls” out there 😀 )! By comparison, it is much easier and more effective to tear off an ear, for example, where you need only 8 pounds (4 kg)!

While a “crushed testicle” will create some pain and a bit of distraction, assuming that you did it right, , a torn ear will cause disorientation, loss of blood, probably loss of consciousness, and a huge mental shock.

Some guys reading this article will be cringing at the thought of being kicked in the testicles—if not already vomiting at my vivid descriptions J—because for a “normal” person a kick to the groin causes a lot of pain, but are all men “normal” in this sense? What are the reasons that a man may not feel that much pain or may even feel pleasure when kicked in the groin?

(To make things easier to understand and imagine, we will call the guy who is potentially kicked in the groin, Mr. Bad. J)

  1. Bad wasn’t just standing there waiting for you to kick him in the groin, he wasn’t in a “gym position”; he might have closed his legs, turned sideways, or maybe is simply too tall
  2. Bad is wearing baggy pants or strong jeans and your kick didn’t reach the right spot.
  3. Bad is wearing a good groin guard—some aggressors come to fight totally prepared!
  4. Bad is an MMA fighter and uses the “bending down” instinct to grab your legs, throw you on the ground, restrain you and whatever else he feels like doing.
  5. Bad has been training for a long time and now has “testicles immunity”—there are actually quite a few men like this!—so doesn’t feel as much pain as a “normal guy” would. I have interviewed a guy who gets kicked in his groin thousands of times full force as part of his job! He is an actor in a show that includes such scenes. Although his testicles are full of scar tissues and he can’t get an erection easily, he doesn’t feel almost any pain when kicked and actually makes money out of it! And yes, he can still have children.
  6. Bad is under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or both and feels no pain, plus is “powered” by the chemicals and by adrenalin. This is VERY COMMON these days.
  7. You haven’t kicked correctly or strongly enough. For example, kicking front to back—aka “jingle bells”—creates almost no damage. Squeezing is actually pleasurable to a surprising number of men. The testicles should be hit in a certain direction to cause debilitating pain, namely upwards in order to push the testicles against the pelvic bone. This way it can cause a TESTICULAR RUPTURE and is much more serious damage than just “blue balls.” It will take surgery to repair the damage, and Mr. Bad will have learnt his lesson!
  8. Bad actually likes it J I have interviewed a guy who admitted proudly that he gets sexually aroused when hit in the testicles, especially with heels. And he is not the only one!

To sum up, my advice is as follows:

  1. Don’t focus your strategy on the kick to the groin. Focus on the face! Much more fragile, efficient, reachable in most situations, and less complicated.

Watch the video clip about 4 factors you should focus on when attacking (link below)

  1. If you kick to the groin, kick correctly. Flex your foot, kick with your shin from bottom to up (towards the pelvic bone)

Watch my video about how to train groin kicks (coming up soon) and why doesn’t the groin kick always work (link below)

Keep safe, smart and strong,

www.miravselfdefense.com

 

The Working Woman’s Self-defense Express Course, eBook – Mirav Tarkka

https://miravselfdefense.com/product/the-working-womans-express-self-defense-course/

In this succinct guide for women with little, if any, self-defense experience, dynamic trainer Mirav Tarkka, a former Sergeant in the Israeli Army, covers all the key points for survival in the concrete jungle, from mental attitudes to martial pressure points.

Israeli-born Mirav is a world-renowned self-defense expert, specializing in Krav Maga (Israeli Contact Combat).  With over seventeen years of  experience as a trainer, Mirav founded Defense Tactics™ (International Combat Training) and Recharge™ (Alternative Functional Fitness) and has now set a goal to inspire, train and help empower individuals and groups at all levels, focusing on the mindset and mental training (as well as the physical aspect) and creating  online courses especially for women all around the world, regardless of their physical abilities, age or culture.  

Mirav studied, trained and served with the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) at the Wingate Institute (Israel), then completed and instructed many international training courses.  She holds university degrees in Psychology and Criminology and a diploma in Physical Education.  With appearances on television, features in magazines and newspapers throughout Europe, Mirav is often invited to demonstrate her work at many international workshops and seminars covering self-defense related topics.

Recently Mirav became a mother of two and says:

“Having my daughters has emphasized even more, for me, how important my role in life is. I need to be able to protect them, at all times, I can’t trust anyone to do that ‘for me’. I need to be strong, extra-assertive, powerful, to be capable of defending them and myself, and to set an example of the independent women I want them both to be. The love of a mother for her children is the greatest force  that exists – that is my underlying drive and that will be what protects them, combined with my knowledge and experience. I would truly wish for all women in the world (and men) to realize their true power, whether they are mothers or not, their true responsibility to themselves and their loved ones, and to take full control of their lives. No one should have power over you.”

https://miravselfdefense.com/

Fatal Attraction Part II – Mirav Tarkka

The love story begins

Back to our “love story”, since the person who feels more guilty and more submissive then the non-victim has been selected (as a victim), he/she has to deal now with a face-to-face aggression. Sometimes, in order to create an emotional defensive mechanism, the victim develops positive feeling towards the aggressor, in order to minimize the damage (in his/her mind) and danger.

