Here are episodes 6 and 7 from Teja Van Wicklen as she takes us through her Mommy and Me Self Defense course.
We will be putting 2 downloads a week here so subscribers can collect the set for FREE, it is available on amazon for $13.98.
[decisiontree id=”4868
Here are episodes 4 and 5 from Teja Van Wicklen as she takes us through her Mommy and Me Self Defense course.
We will be putting 2 downloads a week here so subscribers can collect the set for FREE, it is available on amazon for $13.98.
[decisiontree id=”4868
Here are episodes 5 and 6 of 14 from Teja Van Wicklen as she takes us through her Mommy and Me Self Defense course.
We will be putting 2 downloads a week here for the next 6 weeks, so subscribers can collect the set for FREE, it is available on amazon for $13.98.
Here are episodes 3 and 4 of 14 from Teja Van Wicklen as she takes us through her Mommy and Me Self Defense course.
We will be putting 2 downloads a week here for the next 6 weeks, so subscribers can collect the set for FREE, it is available on amazon for $13.98.
This is the first 2 episodes of 14 from Teja Van Wicklen as she takes us through her Mommy and Me Self Defense course.
We will be putting 2 downloads a week here for the next 6 weeks, so subscribers can collect the set for FREE, it is available on amazon for $13.98.
This year at my son’s school has been problematic to say the least. Both his teacher and the administration have shown themselves to be old dogs, mired in bureaucracy. Things had been going well, but at the end of last year a new super intendant of schools was installed and his first move was to change everything, including many things that seemed to be working. One semester of inconsistency and lack of focus on the kids and my son’s longstanding A/B average has dropped fully to a C. He is acting out, disregarding authority and rushing through work – all behaviors that had vastly improved and which we thought were behind us. The details here are not important. I do not think I know better than others and prefer to let people do their jobs. But I know my son, and I know his work ethic. And I know it has changed drastically in tandem with the new administration.
At the beginning of the year, I met with the new teacher. She smiled. She loved children. She assured me she had my son’s number and all would be well. I know myself. I am quick to judge. I have to remind myself to be forgiving. I wish it weren’t this way, but it is. My first reaction is often to go in for the kill. To stop the bleeding before it starts. So my Neocortex steps in and convinces me to take a step back. I do, I try to have a little faith in people, to give them a chance.
It really doesn’t help when after I’ve calmed my inner monster to make way for the nicer, fluffier me, people disappoint me anyway.
At one point, we called a meeting with the teacher and the administration and went over the specific issues we were having. The teacher admitted to being unfair to my son and did so in front of her peers and the principal. My husband and I were so impressed by this we wrote her a letter thanking her for taking responsibility and showing such character. We left the meeting feeling we had reached the core problem and solved it. Instead, this teacher went straight from being unfair to my son and calling him out on every little childish indiscretion, to allowing him to get away with everything. New problem. So we asked ourselves: is she clueless, or is she actively playing the system? Is she simply doing whatever it takes to keep us off her back rather than helping children succeed?
And so it went, numerous correspondences with the administration. The word document I created from the emails is twenty pages long. Each email reply is the same, “We have met with teacher, we have addressed the issues and feel everything is back on track. Have a nice day.” The word ‘nice’ has so many meanings.
Whether someone is deceptive, untrustworthy or otherwise damaging on purpose or due to laziness or ignorance is for the most part irrelevant. The damage is still done. Some people use charm or niceness on purpose, most don’t. It is simply a habit that has persisted due to its efficiency. We are conditioned to expect bad behavior to be obvious. But, low level predators, victimizers and troublemakers (and bureaucrats!) live under the radar. They keep you off-balance but never push so hard that you push back. This kind of behavior is so much more complex and certainly more prevalent than most of the behaviors you will learn to guard against in a self defense class. As a general rule you are probably unlikely to be mugged several times a week.
