The Eye of Destruction: Self-protection in a World Spinning Out of Control Part One Dr Gregory T. Lawton

Introduction

Everywhere you look in the world there are indications that people are frightened and angry. Intolerance, hate, and rage are spreading through cities like a wildfire and violence stands at the highest levels in history. Whether at work, at a mall, driving in traffic, walking down the street, in our schools, in our churches or spiritual gatherings, violence is a frequent and growing threat.

Emotions are rising to a very high intensity and some people are increasingly unbalanced, triggered by common social interactions, and all too ready to argue, scream, yell, threaten, fight and to respond to even the slightest disagreement or provocation with verbal or forceful aggression, violence, and/or predatory violence.

Concepts like tolerance, understanding, common courtesy, loving kindness, and caring for our human family have been exchanged for selfish and self-centered ego-based behaviors where the only thing that matters is our own opinion, beliefs, and/or meeting our own personal needs.

The question is, in a climate of mounting unrest and social upheaval how can we keep ourselves and our families safe? In this article I suggest that an awareness of the nature of aggression, forceful aggression, violence, and predatory violence and preparedness against these four threats are your best defense and protection for yourself and your family.

In the material in this article concerning self-defense questions may be raised regarding self-defense and the law. I am not an attorney, and this information should not be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, seek out and consult with an attorney. Physical self-defense skills are intended to be used only as a last resort and only to the degree that is necessary to preserve your safety or life. The best form of self-defense is avoidance.

The training techniques in this article pertaining to weapons are intended to teach you what to expect if you are attacked by a person who is attempting to use a weapon against you and is not intended to promote your use of weapons, such as a knife, in an illegal manner.

None of the comments in this article are intended to denigrate any martial art style, system, or teacher. Frankly, I have studied many martial arts myself and I respect the many kinds of knowledge and experience that they represent.

In the information to follow I use two terms, self-defense and self-protection. I do not use these words interchangeably. My definition of self-defense is the use of whatever means is necessary to protect oneself from physical or emotional harm or injury. I define self-protection as a larger arena that includes everything needed to provide an environment of protection around oneself, family, and home and this includes security systems, weapons, and all the basic necessities needed to sustain life.

I highly recommend that the reader of this article reviews my previous three-part series entitled “The Medical Implications of Combat Tai Chi Chuan Techniques, Investigating Blunt Force Trauma” which is on the medical consequences of combat Tai Chi Chuan and which contains very practical and direct physical attacks to the most vulnerable areas of the human body.

Please note that there can be serious legal repercussions to defending yourself and inflicting injury to another person or by causing their death. Legal issues may present as criminal charges and/or civil lawsuits. It has often been stated that, “The first fight is for your life, and the second fight is for the rest of your life”.

Growing Interest in Learning Self-Defense and Self-Protection Skills

During my martial arts career I have never known a time when there has been so much interest in self-defense and self-protection. I am seeing unprecedented levels of interest in all levels of training from self-defense to home defense, to weapons training, survival training, and preparedness and self-reliance. It is vitally important that the martial art and self-defense skills that you learn are effective. A teacher who is not teaching reality-based techniques that help you to understand the difference between aggression, forceful aggression, violence, and predatory violence and that are effective against a dangerous violent or violent predatory attack is doing a great disservice to his or her students.

Much of what is taught in traditional martial art schools is not effective for several reasons. One reason being that students are often not taught how to identify aggressive posturing and separate it from a potentially lifethreatening violent attack and are often only provided with one response to a perceived threat, a physical one, that may dangerously escalate events that the student could and should have easily walked away from. On the opposite side of the threat equation, students are often not taught how to identify a real threat to their safety or life when facing a violent aggressor or violent predator and may therefore misread and underestimate a serious lifethreatening situation.

Another reason that martial arts students may be unprepared for serious physical threat is that real hand to hand combat skills have been removed from many martial arts or are taught in ineffective and unrealistic ways. Many instructors from the self-defense community have observed this and have commented on it, few of them, however, have been in the Asian martial arts long enough to have observed what transpired to cause their “dilution” over the past six or more decades.

Yet another reason that some martial arts training in self-defense is not effective is a common concept in selfdefense that a person can only defend themselves after they have been attacked. Many self-defense skills are designed to respond to an attack and not to initiate or preempt an attack before the assailant can deliver their first strike. The first person in an encounter to deliver an effective strike, one that causes the autonomic nervous system to shutdown or that destroys the integrity of a joint, generally prevails.

