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 deescalation since deescalation 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.
ALSO:
Open Monitoring or Active Awareness
A new concept of an ancient practice. Being present is a particular way is crucial in conflict. An awareness and focus that is both direct and all encompassing with no intrusions of either past or present other than what the mind requires to make sense of the present moment.
Mindfulness is the key, learning to concentrate the mind internally to achieve a level of focus/concentration that leads to an ability to mindfully take in many things in the present moment. Meditation, both moving and sitting quietly, are the practices that will train the mind. Once a level of competence is achieved then it can be incorporated into your practice.
I like to meditate on the breathe. My focus is on it and its processes, feeling it not just mentally noting it. I try to achieve a concentration/focus on the breathe and the processes as well as feeling my body, parts or in general, for tensions, etc. I have learned that if you can achieve a proficiency of brining your mind, and body, back to the moment this way it can lead to the practice of open monitoring.
This is merely the focus/concentration of the singular anchor and graduating to a meditation and practice of wide-n-spacious attentive focus/concentration of many things. It takes the singular to the multiple awareness of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and sounds that surround you wherever you go and at any moment of the consciousness of daily activities. Think of this like active listening but as active awareness. You are present as each moment unfolds in the present. You open your attention/focus/awareness to an array of experiences without getting caught up in either the content of the moment or those past/future stories it may trigger once experienced. Your instincts are allowed to see and hear the moment and in practice you train the mind to act if needed or just experience.
This is the training method you need to achieve a level of proficiency that can transcend the stationary meditative present moment practice into one that incorporates movement then on to such practice as karate or any system, martial or not.
"Be Aware ... of each experience ... as it enters your moment, your consciousness ... bring it the attentive focus necessary to "experience" the feeling and effect ... whether a sight, sound, image, thought, emotion, or sensation."
Regulate your attention from singular to wide-open, note the activity and its relevance, and then start to regulate it actively. Being actively aware means bringing the appropriate concentration/focus into play correctly and at times needed. Controlling the monkey.
You need a focused-attention for some things like listening to Sensei as Instruction is conducted the a more open-attention to allow all awareness to flow in the present moment to achieve a more creative awareness.
Meditative practice is the fundamental and moving meditative active awareness practice, such as waza and kata, are the extensions to the fundamentals that one can tweak as they progress along or parallel to Sensei's instruction.
This will lead us to a type of awareness that is important to a karate-ka. It is a type of awareness that flows between these two and achieves an awareness that promotes the ability to "see" and "hear" a situation "clearly." It allows the mind to have an appropriate response when trained and connected properly in practice. It becomes a discriminating awareness where the mind can naturally and instinctively achieve action without thought. It is a relaxed state with a trained active awareness that flows with each moment. Sound familiar? Isn't this a trait often discussed with traditional training of un-encumbering the mind so it can do things quickly and naturally and instinctively?
Focused singular awareness (micro awareness) + all encompassing wide-open awareness (macro-awareness) = a discriminative awareness (balanced-awareness?). Yes? No? Any suggestions?
ALSO:
Situational Awareness
First, define situational, i.e., situational means, “manner of being situated; location or position with reference to environment; a place or locality; condition; case; plight; the state of affairs; combination of circumstances; Sociology. The aggregate of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors acting on an individual or group to condition behavioral patterns.”
Second, define awareness, i.e., awareness means, “knowledge or perception of a situation or fact (consciousness, recognition, realization, etc.); concern about and well-informed interest in a particular situation or development (understanding, grasp, appreciation, knowledge, insight, familiarity and cognizance.); the ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.”
Third, lets see what comes up when we try to define situational awareness, i.e., “the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening to the team with regard to the mission. More simply, it's knowing what is going on around you; the perception of environmental elements with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time, or some other variable, such as a predetermined event; being aware of what is happening in the vicinity, in order to understand how information, events, and one's own actions will impact goals and objectives, both immediately and in the near future. One with an adept sense of situation awareness generally has a high degree of knowledge with respect to inputs and outputs of a system, i.e. an innate "feel" for situations, people, and events that play out due to variables the subject can control.”