I could of course have listened to my instincts early on as Gavin to Becker tells us to do and demanded a change of class without giving the teacher a chance at all. I could have, in other words, listened to the overwhelming voices in my head that said this teacher is steeped in old habits and just telling you what you want to hear – that, in effect, all my concerns were justified. For that, there likely would have been ramifications. For instance, in demanding a class change once classes were solidified on the books and teachers and children matched (more effectively than in our case one would hope) it would have raised hackles. It likely would have been more difficult to request help the next time since the alarm had already been raised. I would have given away my element of surprise – the fact that I am willing to fight if it comes to that.
So I held back in favor of diplomacy.
I could have, at any point, called an advocate or the State Department of Education and had someone intervene. An advocate would force the school to change my son’s class or address the issues in some other way. This too would have raised hackles and caused a closing of ranks against my family. In short it would have been a declaration of war. And my son still has a few more years at this school unless I want to home-school him.
Again diplomacy.
At any point I could have confronted the teacher, told her “I had HER number,” and I wasn’t going to let my son fail socially and academically without a fight. But what would that have accomplished. If I scared her it would make it difficult for her to do her job. More likely it would challenge her, piss her off and cause more problems.
Life is so much more complex than a good old-fashioned brawl.
Or I could wait and see – and put in the time. A lot of time. I could do the best job possible of working regularly and diligently with the school and with my son to make things work. This is the path I chose since this will likely be my son’s school system in the coming years. It is not ideal, we are in a holding pattern. I’m spending hours a day negotiating, writing letters, having meetings and tutoring my son (this, in addition to the usual daily grind). Now we wait for the next report card to tell us if any of it is working.
Ultimately none of this is about anything so fanciful as making a right or wrong choice. It’s about spotting problematic behavior as early as possible, making strategic choices and changing course, even multiple times, if the situation calls for it. It’s also about living with the fact that there is no perfect choice – no building theme music to herald the culmination of a long journey. And hindsight and second-guessing are futile and distracting. There’s often in reality, no way to know if you did the “right thing” or even “the best thing”.
In this case, I’m feeling a bit stupid. Even with years of training, I was blindsided by niceness. We often are. It’s such an excellent tool. It takes us by surprise. Who wants to punch the nice guy. Who wants to look like a bully and turn others against their cause. So often the preemptive strike can backfire.
So I continue to recalibrate. I have my eye on next year and hope to be well ahead of the game. The teaching staff next year is not stellar, I am told, and that is a formidable obstacle. But, there is still time and I am on it. We are creating allies and setting up the groundwork for a more successful year. It takes time and patience. Two words I’m not always fond of.
Strategizing – mental self defense – is underrated and underexplored. The issue at hand is how to spot low-level predators, victimizers and trouble makers as early as possible; to give name to the benchmarks of predatory niceness and create some sort of vetting system. Many date rapes happen this way – creeping niceness that builds trust.
It’s all well and good to talk about heeding your instincts and criminal ploys to watch for. But, what happens when someone says all the right things, always apologizes, smiles and never does anything obvious enough to point to. What happens when it’s not a matter of life and death, just quality of life and sanity. Or your child’s educational future.
I often think about the vulnerability of having to protect yourself and your little ones with no margin for error.
I think about what it means, not only to make quick, pressured, complex decisions about how badly to hurt someone, but to make a very simple decision to risk death or kill someone because anything short of everything you’ve got might not be enough and the space between the right and wrong decision is as minute and critical as the distance between molecules – a distance that, if you survive the leap, will be measured by everyone, including those with the power to determine what you can or can’t do with the rest of your life.
I reach for a formula, even just the shape of an answer to the urgent question of how to carefully select information and pass it to the neglected populations of the world. And then how to teach them to pass the information on to their children. Truthfully I would rather renovate houses and furniture, make art and read books in peace looking out over the Andes mountains. Who knows why we are driven to do what we do.
I think about Aikido, “the way of loving energy”, and how as a kid I believed in the ultimate martial super power of being able to subdue a dangerous person with a feather light redirect or a gentle hold.
I think about hard styles like Kyokushin and Taekwondo, as different as they are similar and built to create an impervious body and mind.