I have seen a shift from the brutal combat skills I was taught in the late 1950s and early 1960s to “black belt mills” and contemporary sports martial arts. The Judo that I learned in the early 1960s was taught by Judoka who learned Judo at the Kodokan Judo Institute in Japan in the 1940s and 1950s while serving in the military.

At that time Judo included strikes to various parts of the body including strikes to the temple, neck, solar plexus, and the groin. One of the basic principles of Judo during this time, and prior, was to “strike to grapple and grapple to strike”. Strikes were used to set up throws and grappling techniques were often used to set up a strike. As Judo evolved as a sport, the striking techniques were removed and became fouls. Additionally, the instructors that I trained with knew how to execute a grappling technique or throw to either destroy a joint or to use gravity to knock an opponent unconscious and/or to injure the parts of their body that impacted with the ground. During this period the difference between sport Judo and combat Judo was not much.

What happened between the early years of the entry of the Asian martial arts into Western culture and later years? The arts were “watered down” and diluted by succeeding generations of poorly trained instructors more focused on sales and legal liability than on teaching the traditional combat aspects of the martial arts. This resulted in two divisions of martial arts training, training for the sport-minded public and training for the military.

Between the martial arts for public consumption, the traditional martial arts, and military combat and hand to hand training, there is presently a disconnect, but this has not always been the case. If you go back in time six or more decades martial arts training was military training. At the point that this stopped being true civilian martial arts became less effective in preparing students for violent encounters against predator’s intent on maiming, raping, or killing them.

My path into the martial arts first came through the military lineage. My first traditional martial art instructor in Kosho Ryu Kenpo had been an Army Ranger instructor and my first Judo instructor had served in the military during the Korean War and then became a police officer. Both instructors spent time training at the Kodokan. My martial arts training during the 1960s was with instructors trained in Japan and Korea, continued while I served in the military, and then through martial arts schools where the combat techniques were traded for sports competition, black belts, and trophies. I certainly recognized the difference between true traditional martial arts and the evolution of modern martial sports. In every school and training program that I participated in I had to tone down my sparring and fighting techniques.

During the 1970s through most of the 1990s I was aware of the difference between these two systems of training and the loss of effective combat techniques and training in most martial arts schools. If your training has not prepared you for violent encounters in the street from sociopathic or psychopathic predators or felons, you have not actually trained in the martial arts.

Mary’s Story

Allow me to tell you the story of “Mary”. Mary’s story is true, but I have changed her name to protect her confidentiality. Mary’s story is what would give me the motivation to start a school that would provide not only training in the martial arts and self-defense to men and women, but also professional career training in allied health care and the healing arts.

When I met Mary I was the vice president of a large medical psychology treatment center. One day at the office I was approached by one of the Ph.D. psychologists on staff at the firm and was asked by him to consult with one of his patients, Mary and her husband, but because of my busy schedule I was reluctant to do so.

After repeated urgent requests from this doctor I gave in and agreed to meet with Mary and her husband. All that I was told as to why I was meeting with this couple was that they had suffered family trauma and had an interest in self-defense training.

During this period in my career, I was not conducting public martial art classes, but I was training select students, usually law enforcement officers, in tactical hand to hand combat skills. My usual students were police officers who had been in highly stressful situations where they had found themselves rolling around on the ground and fighting for their lives. They had discovered that the training that they had received in law enforcement training programs had not prepared them for life and death fights on the city streets.

When the day came for me to meet with Mary and her husband the couple was well dressed, and Mary was quietly polite and obviously nervous. After introductions and some small talk, I asked Mary how I could be of assistance to her. I have never forgotten her answer because her response to me was, “I need you to teach me how to kill.”

Once I recovered from my initial surprise, I asked Mary why she wanted to learn how to kill, and she shared her heartbreaking and tragic story with me.

Please keep in mind as your read this story that there are three kinds of students that an ethical and competent teacher will never accept as students, and certainly someone who announces that they want to learn how to kill falls into one of those categories. The three categories of students that a good teacher will not accept include the sexually perverse, the violent predator, and students who lack the ability to learn and to remember the information that is taught to them.