Remember also that an attack, an aggression (even if it is not domestic or with someone you know) is a relationship. One doesn’t exist without another. The aggressor isn’t one without a victim, a victim isn’t one without an aggressor. There is a subconscious agreement between these two, a Symbiosis; just like in nature. Changing that balance will change that relationship.

Stockholm’s syndrome

To demonstrate an extreme kind of relationship between the aggressor and the victim I am going to explain a little about the Stockholm’s syndrome – the “capture bonding”.

The Stockholm’s syndrome consists of “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.”

The victims, in this case hostages, end up defending their captors, would not agree to testify in court against them, and even fall in love with them. “We” (who are not “living” the situation) see it as a paradox, as captives’ feelings for their captors are the opposite of the fear and disdain we expect to see as a result of their trauma.

Psychologically speaking, the Stockholm’s syndrome is considered a product of SURVIVAL INSTINCT. “The victim’s need to survive is stronger than his impulse to hate the person who has created the dilemma” (Strentz). A positive emotional bond between captor and captive is a “defense mechanism of the ego under stress”.

The more the victim believes (or led to believe) the likelihood of their survival is poor, the more the victim is likely to develop “love” towards the aggressor in a “face to face” scenario, especially when the captors perform acts of kindness, fail to abuse the victim and so on.

The Stockholm syndrome spreads beyond a hostage situation. “Child abuse, domestic violence, human trafficking, incest, prisoners of war, political terrorism, cult members, concentration camp prisoners, slaves, and prostitutes” can also fall prey to Stockholm syndrome.

Dee Graham (1994) brought the Stockholm syndrome to the “world” of domestic violence. She claimed that the threat of male violence around women, and women’s fear of the men, defies women psychologically and socially. Meaning, women act in a way they know will please men in order to avoid emotional, physical or sexual assault (caused by male anger). Women bond to men to survive, same like hostages bond to their captor to survive, and therefore women are more likely to develop this condition.

Your call!

You can now understand how every victim is responsible for “being chosen”, and how we all make choices that can change our life courses forever. You can adapt a non-victim mindset (and behavour pattern) and empower yourself mentally, spiritually and physically, creating a harmonic self – immune to the external circumstances as much as possible, or you can develop a victim’s mindset, let your guilt and submissiveness take control over your life instead of you taking control over them.

The question remaining is, HOW? How can you avoid being chosen as a victim or being attacked?

In many of my videos, I speak about situational awareness (SA), pre preparation and avoidance as physical “concrete” ways to not be attacked.  Remember, the more prepared you are the less likely you will have to deal with what you are preparing for. Having a preventive and protective (but not paranoid) mindset and awareness, having always an improvised weapon, keeping your “guards up” and so on is very important, and you can read and watch more about this on my blog (https://miravselfdefense.com/mirav-blog/)

But here is something new, fascinating and extremely important. I have been discussing in this article the fact that feeling guilt and the need to be punished contributes to your “atmosphere”, to the energy field you carry around you that tells your aggressor if you are an easy target or a difficult one. So the true prevention of these potential “punishments”, and this is related also to your relationships with people and yourself, your habits, your personal life, events that “happen” to you (nothing is by accident!) comes from… the inside – YOU!

Stop punishing yourself! Love yourself more!  Surround yourself with positivity and happiness! Replace the feelings of guilt, self-sabotage, and anger with compassion, love, and gratitude. Once your energy field, your frequencies, no longer match your aggressor’s ones, he will look for someone else to perfect his match. So, self-work always produces a better you, even here.

Free yourself of the idea you should be punishing yourself. Think of it this way; even if you did do something worth suffering for, punishing yourself won’t fix it. It will make it worse not just for you, but for your environment too. You might become an aggressor yourself! Self-sabotage and suffering don’t lead to self-forgiveness.

Into action

I know it sounds simple, maybe too simple. To be truthful, self-work never ends, and there are always ways to do more and do better.  Meditation, self-reflection, and writing (to yourself) help, but there are some really good “quick fixes” that help quite fast, almost immediately (I used them myself).

One is the “Ho’oponopono” an ancient Hawaiian practice that works on your guilt-forgiveness process. You can download it from YouTube and play it to yourself or just say the four phrases to yourself several times a day. It really works like magic.

The second quick way is just to do good deeds, at least one – even little- good deed every day. Make someone smile, give a compliment, help someone struggling with the groceries, and so on. The good energy that your deed will produce inside you, will “fight” the negativity of the guilt and anger.

Surprising, eh? Speaking about self-defense, violence, love, temptation, meditation, forgiveness, anger, guilt, good and bad… all connected together, creating a deadly chaos, or a harmonized and safe being. It is all about your self-awareness, and choices.

I hope you enjoyed this article.

Please feel welcome to contact me for questions or comments via email: coaching@miravselfdefense.com

Stay safe and loved.

http://www.miravselfdefense.com

Fatal Attraction Part I – Mirav Tarkka

Guilt and Punishment 

All of us are prone to feel guilty about something or other. It’s quite normal, no need to feel guilty about it.

