If I had to say what the most critical trait a person can have and develop when it comes to handling, dealing and defending against aggression and violence it would be, "Awareness and Avoidance." To have an expert, mastery, of awareness and avoidance is at the top of my list. It is what I live by today and promote above and beyond any and all other means such as martial arts skills, the physical, and karate skills, physical as well.
Having the attitude, mind-set and mind-state toward articulation, communications and active listening strategies to enhance and create deep abiding awareness toward the avoidance of aggression and violence is the only true way to keep safe and remain unharmed. If you fail to achieve this then you are really in a bind.
Awareness can and does mean many, many things. There is NO one answer fits all when it comes to awareness so a list would be insufficient to explain how awareness works in all its forms. If you are in this for self-protection then get ready to really research awareness.
In order to avoid, one must be aware of the dangers, limitations and triggers that cause and result in aggression and violence. For instance, an awareness that in karate self-protection the empty hands are ineffective and inefficient to defend and protect against multiple attackers and weapons such as knives and guns, etc.
An awareness of both the social moral and legal system regarding self-protection and the defense of self-defense is also the type of awareness one must achieve to be successful in defense-protection. It also provides knowledge and understanding that is used to prepare and apply avoidance strategies.
Here is something I wrote earlier on awareness that helps understand and it does provide the type of awareness that applied in training and practice helps to understand those strategies and tactics used to avoid aggression and violence.
In our efforts to train for self-fense we coin the word ‘awareness’ and that term or word carries a variety of meaning dependent on certain factors of intent. In karate and martial disciplines awareness becomes something else entirely but in truth there are two kinds of awareness that, for me until this very moment, are divided into two distinct concepts. We have a “Primary Awareness” and we have a “Secondary Awareness.” If you are thinking to yourself, the conscious mind and the unconscious mind you are heading down the right path.
Primary Awareness:
▪ Consists of your current present moment awareness of your conscious mind.
▪ Our minds use primary awareness to focus on the content of the spoken words, etc., but when content, stimulus, exceeds the processing ability of our primary awareness our minds pass it along to the secondary awareness where everything becomes possible.
Secondary Awareness:
▪ Consists of all the other information you have gathered throughout your life, but do not presently realize in your primary awareness, i.e., the storehouse of information residing in your unconscious mind.
▪ Our gut feeling, the spidey sense that tingles telling you something is amiss and take attention to that stimulus to identify the issue, event or action, etc., that is causing you unconscious concern.
▪ Represents everything, awareness, other that your awareness, it is knowledge of the complete resource inventory within your conscious and unconscious mind.
One great issue for both primary and secondary awareness, it is and must be comprised of accumulated information, knowledge, understanding and experiences along with our cultural belief system all who affect how both work at any given moment. If you have no knowledge of and/or experience with (through real-life experiences or experiences through training and practice, etc.) such things then both your primary and secondary awareness have nothing to use in our minds to be of use in that given situational moment. Such as being attacked by a predator by surprise and heavy damage, if you have not experience it or trained for it you will succumb and if you are lucky you will just freeze, take damage and then spend some time at the ER.
Training, practice and experiences are about feeding and developing and making use of the yin-yang of awareness, our primary and secondary awareness abilities of the human mind. Educate that awareness and then consider the content of that training where the other categories of awareness are involved, i.e., “Situational, Physical (both self and adversary), Dynamics (pre-assault indicators, etc.), Duty-beliefs-place in life, Criminal, Danger, Environmental, Mindful and Self.”
Avoidance itself is a topic, subject and skill-set that encompasses a variety of disciplines starting with, awareness of surroundings and dangers then on to listening skills, communications from active listening/articulation and empathy and sympathy of the target of avoidance, i.e., both avoidance and de-escalation since de-escalation is also a tool used in avoidance to stop someone in their tracts from violence, etc.
Avoidance comes in a lot of flavors such as understanding that even if the other person physically attacks your awareness of time and distance allows you to avoid using physical skills if you can place obstacles in the path allowing for opportunities to escape and evade physical attacks and damage.
Avoidance is about attitude, letting the ego go for the sake of safety, security and health, i.e., simply saying, “I’m sorry,” then walking away while giving the adversary a face saving way to let you go and then escaping the premises or environment so you can evade in possible follow-along attempts of your attacker.
Awareness of your ability to be creative while using that creativity to avoid bad things and situations is all a part of being a master of awareness and avoidance, the ultimate goal of ALL self-protection models of legal, social and moral self-defense.
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