Mary began to explain her story to me in halting and painful words, punctuated by tears. The woman, her husband, and her then 11-year-old daughter had been in their home when two men broke in and assaulted her husband and raped her at knife point while using threats against her 11-year-old daughter to make her comply with their demands. Over a period of several hours, she was repeatedly raped by both men in front of her husband and her daughter.

Prior to meeting Mary, I had always used my training to help people in need of training and to help to empower those who had been physically and mentally harmed by violent assaults. Mary’s story and plight so moved me that I began what was later to become an over 40-year mission to assist anyone that needed training. Obviously, I accepted her as a student, and I began to train her in the martial arts and self-defense.

The most important attributes needed to address and cope with the personal and social challenges ahead of us are physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional strength. As we see today, during daily increasing tests and difficulties, the greatest threats to our peace of mind and security are stress, hate, rage, fear, anxiety, addiction, depression, and mental illness.

Why Learn Self-Defense?

Rarely am I asked why a person needs to learn self-defense by a victim of childhood abuse, physical assault, sexual assault, or a violent crime. Some students will resist training in avoidance or situational awareness claiming that if they must practice these habits or alter their daily lives in any way that that in and of itself is a form of “assault”. I learned long ago that you cannot change a person’s opinion, you can only attempt to change their point of view or perspective, and so I do not try to change opinions, I attempt to lead by example.

We must be aware that violent attacks do happen, and we can learn how to avoid them or to defend ourselves against them.

I might suggest, however, that if you could see the world from the point of view of someone who is a survivor of childhood abuse, incest, rape, and violent assault you might at least admit that some of the skill sets that are taught in a self-defense program have merit. If you do not personally want to learn self-defense skills, which are mostly mental, then please do not discourage or hinder the sincere efforts of someone who does want to learn these skills and abilities.

If you drive a car, you probably use avoidance, observation, and situational awareness skills every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Most good drivers drive defensively, and I hope that you are a good driver because I might be next to you on the highway. Defensive drivers are situationally aware. They know where their vehicle is on the road and watch the traffic in front and beyond the cars that they are following, they watch the traffic in their rear-view mirror approaching them from behind, especially at stop signs and at red lights, they monitor traffic in their side mirrors, and they watch their blind spots on both sides of their vehicle. Good drivers develop a sixth sense and know in advance when another driver might quickly change lanes or veer into their lane.

This driving comparison is an analogy for learning the key elements of self-defense which are avoidance, observation, and situational awareness. You learned these skills to get a driver’s license and to be able to drive to work. Perhaps you will now learn to adapt these same skills to protect yourself and your loved ones? Bad things can happen to good people, but they don’t have to.

The most recent violent attack and rape that I became personally aware of involved a young female runner out running in a lonely, wooded area in the dark early morning hours wearing ear buds and listening to music. She was grabbed from behind, taken to the ground, and assaulted.

No one deserves to be mugged, robbed, beaten, or raped. While we may be unprepared for an assault or have made poor choices regarding the situations, we place ourselves into, it is the assailant who is responsible for the violence. It is the decision of the assailant to harm another person that is the cause of the assault. We on the other hand must be aware that violent attacks do happen, and we can learn how to avoid them or to defend ourselves against them. We do not have to be victims.

Everyone Has the Capacity to Defend Themselves

You were born with the capability of becoming a human weapon. Everyone has the right to protect themselves. Even the smallest creatures on earth have been given the ability to protect themselves. I have personally observed a mouse fight back against a cat.

From the evolutionary characteristics of environmental camouflage to chemical protectants and poisons, to horn and hoof, and teeth and claws, all creatures have evolved the ability to protect themselves and to defend their young. Human beings lacking a thick hide, fur, horns, hooves, sharp tearing teeth, and long ripping claws have developed hand, foot, knee, and elbow fighting skills and they have invented basic self-protection weapons including knives, sticks, and guns as a way of magnifying their ability to inflict damage against other humans.

Each human is unique in terms of personality and the innate or acquired qualities that they possess. While we all possess various attributes one of those attributes is the ability to inflict harm to another through violence. Violence should not be viewed in a negative light but rather as a quality or action that is relative to a particular set of circumstances. In the circumstance of an attack, violence is the correct response, it is likely the only correct response.

Violence for the purpose of rape, injury, or murder is condemned by society, and rightly so, but violence used for personal protection and as a survival tool is a fundamental right of all human beings.