I think about Taichi and Bagua and the absolute magic, the strengthless power that comes from cultivating internal arts.
I wonder at the many hard and soft forms of Arnis, Kali and Silat and how they seek to specifically address issues many other styles don’t; issues of size differentials and weaponry.
I think of Krav Maga and how it mixes and modernizes military hand to hand combat for normal people.
Thirty years on I’ve learned that Aikido and the internal arts really begin to take shape after fifteen to twenty years of study, that Kyokushin and other hard styles break the body down as much as they build it up and in the end you have skills it hurts to practice and pains that never go away. You end up being an enemy to yourself and causing damage you were seeking to avoid. I found out the hard way that even the most open and inclusive hive mindsets ultimately shun new questions in favor of already ensconced answers.
After thirty years of training, mental and physical, I wonder what I’ve really learned. I know I’m safer from certain things, certain people, but I wonder just how much. I am physically stronger in muscular ways, broken and weaker at my joints and nerves. I am mentally tougher in important ways but also aware of what real fear and physical pain are and how it is possible for those things to utterly overwhelm the mind’s ability to cope. I am more aware than ever of the ticking of the clock and the balance between seeking to protect while at the same time being present in life.
I suppose having more questions supplies me with more answers.
I know not to choose violence unless I am willing to put a period at the end of the sentence. I know not to give up my element of surprise by announcing my intention to survive at all costs. If I did he would only laugh at me and take it as a challenge. And seek to kill me faster. I think I know where to put my mind in an emergency and how to block out unconstructive mental chatter.
I am pretty sure that to be female is be physically and culturally vulnerable in the world. It’s possible that to be male is to be emotionally vulnerable and that we are stronger when we help one another by filling in those gaps.
I don’t know that answers exist. But I am positive that I will continue searching for questions.
Your first target choice is the most important.
Your first attack either creates an opening for your second and third attacks or notifies your attacker that you need to be immediately neutralized. Once he knows you plan to fight, your element of surprise evaporates along with any time to strategize. Depending on his level of determination your assailant will do whatever is necessary to make sure his plan goes smoothly including, but not limited to, knock you out, tie you up, lock you up or kill you. Put yourself in his shoes. You’ve invested time and effort into this project, if you’re injured in the process or too much attention is drawn, you lose. If your assailant is fully invested in you, he may put everything he has into the completion of this venture. Wouldn’t you.
Sometimes your first choice is the most important one. Sometimes it is the only one.
(Caveat: Almost everything changes if your assailant has a gun and intends to use it. You will need to know how to read signals and to trust your knowledge and instincts. Does he appear to know how to use the gun? Is he desperate enough to shoot you? Might he shoot you be accident because of his level of anxiety? You will have to choose whether to give him what he wants, attack him, or run. More on this in other installments, or check www.ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com, wwwNoNonsenseSelfDefense.com and www.CorneredCat.com for detailed gun-related articles.)
If you create an opening with your first attack, you will have taken an important step towards the overall strategy of bombarding him so he can’t recover. This is how you damage either him or his plan and create an opening in time and distance large enough for your escape.
The first attack is where a mental shift must occur if it has not already. How you accomplish this daunting mental shift has been covered in earlier installments of this article and, if you remember, involves trusting your own decisions and perceptions, giving yourself permission to do whatever it takes to survive, even if it goes against everything you have been told about damaging another person. The ability to shift from what is essentially a social mindset to an asocial one is a psychological mystery of sorts. Some people do it easily and others can’t do it at all. Knowing where you fall is also an important part of this puzzle.
There is only so long you can defend against a determined attacker. The law says you may not aggress on someone unless you are in imminent danger. Once you have established that you are indeed in imminent danger, you must cease to be the rabbit in the trap and become the wolf feeding her cubs. This is to say you must become the attacker. In becoming the dangerous one in the relationship for this crucial moment, you remove some of his options (remember that the predator has more options than the prey). You want him defending, not attacking. The conversation must become a monologue in which he never has a chance to speak.
