Click here to learn the key to effective self-defense

Pssst – want to know the secret to self-defense?

Want to learn the key to what makes every kata deadly effective?

Want to master the one thing your teacher doesn’t talk about in class?

Are you ready?

Here it is.

Presence. Awareness. Consciousness. Mindfulness.

Bingo. Bango. Bongo.

Wow, you say, that was a waste of time. Pfft. The secret to self-defense is not a physical technique. What a load of BS.

Yup, thought you might say that. So, let’s try an experiment. Walk around the downtown core of any major Canadian city, staring at your cellphone, not paying attention or looking at the people or things around you. Make random turns. See what kinds of attention you attract. You may wanna take someone to watch your six.

Repeat the same experiment in about a week. This time, keep the phone out of sight. Scan your environment frequently. Listen to what happens around you. Absorb but do not react or respond to things in the environment.

Notice a difference?

Ok, another test.

Perform a kata – any kata. Be mindful of any ‘thoughts’ or internal monologue that occurs while you are doing the kata. Record them when you are done.

OK, same kata again. This time, squelch any ‘thoughts’ or internal monologue that come up while you are doing the kata. Stop them. Let your brain go right to the kata. Focus on the kata and the kata alone. Don’t talk yourself through the kata and don’t provide a running play-by-play for yourself.

Did you notice anything different? What was it?

While this was not the intent of his book, C.W. Nicol wrote a very insightful tome called ‘Moving Zen,’ he talks about the ultimate aim of karate being a harnessing of spirit, achieving a state of tranquillity.  He points towards the idea that kata help us transcend our daily world to that state. Finding that centre of calm in the core of your being is like activating the power that is held in the eye of hurricane (my words, not his).

But while you may find yourself in the present moment in a kata, engaged in that moment with your movements, achieving situational awareness takes a bit more. It is applying that sensory connection to your surroundings. The concept that what you learn in the dojo can be applied outside begins here. But like mindfulness requiring practice, so, too, does developing situational awareness.

Situational awareness is the key to salvation, dear reader. It matters not how good a fighter you are, if you are distracted or not paying attention to what is going on around you, it matters not how talented or skilled you are. Do a few google searches and you will get a sniff of what happens when you don’t pay attention to your surroundings or pick up on cues in the environment. I will not mention them by name here, because some of them are no longer with us. And I am really not one to speak ill of the dead.

I’d just rather prefer that you not follow in their footsteps.

Let me share with you a couple of practical examples - one personal, one not so much.
Years ago when I was bouncing. we had a very rowdy Friday night in the bar. The owners, in their infinite wisdom had put sand on the floor to create a 'beach party' effect in the bar. Well, on this particular night, we had two groups come in. In one of the groups was a scrawny little guy who looked like her was out for something. He found it. The other group, from a local community near the city knew of this individual - in fact, if memory serves me correctly, little guy had slept with the sister or girlfriend of one of the larger men in the group. 

Now, I should mention at this point, I was not working that evening. I was just there to shoot the poo with the lads and grab a beer before heading home. I saw what was going on. Whether it was my job or not, it was happening in my atmosphere. That makes it my issue since fights in bars can often explode quite quickly.

Not all bar staff were as observant. One was wilfully not watching what was going on because he was not willing to possibly be injured breaking up a fight. Another was making time with the ladies, totally oblivious to the whole goings-on.

It took all of about a minute from the time the little guy made his way into the centre of the bar before fit hit the shan. I jumped in the fray to help a horribly-outnumbered group of co-workers. Further details at another time.

Another incident happened to a school friend of mine who was by all accounts a bright guy. Sciency dude, honour roll. That kinds stuff. But one night he found himself downtown. And who happened upon him but a couple of guys off of his blind side, asking for the time.

Stop me if you have seen this one.Meh, ok, here it is anyway.

Yup. He looked at his watch. Head down. Before he could verbalize where Mickey's little hand was, he gets clocked. And they grab his watch when he goes down. They tried the wallet, didn't work. Unaware of his surroundings and not seeing what was coming, he became a stat of not knowing who was around him. Tuned out can sometimes equal knocked out.

Kata is meant to teach us in many ways. Muscle memory; use of body structure and mechanics to develop and generate force; use of both sides of the body for both offensive and defensive positions; body shifting and stance manipulation; and, yes, awareness. If you’re just boogying through your kata without feeling, seeing, hearing – well, mebbe all you are doing is choreography with yells.

Can you feel where your feet are in a stance? Where your hands are in a chamber or a punch? Your elbow, in or out? What about your hips, your spine?

Are you scanning the environment in your kata? Are you in the fight or going through the motions?

Here’s the thing – pick a person at random. Scan them. Then remove yourself from the area and try to recall as much as you can about them – approx. height, build. Hair colour. Clothing. What did they have with them? Could you see their hands? Anything noticeable about them?

Try doing it again as you walk towards someone. Can you see their hands? Don’t think about it or focus on it, but you should be aware of what they are doing or how they are acting. It could be that they have plans for you.

Awareness can and will give you a leg on coming out of a fight - or even better, possibly avoiding it altogether. But, rest assured, simply being 'aware' does not guarantee total success. Ever. Nothing does. But if you are not aware or not situationally in tune with your environment, the risks of personal harm shoot up exponentially. You are, dear reader, a bona-fide sitting duck. And you may be walking into the oven with your eyes closed. Or fixed on a screen.

So, how can you increase awareness/ build your core mindfulness? Put down your damn phone, for one. But there are plenty of ways you should be doing it already in your practice. If you are still finding that you have monkey mind, here’s some things you can do:

Core mindfulness/ awareness

Situational awareness

Of course, practising kata with less attention to what you are thinking and more on what you are feeling/ seeing/ doing/ helps, too.

See, I was right! :)