Everyone Has the Legal and Moral Right to Defend Themselves

Self-defense and protection skills are very important for individuals, families, and communities. Every individual has the right to defend themselves mentally and physically, from abuse and assault. Abuse and assault may include mental and emotional, as well as physical aspects.

These physical aspects include assault and battery and sexual assault. Family members have the responsibility to watch out for and to protect each other. Parents, of course, have the duty to protect their children from harm. Older children in a family have the responsibility to protect the younger children in their family. Communities

have the responsibility and the duty to provide security and protection for its citizens. Individual citizens have the duty to assist their neighbours.

You may be surprised to learn that ninety percent of self-defense is simply awareness and avoidance. The other ten percent is composed of five percent communication skills and five percent self-defense skills.

No one wants to be involved in conflict or violence, no one wants to be injured or killed, or to have a loved one or a friend injured or killed. We all want to live and to enjoy life in peace. However, as is evident from the daily news coverage, bad things happen to good people. Those that do not believe this, are living in a bubble and are not in touch with reality. Our first objective should be to minimize threats in our lives, but when you are faced with the worst day of your life you need to be able to flip the switch and destroy your attackers with total commitment to their destruction.

Many of the students that I teach who have been victims of a violent attack were in compromising circumstances and they state that the attack “Came out of nowhere,” in hindsight it did not.

The First Rule of Self-Defense is the Avoidance of Trouble and Conflict

As a child growing up, I was known as the neighbourhood defender. I would fight for and defend the small or “weaker” kids against larger kids and bullies. That characteristic has continued in my life as a fierce sense of personal fairness and social justice. Once I began to study and to train in the martial arts, I started to teach others how to defend themselves. My primary objective is to teach average people how to avoid conflict, or should conflict confront them how to neutralize a threat non-violently, or if violence or an assault should be eminent, how to protect themselves and hopefully to stop the violent attack and to remain safe and unhurt.

The best form of self-defense is to ensure that you have prepared for an attack before it happens and that means that you do not take unnecessary risks with your personal safety. Learn to avoid the areas, places, and people in your life that might increase your risk of being attacked.

Some people think that teaching self-defense is about practicing and teaching violence and nothing could be further from the truth. Self-defense is primarily about avoiding violence whenever possible but if violence comes into your life self-defense training may save your life or the life of a loved one. People who have learned coping mechanisms and how to remain in control of themselves are far less likely to become enraged or driven by fear. People that react to provocation from the emotions of fear and rage are more likely to overreact to minor provocations, to harm, or kill others. The safest people I know are the most dangerous people I know.

The first and most important lessons taught and learned in self-defense are the avoidance of risk, threat, and violence. Avoidance is mainly gained through observation, situational awareness, and threat assessment. We teach students to get their heads out of their phone and media and their eyes and mind on the environment around them. By practicing avoidance through situational awareness and assessment, we help people avoid having to use physical self-defense skills. We do not encourage people to be violent, we encourage and empower them to avoid violence.

The training that I provide is intended to be used by good, decent, well-intentioned people who want to use this knowledge to preserve peace and security in their lives. As an author and a teacher of the martial arts and selfdefense classes I do not promote or condone violence and I do recommend the avoidance of violence and harm to another human being whenever possible.

When we employ violence against another human being our intent is the destruction of our assailant. To have reached this point in an encounter we must have exhausted our ability to deescalate, placate, grovel, avoid, escape, or evade a violent or predatory attack that has put us in fear for our lives, or the lives of our loved ones.

A self-defense program is not a vaccine that makes you immune to being victimized. If a self-defense program helps you to avoid and/or effectively deal with threatening situations or an actual attack, then it has served its purpose well. There is no one size fits all and the ability to defend oneself using specific skills or tools is dependent on gender, size, age, and a person’s mental attitude and physical condition.

Situational Awareness and Threat Assessment Is Not Paranoia

Recent events in the media have awakened many people to the need to be prepared for crisis and the need for personal and family protection. This has motivated many people to purchase firearms, pepper spray, tasers, and other forms of self-protection. I do not support or recommend this course of action unless it is preceded or accompanied by competent self-defense and mental preparedness training. By mental preparedness I mean training in the psychology and sociology of aggression and violence.

What we do not need are more and more people driving around town with weapons in their cars but with almost no mental or psychological training in how to deal with aggression or violence. As recent events in the news have shown us, even highly trained police officers can make tragic mistakes while under stress, how much more so for the untrained citizen.