Subsequent attacks will also need to be fast and furious so he has no time to breathe, but they don’t have to be quite as perfectly chosen. Ultimately, you want to use everything you have together in a merciless barrage of targeted and brutal assaults that give him no chance to recover. This is how you survive a dangerous encounter with a violent criminal. Incapacitate him and leave. You have a wild animal inside you. We are educating that animal so she can be both wild and wise.
Part 6
What are the best primary empty-handed attacks?
The Hammerfist
I’m going to recommend the Hammerfist. But, just to confuse you, let’s talk about punching, after all it’s a classic, and it’s similar to the hammerfist in some ways. Most women never punch, though boys seem to miraculously know how to hold their fists and deliver these things. In the movies we see a lot of this but the fact is, without spending a lot of time on it, punching takes practice, so if you don’t do it regularly, don’t plan to use it to protect yourself.
As the center of personality the face tends to be the primary target when men face off against one another. But the face is attached to this incredibly mobile thing called the neck, which makes it more difficult to hit than the movies might have you think. When punching someone in the face you run the risk of catching his skull which will make little impression on a determined attacker and will certainly keep you from using that hand again for a while. In face, you are more likely to break the tiny bones in your hand and wrist even if you hit his face, than you are to keep him from hurting you.
As an alternate option to the punch I present to you, the Hammerfist, which is exactly what it sounds like. Hold your hand the way you would hold a hammer. Now lose the hammer. That softer part of the hand is a better weapon than the highly breakable knuckles. Imagine punching a brick wall vs. pounding on it.
Another cool thing about the Hammerfist is how multi-directional it is. Punching is harder from odd positions. By odd, I mean from the ground or in a car. It’s very difficult to generate power with a punch when you’re lying on your back or trying to hit someone who’s reaching in your car window. Remember we’re talking about protecting yourself against someone who fights dirty. So you may not be facing the person, in fact you probably won’t be. He’s more likely to be behind you or at an angle, places where punching is difficult to impossible. For instance, you can pound down on someone’s neck or collarbone but you can’t punch in that direction unless you’re much taller. You can Hammerfist out to the side or down on an angle. Try it.
You can also turn many things into weapons by allowing them to protrude from the pinky side of your hammerfist. Now you can practice one technique with many applications.
Generating power with a hammerfist can take some practice. If you have any hard or sharp object in your hand, you don’t need as much power, but the section on weapons is coming up next. If you want to generate enough power to strike someone in the neck, groin or base of the skull, it would be wise to try it out, and see how strong you feel doing it. Get to a heavy bag, or something you can hit from different angles and work it out.
The good news is that practicing a hammerfist on a heavy bag is a great way to build strength without weights. Making contact with a heavy bag causes muscles to contract much like lifting weights.
(If you haven’t done this sort of thing before, don’t start out by hitting with all your might. Take it slow and respect your body. After a number of repetitions or a few 1 or 2 minute cycles, check back in with yourself the next day.)
Hammerfist Targets:
You can use a Hammerfist anywhere really but the best targets are both tough for your opponent or attacker to see coming and vulnerable to the attack.
Recommended Hammerfist Targets:
Front or side of the throat
Side of the face including the jawline (where ear, jaw and neck meet)
Base of the skull (where the neck and head meet) – This is an excellent target if you are thrown over someone’s shoulder. Be careful in practice, it is easy to knock someone out this way or to damage their neck badly.
Other Targets:
Groin (the groin is a great target except that, as we will discuss further, it is well-defended and therefore often easy to spot and defend as a first move.)
Hammerfist Targets with a Weapon
All of the above targets are applicable. Following are targets that are only sufficiently vulnerable to a very powerful attack or an attack with a hard or sharp weapon:
The kidneys can be hit with a hard or pointy object, but you must be very precise with anything but a pointy or sharp weapon. The kidneys can be found at the back floating ribs especially on a rising angle. A ‘hit’ to the kidneys tends to make it very hard to breathe, which should allow for a follow-up attack. You might think of using this target if someone throws you over their shoulder.
