Want to learn an effective shortcut to making a lasting change in your self, your beliefs, behaviors, and the perceptions others have of you?
The traditional method involves an honest introspection of who you are and how you want to be different. Using this method, eventually the ‘outside’ you matches your inside attitudes and beliefs as you manage to change yourself, and eventually others will begin perceive you as you truly ‘are’. As an example, once you stop feeling shy, you will no longer appear shy to others, and they will treat you as though you are confident. This way can be described as ‘from the inside, out’.
The shortcut method involves acting on the outside the way you want to perceive yourself on the inside. Moving confidently leads to others reacting to you as if you were confident, leading to confidence. This way can be described as from ‘the outside, in’.
The outside in method is particularly effective when used to change how one communicates through body language and movement.
A six-week course in how to walk as though you shouldn’t be messed with has been shown to have a longer lasting effect on predator’s perceptions of vulnerability in potential victims than a six-week course in self-defense. (Book, Costello and Camiller 2013)
This maybe is because a six week course in self defense is not of long enough duration to change a person’s deep perceptions of their own ability to defend themselves, where as just learning to change one’s walking style doesn’t require a fundamental change in who one thinks they are.
You walk ‘as if’, not as ‘really are’.
In the following short clip a group of students are practicing stride lengthening in our Thinking Self Defense training.
Like the hunting lions described in our previous post, There are Lions out there, human social predators rely on their eyes to give them cues on choosing a potential victim.
An individual’s manner of moving can influence the perceptions of observers. Studies have shown that movement cues can reveal aspects of personality, life satisfaction, and sexual orientation. Body language is also symptomatic of an individual’s level of vulnerability – indicating dominance or submissiveness, powerfulness, self-confidence, vulnerability to assault, and history of physical and psychological injury.
As this applies to self-defense, research has directly tied specific movement cues found within an individual’s manner of walking to the likelihood of being victimized through assault.
If your way of walking includes the following ways of moving, you are likely to be seen as more vulnerable to attack.
Short strides
Lifting or shuffling steps
Constrained (tight) shoulder and arm movement
Constrained hip movement
Hesitant or slow pace
Confusion or distraction
Impaired walk (by injury or clothing)
However, if your way of walking includes the following ways of moving, you will be seen as less vulnerable to attack.
Lengthened stride
Swinging foot placement
Swinging arm movement
Unconstrained torso/hip movement
Direct pace
Attentive
Unimpaired (full body) movement
In a study by Book, Costello and Camiller (2013) this second set of movement cues is found to be effective in conveying a perception of assertion and less vulnerability to a group of criminals who were serving time for crimes involving physical assault.
Like animals in ‘nature’, human social predators seek signs that signal vulnerability in a potential target in order to increase the likelihood of a successful attack. Movement cues that signal you are less vulnerable, mean you are less likely to be a potential victim.
We teach these easily learned movement cues in our workshop Thinking Self Defense as an essential element of the second level of the three level pyramid described in the post: The Pyramid of Self Defense
Imagine you are a lion, crouching in the grass, hungry, and watching a herd of potential prey; what exactly would you be looking for as you choose your victim? Why one, and not another?
You want success, and the least amount of effort, for the maximum gain. No fight where you could possibly be hurt, no long exhausting chase, and no crowd of others to intervene.
As a predator, you’re attuned to movement cues that broadcast an individual’s strength or vulnerability, even as it stays within the herd.
Some move in a fluid way that promises a fight, or a long and possibly fruitless chase. Others gather in groups, and you know not to charge into a ring of antlers. You wait and scan, knowing your prey will send a message through its movement.
In the herd there are always a few that look hesitant, unsure, constrained, maybe injured, or old, or just not alert to the potential in your presence. You’ll wait for one of those to fall behind, or separate itself from its companions, making it your obvious choice. Then you move.
We call it ‘Nature’, the world of predators and prey. It is also our world.
In our cultural evolution we have moved beyond the life of hunter and hunted, yet in the DNA of our own nature, the deep past remains. Today’s human predators still rely on the ancient skill of reading non-verbal cues that can reveal assertiveness and strength, or vulnerability to victimization.
There is a language to movement, and you are telling others about yourself every time you move. Learning the basic ‘tells’ that communicate “don’t mess with me”, is one of the most effective means of keeping yourself safe.