We all feel guilty about something, eating too much, eating too little, praying too little, loving too much or too little,  being too honest or not telling the whole truth, wanting someone we shouldn’t or not wanting the one we “should”, believing in God, not believing in anyone, workaholics, shopaholics, drug addicts,  alcoholics, pheromones, nymphomaniacs…and what else?! We all have our little “sins”.

But what does this actually mean? Well, if we all feel guilty, we all have a need (subconscious or not) to be punished. “Horrible” as it sounds, in one way or another, this is how you attract violence into your life. Whether you are violent in some ways towards yourself, you let someone treat you badly or you attract an aggressive incident.

Sigmund Freud (1916) explained that most of us aren’t strong enough (character-wise speaking) to “supress” our guilt without feeling self-deceived and therefore diverse forms of self-punishment are formed. He divided these into “the criminal from a sense of guilt”, “those wrecked by success” and “other self-sabotaging and self-tormenting character types”.

Friedrich Nietzsche believed (1887) that we want to experience guilt as we have a rooted desire to cause suffering, in order to dominate others and express power. It is our integration into society and culture that prevents us from doing so, but the instinct is always there.

From a religious point of view we grow up believing we “should be” or “could be” better people, but consider ourselves unable to (due to our nature/instinct), therefore we feel guilt (and confess, donate, fast, cry, suffer, pray for forgiveness etc’).

In all these explanations the common factor is that the feeling of guilt leads to the “agreement”, or even the will, to suffer. Once we pay that price our guilt feeling diminishes and we are able to feel good again until the next time.

How This Impacts Our Vulnerability 

So, if you subconsciously (or consciously) feel guilty about something, you are more likely to look for trouble, or let trouble look for you. Now, I am not saying that you wake up in the morning, leave your home and try to find someone out there to beat you up. But I believe that you create, knowingly or not, an energy field around you (“I feel guilty, I should be punished, I feel unworthy, I feel vulnerable”) which will attract an aggressor more readily. Aggressors look for this type of “easy victim”, people who are submissive and not likely to fight back. If you believe you should be punished, your inner strength and will to survive will be weaker than if you believe your life is worth living that you are worth living.

On the other hand, if you are a person who is generally more connected and aware of your feelings, and self-being, you have been working on your guilt and anger, and the energy around you “feels” to the aggressor as if you are “not the right one”. In this sense it would be challenging to fight you and it won’t be that pleasurable. The aggressor is looking for a submissive person in order to feel more powerful (himself); if you are not that, then the “power trip” is …. pointless.

It has been scientifically proven that aggressors, like wild animals, choose their victims by picking up on subconscious signals. The “predator” knows in a matter of a few seconds who is a suitable target and who isn’t.

Hardening the target

“If I had the slightest inkling that a woman wasn’t someone I could easily handle, then I would pass right on by. Or if I thought I couldn’t control the situation, then I wouldn’t even mess with the house, much less attempt a rape there.” (Brad Morrison, a convicted sex offender who raped 75 women, quoted in Predators: Who They Are and How to Stop Them by Gregory M. Cooper, Michael R. King, and Thomas McHoes) “Like, if they had a dog, then forget it. Even a small one makes too much noise. If I saw a pair of construction boots, for example, out on the porch or on the landing, I walked right on by. In fact, I think if women who live alone would put a pair of old construction boots—or something that makes it look like a physically fit manly type of guy lives with them—out in front of their door, most rapists or even burglars wouldn’t even think about trying to get into their home.”

Betty Grayson and Morris I. Stein (1984) tried to find out what attracts aggressors to certain victims and what doesn’t. After videotaping pedestrians (without their knowledge) on a busy street in New York, they asked convicts to make their selection of who they would choose to attack, within seven seconds. The results were surprising. The selection was not depending on age, race, size or gender (for example, some small women were passed over and some large men were selected). Even the convicts themselves didn’t know how to explain their choice. But what was common to all the “potential victims” selection, was a few things in their body language, that sends messages to the subconscious mind that that person is weak, is distracted, can’t defend themselves, and feels as if they deserve to suffer (lack of self-love, again the guilt feeling).

To give a few examples, the potential victims that were selected dragged or shuffled their feet when walking, while “non-victims” had a smooth stride stepping heel to toe; potential victims walked slower than non-victims, or had an unnaturally rapid pace when nervous or scared, while non-victims had again a steady “normal” pace of walk; potential victims had a slumped posture that indicates weakness or submissiveness and a downward gaze (the guilt again!) whereas non-victims had a confident, “correct” posture and looked straight and around (situational awareness).

So, Can you “fake it till you make it”? Can you fake the body language to seem more confident and not be potentially selected by aggressors? The answer is YES, you can walk more confidently, you can seem to be more centered, you can be more aware of your environment, you can change the pace and stride of your walk… but can you really fake confidence? can you fake inner strength? Can you fake self-love…? The non-verbal signals your body will give up in a stressful situation is not something you can easily camouflage.

http://www.miravselfdefense.com