The back of the knee is where a bunch of ligaments attach. A cut to the back of the knee can disable the leg.
The achilles tendons is the thick tendon that attaches the calf muscle to the heel of the foot. If cut, it may make it difficult for him to chase you.
Hammerfist Tips:
When practicing, focus more on the speed of retracting the hammerfist rather than the impact on the bag or focus pad. In other words, focus on the pulling back rather than throwing the hammerfist. This will make you faster and speed can be the same or better than strength in a fight. Also, when you focus on the attack you often pause briefly with your arm extended which can allow someone to grab you. This tip is somewhat counterintuitive, but in practice it is both more efficient and more effective.
Tips on generating power almost always involve softening your knees (it is very difficult be strong with your legs locked), coiling your hips (which takes understanding and practice) and exploding in your chosen direction. If you have played baseball or softball or even tennis, you understand the swinging of a bat or racquet at just the right time and with all your power.
These are concepts it is virtually impossible to explain. Even pictures don’t really help. They must be demonstrated. Video and live instruction are the way to go.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Your first target choice is the most important
Your first attack either creates an opening for your second and third attacks or notifies your attacker that you need to be immediately neutralized. Once he knows you plan to fight, your element of surprise evaporates along with any time to strategize. Depending on his level of determination your assailant will do whatever is necessary to make sure his plan goes smoothly including, but not limited to, knock you out, tie you up, lock you up or kill you. Put yourself in his shoes. You’ve invested time and effort into this project, if you’re injured in the process or too much attention is drawn, you lose. If your assailant is fully invested in you, he may put everything he has into the completion of this venture. Wouldn’t you.
Sometimes your first choice is the most important one. Sometimes it is the only one.
(Caveat: Almost everything changes if your assailant has a gun and intends to use it. You will need to know how to read signals and to trust your knowledge and instincts. Does he appear to know how to use the gun? Is he desperate enough to shoot you? Might he shoot you be accident because of his level of anxiety? You will have to choose whether to give him what he wants, attack him, or run. More on this in other installments, or check www.ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com, www.NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com and www.CorneredCat.com for detailed gun-related articles.)
If you create an opening with your first attack, you will have taken an important step towards the overall strategy of bombarding him so he can’t recover. This is how you damage either him or his plan and create an opening in time and distance large enough for your escape.
The first attack is where a mental shift must occur if it has not already. How you accomplish this daunting mental shift has been covered in earlier installments of this article and, if you remember, involves trusting your own decisions and perceptions, giving yourself permission to do whatever it takes to survive, even if it goes against everything you have been told about damaging another person. The ability to shift from what is essentially a social mindset to an asocial one is a psychological mystery of sorts. Some people do it easily and others can’t do it at all. Knowing where you fall is also an important part of this puzzle.
There is only so long you can defend against a determined attacker. The law says you may not aggress on someone unless you are in imminent danger. Once you have established that you are indeed in imminent danger, you must cease to be the rabbit in the trap and become the wolf feeding her cubs. This is to say you must become the attacker. In becoming the dangerous one in the relationship for this crucial moment, you remove some of his options (remember that the predator has more options than the prey). You want him defending, not attacking. The conversation must become a monologue in which he never has a chance to speak.
Subsequent attacks will also need to be fast and furious so he has no time to breathe, but they don’t have to be quite as perfectly chosen. Ultimately, you want to use everything you have together in a merciless barrage of targeted and brutal assaults that give him no chance to recover. This is how you survive a dangerous encounter with a violent criminal. Incapacitate him and leave. You have a wild animal inside you. We are educating that animal so she can be both wild and wise.
Building Your Vocabulary
Where you strike is as important, or even more important, than how. There are many instances of people being stabbed up to 40 times and surviving, while once is enough to kill in another instance. The major difference here is the target.
In learning to survive a brutal encounter you must commit the softest and most vulnerable areas of the human body to memory. The best target is not only the one that will do the most damage or cause the most pain, it is the one you can reach from the position you are attacked in. If your instructor is particularly enamored of the groin as a kicking target and you are attacked at knifepoint while in your car, you may find yourself at a loss. Worse, your brain may glitch and you may not be able to think beyond how to kick the groin from your current seated position. You need a vocabulary with which to form answers to complex questions-A vocabulary made up of targets and attacks.