Preemptive attacks or counterattacks must be surgical and catastrophic.

Current social conditions related to the pandemic, economic decline, unemployment, homelessness, immigration, drug addiction, and racism are obviously increasing individual stress, fear, and anxiety, as well as causing a decline in mental health, increasing drug and alcohol abuse, and escalating suicides especially among our youth. Daily we are hearing about and witnessing terrible acts of violence.

Situational awareness and the ability to assess threats is not paranoia or “living a life in fear," instead these skills provide a sense of self-empowerment and security. The individual who is trained in the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of self-defense is less likely to be provoked by argument or social aggression into a situation where physical violence may result in harming someone, the taking of a life, losing one’s own life, or losing your freedom due to incarceration.

I teach my students five levels of threat assessment, and I suggest that human to human conflicts may follow five stages:

1. Assertiveness – Healthy assertiveness is the personal expression of confident and affirming behavior. We may disagree with someone, but that disagreement does not necessarily to lead to aggressive behavior. 2. Aggression – Aggression is a demonstration of the beginning stages of physical and psychologic threat, bullying, and intimidation. Aggression is a domineering pursuit of one’s opinion, aims, interests and/or needs. 3. Forceful Aggression – Forceful aggression is a psychological manifestation of hostile behavior or attitudes toward another person or persons, and it represents a readiness to attack, or it may become an actual physical attack that does not have the intent to cause serious harm, injury, or death. 4. Violence - Violence is the intent to inflict direct physical and psychological harm to another person through behavior that results in injury or death. 5. Predatory Violence - Predatory violence is a form of violence that is inflicted on a person by someone who is psychologically developed by circumstance, conditioning, and/or mental illness. Predators include individuals with aberrant behavior patterns, career criminals, sociopaths, and psychopaths.

Violence is a form of lethal behavior with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm or death. Both the violent and the predatory violent personality are types of the aggressive personality. Together they form a continuum of behaviors that develop over time and through life experience, trauma, and behavioural conditioning. This conditioning develops through an initiation process whereby a role model or dominating person in their lives introduces them to violence.

In plain English, many violent and predatory violent persons were abused as children and then introduced to violence against others by a family member, peer, or gang. When faced with this kind of violent encounter there is no reasoning or talking your way out of the situation. Your choice is to be injured, killed, or raped, or to stop the assailant.

It was for these types of violent assailants, and war, that the traditional martial arts were originally developed. It was foolish for certain instructors to change these arts into point contests and sporting events. If you have studied the traditional martial arts and you are not capable of stopping a violent attack, you have been wasting your time, and worst you have put yourself, and possibly others, at risk.

Self-defense Against a Violent Assailant Requires a Total Commitment to Inflict Catastrophic Injury

Perhaps you have watched one of the documentary films on the National Geographic cable network. If so, perhaps you have seen coverage of a predator like a lion taking down their prey. You may have observed the lion and how they selected their prey, then stalked an animal in the herd, and finally their total and complete commitment to taking down and killing the animal that they chose. You may have understood the intensity of the act of hunting, stalking, and killing. Violence in the street is no different and all violence is the same.

This is the total commitment required in attacking or launching a preemptive attack against a violent predator. If you do not do it to them, they will do it to you. Which one of you do you want to be the victim, you, or the assailant? The one committing the violence first is the one that prevails during an attack. Defensive wounds are found on victims.

Successful self-defense against a violent attack or violent predator requires intent, pin-point focus, and total commitment to your attack. You must want to inflict an injury to your opponent. Regardless of where a target on your opponent has appeared you have to attack that area of their body with intent, pin-point focus, and total commitment. In other words, you must want to strike an area of their body and then do it with enough force to cause serious injury that shuts down the autonomic nervous system, destroys a joint, or breaks a bone.

The eye is a primary target and serious eye injuries will instantly shutdown the autonomic nervous system. For more information regarding eye attacks visit my previously cited articles.

When attacking the eye insert a finger or the thumb into the eye socket until you can’t go any further.

In our self-defense training classes we practice initiating and launching highly intense, mentally committed physical attacks to the most vulnerable areas of the human body. I have previously written articles for a threepart series published in Lift Hands magazine entitled “The Medical Implications of Combat Tai Chi Chuan Techniques, Investigating Blunt Force Trauma” which includes information on the medical consequences of attacks to the eyes, throat, groin and easily broken bones of the human body. I invite you to refer to those articles as they explain the concept of inflicting maximum damage to the human frame. However, these attacks cannot be effective unless they are delivered with ferocious intensity, like the lion example given above.

