Month: February 2008

Many factors change between day and night and we can use this to our benefit. For example do the simple walking drill when you walk into a partner and they have to evade but with the thought to keep the sun at your back so he will have a problem to see you and learn to work through this difficulty. Another way is to wear sunglasses and than turn on bright lights in a dark room and work your way out of there. The principle is clean and your use of it can vary according to the situation. Use your head and in the logical way for it.

Learn to rest on other positions or mindsets. For example do your push ups or squats and start each one from the end position. Start the push up with your chest touching the ground or the squat from the lowest position. Learn to adapt your breathing to this different status and remember habits starts serving you but you end up serving them.

Sit on the ground holding your rifle or broomstick in your hands ready. Have a partner or more walk through you and you need to get away and up without placing your rifle barrel on the ground. Your partners can push and pull you using their legs, body and hands and you need to keep thinking about the open space around you so you can move and work. Speed up the drill as you go till you have people running at you and note how you can do more than one thing at the same time and be more effective. (to simulate the rifle barrel avoid placing the broom beard on the ground)

Once you are up, give the rifle to someone else and change the roles. Remember not to harm yourself and do the least harm to others to get the job done.

A simple game. One person holds a paper page and the others try to rip it out or make him release it. It is a drill that does not allow a tug of war and lets you work with material that is fragile. It is important not to rely on your gear and to know it can fail some times.

Take a broom stick and hold it overhead. Walk around and pay attention to the feeling in your feet as you move the stick around and the balance of the mass and muscle tension shifts constantly. Now sit down and get up and note how you can do this as you use the broom to help you move using the least amount of tension. Move forward to rolling using your breath first and relaxing again into your feet slowly cleaning yourself tension and bad posture. Now change the positions of the broom holding it with any combination of palms facing you or not and holding it at the ends and the middle and in any position you can think of. Work with your eyes closed as well and use the broom as an extention of your eyes.

Relax your eyes and use everything you have.

Close your eyes and let your partner come at you and touch or hold or strike you in various places. As you become aware of it. Tense up your body and breathe. Do this many times and every time lessen the tension bit by bit or tense only parts of you and this will aid in getting over the fear tension from being touched or surprised while you can still use it for your own good. Next have a person come and grab you in some way as you close your eyes and for example if you are held by one hand reach with your free hand to his throat or anywhere else according to what you feel by the grab. Follow this through and find how you can know where his body is and where is he going according to the touch and don’t expect to get to 100%, we are human. Follow this by moving and being grabbed and continuing your movement  both with the held part (s) and the free parts to get away all while your eyes are closed. It will greatly help you in keeping your wits in a hard situation and in developing your body awareness other than sight.

concentrate on the feet next time you roll from standing to the ground. Roll slowly with eyes closed and check if you are bracing your feet to support an imbalanced position as you hesitate or tense up with fear against the fall. Breathe and relax from the feet and note if the roll is different now. Pay attention to everything and the fear will be just one of them.

Choose a task from cleaning your rifle to making breakfast for the children and do it all in breath pauses between breaths and recovery. This can prepare you for getting people out of toxic enviroments and the like. remember it is not what you do that counts the most but the deliberation.

Have a partner grab you in many different ways (hand, neck arm and so on) and as he grabs or levels pay attention to where is he leading you and what are the directions he is strong in and weak in. Now add a push or a pull to this and as they start to move add your movement in the same direction as they move and take control of the movement by momentarily joining it and letting go (escaping) this is similar to tensing up and taking more space and than relaxing and escaping through the space only here you add the movement to it. This is a thought I had after working with hard pulls with several partners and this is the way I choose to escape sometimes. Find what works for you.

This is a very simple drill, simple is not easy.

have two or more friends try to pull and push you toward a destination. It can be anything and your job is to escape and stay at another point using only evading and positioning such as slipping away, escaping from holds and the like. The two who are pushing and pulling will use force as well and it will help you learn to give no support after you first tense up against a push/pull and note how it works on you better if you “resist”

Be aware of your breath all the time and let it guide you. With no breath there is no life.