Self Defence…What If?

____________________________________________________________________

Our work shop on self defence will soon be upon us and has sparked a lot of conversations in the blogs and facebook pages. Although we have run these courses before and will do so again, these events do focus the mind upon this important subject – that of the defence of the self.

It is of course the reason most of us gotten in to martial arts in this first place, one day we asked the question ‘what if?’, and for most of us the answer was; ‘I’m not sure!’ So the next logical step was to find a martial art club…and here we are!

But during the years of our training that question is often replaced by the enjoyment of training and the discovery of skills we didn’t even know we possessed. So a workshop always brings that question back to the forefront of the mind…’what if’? And strangely enough, despite the grades we wear often that answer is still elusive, but that’s the good news!!

The true gift of martial arts is ‘awareness’, or what we call ‘Zanshin’ in the dojo, even the awareness that we might not be good enough yet, so we had better keep getting good!

Unfortunately the people who might run into trouble out there usually never saw it coming till it was too late, never questioned the environment they were in, the people they were with, or the physical state they were in, they probably think they don’t even need a ‘self defence’ work-shop!

So these skills of awareness, focus, and environment will be the main lessons we will be trying to teach in our workshop, indeed these are the skills that are being hammered into you during every dojo session without you even knowing! Not just during a combat sessions, but during Katas, during weapons, even during exercise sessions! Even as you walk into a room full of other martial artists your awareness skills will grow, the sense of self becomes heighten, and all this is so much better than having to throw that punch!

So as martial artists you might still ask the question; ‘what if?’ Don’t worry you always will, that’s your advantage over the other guy!

See you in the Dojo.

Sensei Richard