In our self-defense classes I teach beginning students three main areas of Chin Na Fa attacks: the eyes, the throat, and the groin. In later classes I add the collarbone and the foot. For most students these five areas are sufficient and about all of the information they can potentially execute under stress and fear. For advanced students we begin to investigate the entire toolbox of Chin Na techniques.

Are the Traditional Martial Arts Ineffective Against Violent Predator Assailants?

There is a lot of criticism of traditional martial arts as regards their effectiveness against violent attacks. Some of this criticism is justified. Much of the criticism is directed at the traditional martial arts by leaders in the selfdefense industry and some of it comes from sports martial artists from the mixed martial arts profession.

My question is do the critics understand that what they are criticizing is not actually traditional but a diluted modernized version of an original martial art? As a point of fact, these same critics have “cherry-picked” the very techniques that modern martial arts have eliminated and are using them to promote their classes and sell their books.

With a point of view that spans almost seventy years in the martial arts I am aware of how the so called traditional martial arts were modified and how the most brutal and effective techniques based upon Chin Na techniques were removed in favor of safer and more sports-oriented methods and techniques.

It seems odd to me that the same critics from the self-defense industry, although using and teaching Chin Na techniques such as those that “seal the breath” (crushing the throat) or cause unconsciousness through the autonomic nervous system (brachial stun), are apparently ignorant of the origin of these techniques in true traditional martial arts.

In my article entitled “The Medical Implications of Combat Tai Chi Chuan Techniques, Investigating Blunt Force Trauma, Part 2," also published in Lift Hands, you will find the following statement and quote.

“Liu Jin Sheng is the co-author of the book Chin Na Fa which was written in collaboration with Zhao Jiang. The first edition of the book was issued in July of 1936 as a manual for the Police Academy of Zhejiang province. Liu Jin Sheng stated, "...if you are in command of this technique, you can sway the destiny of the enemy. You can kill your enemy, cause unbearable pain, tear his muscles and sinews, break his bones or make him unconscious for some time and completely disable him to resist. Even a woman or a physically weak man who mastered this technique can curb a strong enemy. This technique demands deftness and skill, not brute force. It is necessary to train oneself daily to make the body flexible and nimble, but "hardness" must be hidden inside this "softness."” (1)

Shaolin Chin Na Fa: Art of Seizing and Grappling by Liu Jin Sheng

One of the easiest areas of the human body to access and damage, especially in an attacker that grabs on to you is the throat. When striking soft targets like the throat drive your hand all the way through the neck until you hit bone.

One of the easiest bones on the upper body to break is the collarbone. My students practice using a downward hammer fist to this bone or the inferior aspect of the palm from the Tai Chi Chuan posture “High Pat on Horse”.

Contemporary approaches to “reality self-defense” are not offering anything new, they have just repackaged traditional Chin Na Fa but failed to give its originators, teachers, and authors of books on the subject any credit. If your traditional martial art has been stripped of its Chin Na Fa roots then I agree with the critics, it is most likely ineffective in addressing violent encounters. But if your martial art utilizes, trains, and drills on Chin Na techniques then you should be well prepared to handle the most violent of encounters. You fight how you train.

Violence – Unexpected and Sudden

Violence in its various forms can appear in the life of anyone, and when it does it usually does so unexpectedly and suddenly. No one is immune to violence. The best way to avoid violence in your life is to be aware and to be prepared.

I have found that in general people who have not experienced violence in their lives have little interest in learning how to avoid it or deal with it. But people who have suffered from, and survived, violence are eager to learn selfdefense.

Unfortunately, many who are either fearful of potential violence in their lives or who have been the victims of violence or abuse run to the nearest gun store to purchase a weapon. It would be far better if they learned the mental, emotional, and spiritual abilities needed to avoid or defuse aggression and violence when possible. When it is not possible to avoid violence, those with self-defense training will be better able to handle those situations.