Consider these three things: The part of your body or the weapon you are using against your attacker, the part of his body you are attacking, and the many different positions you may find yourself in during an attack.
There is a certain amount of creativity involved here. Punching is not the only option. There are many strikes to be made with the back or side of the hand, with elbows, feet, knees, even the forearms and head. I know martial artists who only use a few of these. Keep an open mind.
Debilitation not just Pain
In order to retaliate physically in a way that protects you, you need to attack the most vulnerable part of his body with the strongest part of yours or something hard or sharp. Strongest does not necessarily mean hardest, it means least breakable.
“Buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind,
to withstand the world that’s what it takes. All that steel and stone
is no match for the air, my friend. What doesn’t bend, breaks.”
~ Ani DiFranco from her song, Buildings and Bridges
When you practice or even think about self defense, ask yourself this: Is the target I have chosen vulnerable enough as to be debilitating? If it isn’t, don’t stake your life on it.
To state the obvious, the best target is one that, when you make contact, will cause the other guy more pain than it causes you. In movies people punch to the face. Because we see it so often it has become an instinctive response and part of the culture. The face is the center of personality and therefore what we as emotional humans seek to destroy first. It is, however, often, not the best target. Small bones in the hands break easily, unless highly trained (and the sad truth is that most hands highly trained enough to withstand punching to hard targets reap the reward of painful arthritis later in life).
It may actually require a conscious decision from you to attack something other than the face. And there may be no time for conscious decision, which is why we are preparing now. If the face is your only option, take it, but be aware that anything aimed at the face is briskly tracked by the eyes. Yet another reason the face is often not the best primary target.
By a debilitating target I mean one that will force your assailant to discontinue his attack. Pain is very subjective and difficult to quantify. Someone on drugs or used to being disciplined by way of systematic beatings or torture can endure quite a bit more pain than you may even be able to imagine. You can be in agonizing pain and still manage to give birth to your child without passing out. A violent criminal may be able to take quite a hit and still continue to hurt you.
The amount of pain a criminal will be able to withstand generally corresponds with his level of determination. If he is looking for an easy target, a bit of fight from you may deter him. If he enjoys a fight, has invested time and energy searching for you or vetting you and is intent on his decision, a bit of fight will only galvanize him or entertain him. If he’s on drugs, he may not feel pain. He may not even respond to broken limbs. I know a martial artist who won a tournament with a broken collarbone. My friends have much crazier stories.
We are planning for something that can’t be planned. We are gathering information in the event we need it. Whether or not it comes to our aid is anyone’s guess. Everything you know about crime and about yourself along with every bit of knowledge you have gathered about this criminal will need to come into play in the moment. You will have some idea of his level of commitment to this crime based on his behavior. You may be able to tell if someone is on drugs. You must find a way to connect with your focus and your plan and commit to the job at hand which is to make sure he can’t keep hurting you or your child. If luck is not on your side and you are alone, you will at the very least need to create an opening so you can run away, presumably by hurting him enough to make him rethink his choice, taking his legs out from under him, knocking him out or running really fast. Barring the less gory options you will need blind or disable him in some way. Or kill him.
It seems it’s both easier and not as easy as you think the to end someone. What does that mean? In the many stories I’ve heard and books I’ve read, and conversation’s I’ve had on this subject, there is a dichotomy. Accidents happen that makes it seem easy to kill or die. But we can’t harness or control accidents. As it turns out quite a bit is involved in killing and at the top of the list is your determination to live and your ability to override your natural human aversion to end someone’s life forever. This is something good people do only in the name of survival. And because it doesn’t always come naturally, we need a proper vocabulary in order to understand our options.
To be Continued in:
THE SELF DEFENSE CONTINUUM: DISENGAGE THE ATTACK pt 5