In our workshop Thinking Self Defensewe teach the basic movements that help keep you safe.
The self-defense situations that you watch in the movies and television will be no help to you in figuring out what to do in a real life situation. No matter what you may imagine you will do if you find yourself in a difficult situation, there will be one major difference between the movie and reality. This difference will occur on a cellular level, as a sudden flash of feeling, and how you will deal with it has already been set by evolution.
it all comes down to adrenaline. In a threatening situation the sudden ‘flash’ of adrenaline into your bloodstream causes a reaction that was put there eons ago through the evolutionary process. This reaction manifests as a three way choice, you either Fight, take Flight, or Freeze.
Fight
Flight
Freeze
Freezing may work well for animals in the wild that become aware of a predator before it sees them. Predators are alert to motion, and freezing may allow their prey to remain unseen. Predators also know not to eat already dead animals, and animals that ‘freeze’ in order to appear dead (playing Possum) will be often left alone to survive.
Unfortunately, freezing is exactly the wrong thing to do when a human means you harm. Action, either Fight or Flight, or a combination of the two, will be what is required for self-preservation.
In the cinema, everyone always acts, dishing out rough justice to perpetrators of all kinds. Women weighing 50 Kilos regularly destroy bad guys weighing twice as much. In real life?…not so much.
In the real world, the outcome will be based on Fight, Flight, or Freeze.
Amenability is a character trait that is useful in everyday life. It means that you are easy to get along with, flexible and responsive. People with this character trait will be popular, approachable, and helpful. They are ‘nice’ people, and most people have a desire to appear nice, as it is a helpful characteristic as one makes their way in the social world. Being amenable is a way of being lucky, as it allows the world and circumstances to bring things towards you. It is a great characteristic to have, as long as it is not your only option of how to behave in social situations.
Gavin de Becker has an excellent book, The Gift of Fear. In this book, he describes the Elevator scenario:
“A woman is waiting for an elevator, and when the doors open she sees a man inside who causes her apprehension. Since she is not usually afraid, it may be the late hour, his size, the way he looks at her, the rate of attacks in the neighborhood, an article she read a year ago—it doesn’t matter why. The point is, she gets a feeling of fear. How does she respond to nature’s strongest survival signal? She suppresses it, telling herself: “I’m not going to live like that, I’m not going to insult this guy by letting the door close in his face.” When the fear doesn’t go away, she tells herself not to be so silly, and she gets into the elevator. Now, which is sillier: waiting a moment for the next elevator, or getting into a soundproofed steel chamber with a stranger she is afraid of?” http://gavindebecker.com/resources/book/the_gift_of_fear/
In de Becker’s example, the woman is amenable, and places herself in a potentailly dangerous position because she is being ‘nice’. If one is naturally amenable, one has to develop a non-amenable self for self-defense situations where it is important to be wary and able to set clear physical and social boundaries.
Nice is easy…and not nice is difficult, especially for nice people.
Effective self -defense training helps one develop options. More options allow more versatility in self-defense situations, and more versatility means a greater chance of staying safe.
Without options people tend to fall back on their particular evolutionary reaction, with its four basic paths; flight, fight, freeze, or faint. Though your body’s innate reaction may work to keep you safe, chances are it may not, and it is always best to have a trained option when it is time to respond to a threat to your personal safety.
Training creates ‘space and time’ to evaluate the situation before deciding on a response. Where does the space and time come from? It comes from practice, from having already found yourself in a ‘pretend’ threatening situation, where it is possible to try out techniques and responses, to gauge their effectiveness.
In this way you can eliminate the responses that won’t work for you based on body type and physical strength, (i.e.. A 60 kilo woman cannot hit like a 90 kilo man), and you can practice adjusting your outward behavior in order to stop potential threatening situations from escalating into physical confrontation. (see post: Nice, or Not?)
Preparation for things that may never happen isn’t a waste of time. If a self-defense situation does occur your preparation may make the difference between just another day in your life, and the day your life changed irrevocably.
A baby’s life force energy is fresh, unstressed, and free. Still unaffected by the world we live in, the baby rolls around, kicking and waving at the air, making all sorts of sounds, uninhibited by nature. The ‘force is strong’ with them. They sleep with their mouths closed and their tongues touching the roofs of their mouths.