Above your shoulders you have a head with a brain in it that is the most advanced processing computer ever created. Your conscious and unconscious brain are capable of processing 11 million pieces of information a second. If you train your body and mind correctly you can take in critical information, reach a decision, and act in microseconds. In our training classes we train to deliver crippling attacks against an aggressor in one second or less. When you have determined that you are facing a threat to your life the time for hesitation has passed, it is time to act. (2)

Assume the Worst, Train for the Worst

In reality-based martial art self-defense training we train for the worst possible scenarios, and we know that if we are prepared for the worst-case scenario, we can always modulate and down-regulate the intensity of our attack as specific circumstances allow. We can do the same thing in the street, but we need to possess the capability to deliver an attack to an assailant that is destructive and that completely incapacitates the assailant.

Many of the practices and techniques of the martial arts are too complex to be effective in life threatening attacks when the brain and body are under extreme stress and fear. Effective self-defense techniques must be simple and reduced to as few movements as possible.

Keep your techniques simple, but destructive. An effective technique to the groin will shut down the autonomic nervous system, drop an assailant instantly, and may result in vomiting and unconsciousness.

When using the knee to attack the groin, drive the knee into the genitals as if you are trying to push your knee out the other side of the assailant’s body. One of my instructors used this technique on an attacker in a bus station restroom and broke the assailant’s pelvis in two locations. That is how it’s done correctly!

Many modern martial artists and self-defense instructors have not figured out how to separate the beauty of the art from the brutality of effective fighting and they confuse the two. I may practice the violin, but I will not use a violin in place of a knife in a fight. I know the difference between techniques that stop an assailant in a heartbeat and those techniques that will not be effective and will likely get me injured or killed. Rather than attempt a wrist-lock on a chemically altered drug addict attacking me with a knife, I will opt for deflecting the knife and crushing their throat. Assume the worst possible scenario and train for the worst possible circumstances.

Conclusion

It is my hope that by writing this article you will take steps to safeguard yourself and your family. It is also my hope that you will realize that the greatest self-defense weapon that you have is your mind, but that you must prepare it through spiritual, mental, and emotional training and conditioning. You must remain aware and prepared. In conclusion I would also state that in presenting my experience, observations, and opinions in this article, and other similar ones that I have written, that I have no conflict of interest. I do not charge for teaching martial arts or self-defense and the books and materials that I have written are free to the public.

References:

1. Shaolin Chin Na Fa: Art of Seizing and Grappling, by Liu Jin Sheng, Shan Wu, Shanghai, China, 1936 (Copyright Andrew Timofeevich 2005). 2. Information Processing Speed in Clinical Populations (Studies on Neuropsychology, Neurology and

Cognition) 1st Edition by John DeLuca (Editor), Jessica H. Kalmar (Editor), July 24, 2015, Routledge, 27

Church Road, East Sussex, BN3 2FA, UK

Photography Credit and Assistance:

Many thanks to the gifted and talented photographer Abass Ali for his excellent images and to Sifu John Aldred and Mohamed Jabateh who assisted this effort as “attackers” and “defenders”. Sifu John Aldred is a highly trained and skilled martial artist who has trained with me and beside me for over two decades. Both Abass Ali and Mohamed Jabateh are talented and dedicated martial artists who have trained with me for the past nine years. I must mention that we have a very good time staging and taking these photographs with lots of unusable photos because we are laughing so much that we can’t keep a “threatening face”.

Authors Note:

The “gun” used in the first photograph in this article, and that is modelled by MJ Jabateh, not a firearm. It is a Bryna non-lethal self-protection weapon that launches hard rubber balls and balls that contain pepper spray. It effectively stops assailants without taking a life.

About the author:

Gregory T. Lawton, D.C., D.N., D.Ac. is a chiropractor, naprapath, and acupuncturist. He is the founder of the Blue Heron Academy of Healing Arts and Sciences where he teaches biomedicine, medical manual therapy, and Asian medicine. Dr. Lawton is nationally board certified in radiology, physiotherapy, manual medicine, and acupuncture. He was the vice president of the Physical and Athletic Rehabilitation Center which provided physical therapy for professional athletes, Olympians, and victims of closed head and spinal cord injuries.

Since the early 1960s Dr. Gregory T. Lawton has studied and trained in Asian religion, philosophy, and martial arts such as Aikido, Jujitsu, Kenpo/kempo, and Tai Chi Chuan. Dr. Lawton served in the U.S. Army between 1965 and 1968 achieving the rank of Sergeant E-5.

Dr. Lawton’s most noted Asian martial art instructor was Professor Huo Chi-Kwang who was a student of Yang Shao Hou.