The life force of an old person approaching their last days is weak, hesitant, and thin. Worn down by the years, they move slowly, limbs stiff, voices soft, inhibited by age itself. They sleep with their mouths open and their tongues lying flat in the bottom of their mouths.
The strong life force of the sleeping baby ‘pulls’ the tongue up against the roof of the mouth, making a connection between the energy that runs up the spine and over the top of the head, and the energy that runs up the front through the chest and neck to the tip of the tongue. The ‘strong force’ works like a magnet, drawing up the tongue and closing the mouth.
In the old person the energy isn’t strong anymore, and the mouth falls open when they aren’t keeping it closed consciously.
Want to hold onto the strong effects of the ‘force’? Develop the habit of keeping your tongue gently pressed to the roof of your mouth whenever you aren’t talking. Where, exactly? Right where your tongue would be if you were about to create the sound for the letter L. This is also the position used for the Breathing Technique.
Feeling states within your body affect the way you breath, and the way you breath can immediately affect the way you feel, creating a closed loop of stress causing stressed breathing, which creates more stress, until you are inordinately, and most completely, stressed.
Since you are always re-programming your brain and body through the actions you choose to repeat, as described in the post shown here: The Prime Enabler, then something that is repeated as often as your breathing has the potential to create not only an immediate effect, but also a long-term ‘state of mind’.
Martial artists, actors, singers, spies, and people who find themselves in high stress situations are taught a simple breathing technique to help them stay calm. It is the identical technique that is used in advanced meditation practice, when calming the body/mind becomes a pre-requisite for development.
The main issue with breath control and other body oriented techniques is that they work at a different pace than the mind oriented speed of normal life in the modern world. The most common mistake people make when approaching techniques and practices that are meant to create physical changes is that they ‘try it a few times, then move on’. Physical practices do not move at the ‘digital’ speed we have become accustomed to in our modern world.
They move more at the speed of the sun, moon, and seasons, continuous and unhurried.
Our human species also used to move at this speed, and our bodies developed their present forms and abilities in relation to that rhythm.To the modern human this calls for unusual patience, like waiting for an Internet connection on Dial-up. The important point being, you ‘get’ the physical changes at a speed that feels very slow, more like the changing of the tides than the turning on of a light.
Sit on the edge of a chair so that your spine is straight; place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. When you take a deep breath in, the hand on your abdomen should rise higher than the one on your chest. This insures that the diaphragm is pulling air into the base of the lungs.
1. After exhaling through the nose, take a slow deep breath in through your nose for a count of 3 (or as long as you are able, not exceeding 3)
2. Slowly exhale through your nose for a count of 5. As all the air is released with relaxation, gently contract your abdominal muscles to completely push the remaining air from the lungs. It is important to remember that you deepen respiration not by inhaling more air but by completely exhaling it.
3. Repeat the cycle eight more times for a total of 9 deep breaths.
In general, exhalation should be longer than the inhalation. The use of the hands on the chest and abdomen are only needed to help you train your breathing. Once you feel comfortable with your ability to breathe into the abdomen, they are no longer needed.
Here is a video showing the technique, in this case the person demonstrating is sitting on the floor, we recommend sitting on the edge of a chair.
There are a million videos out there showing variations on this technique, most of them containing psycho-spiritual mumbo-jumbo and overly complicated instruction. The rule here is: Keep it Simple. Impose a simple demand on your body without a lot of mental links and it will make a simple, and in this case, an extremely worthwhile adaptation.
Once you have the basics to abdominal breathing to such a degree that you don’t have to use your hands on your torso for guidance, but can just feel whether you belly is moving in concert with your breath, it is time to ‘use it’ for effect in your life.
The next time you are in a stressful, frustrating, or boring situation, take a moment to focus your attention to your breathing. Chances are you will be ‘chest breathing’. Change your breathing to abdominal breathing by focusing on it for a minute or so. The change in your breathing will have a calming and centering effect on your body, and consequently, your emotions. This may sound too simple for belief, but this lowering of the breath from the upper chest to the lower abdomen is the primary technique for almost all ‘personal development’ methods. With a little practice, when it becomes your normal method of breathing, you will have a tool that is unused by most of the adult world.
Want to learn an effective shortcut to making a lasting change in your self, your beliefs, behaviors, and the perceptions others have of you?
Strength and Resilience 