“A cumulative alertness to threat and the environment. Enabling you to notice pre-incident indicators, odd movements or anomalies given the situation. Cumulatively, pre-incident indicators create a visual unlikely circumstance consistent with either a contrived situation or predatorial behavior."- Kelly McCann
Talk about a mouth full, it helps to understand why this particular term used in self-defense teachings can stray far and away of what one would really need to be situationally aware when in situations that could lead to violence. When discussing situational awareness the student must also understand things like, “Situational understanding, assessment, mental models, and Sense-making.”
Situational Understanding: In the context of military command and control applications, situational understanding refers to the "product of applying analysis and judgment to the unit's situation awareness to determine the relationships of the factors present and form logical conclusions concerning threats to the force or mission accomplishment, opportunities for mission accomplishment, and gaps in information".
Situational Assessment: it is important to distinguish the term situation awareness, as a state of knowledge, from the processes used to achieve that state. These processes, which may vary widely among individuals and contexts, will be referred to as situational assessment or the process of achieving, acquiring, or maintaining SA." Thus, in brief, situation awareness is viewed as "a state of knowledge," and situational assessment as "the processes" used to achieve that knowledge.
Mental Model: Accurate mental models are one of the prerequisites for achieving SA. A mental model can be described as a set of well-defined, highly organized yet dynamic knowledge structures developed over time from experience. Experienced decision makers assess and interpret the current situation and select an appropriate action based on conceptual patterns stored in their long-term memory as "mental models". Cues in the environment activate these mental models, which in turn guide their decision making process.
Sense-making: situation awareness is about the knowledge state that's achieved—either knowledge of current data elements, or inferences drawn from these data, or predictions that can be made using these inferences. In contrast, Sense-making is about the process of achieving these kinds of outcomes, the strategies, and the barriers encountered; Sense-making is viewed more as "a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively", rather than the state of knowledge underlying situation awareness; Sense-making is actually considering a subset of the processes used to maintain situation awareness; In the vast majority of the cases, SA is instantaneous and effortless, proceeding from pattern recognition of key factors in the environment; Sense-making is backward focused, forming reasons for past events, while situation awareness is typically forward looking, projecting what is likely to happen in order to inform effective decision processes.
Situational Awareness is a critical decision-making state of mind. It is not a constant state but one that is usually triggered by instincts developed through experience, training, practice and understanding so that a trigger event will turn on SA and that will allow the operator to achieve proper defensive states to achieve goals be it civil self-defense for a non-professional to proper tactical and strategic goals for the professional.
What constitutes the atomistic of SA comes from implementation of the other related concepts, i.e., SU, SA, MM and SM as described above. Each environment, each social group dynamic, each social belief system and so on dictates in any given moment what happens and what should be done to achieve goals, i.e., restraint or defense, etc.
As can be seen just in this short terse article the concepts toward awareness in martial arts training for professionals or civil self-defense can be complex. It is imperative students of MA-SD be exposed to, trained in and application of awareness if for no other reason then to identify the road markers that broadcast danger is down the road and it involves violence. It also speaks to how a person should become aware of themselves and as to their thoughts and actions according to any given moment because a lot of violence can be avoided by that type of awareness, i.e., in any given situation having an awareness of our own monkey’s, the monkey’s response and making a conscious decision to ignore the ego emotional monkey crap and make good decisions, etc.
In closing, there are a variety of awareness concepts that should be made part of self-defense martial arts training or self-defense training all used to set off your spidey sense so you can actually avoid violence, etc.
ALSO:
The Totality of Awareness ...
“Awareness: if the person doesn't pay attention or doesn't recognize a problem, no skill in the world will help. They need to learn how to be watchful and what they are watching for, which will cover a lot of crime/violence patterns.” - Marc MacYoung
There are a variety of models used to describe “awareness.” This post is an attempt, by me, to provide as many models of awareness with short descriptions as I can for the martial artists and/or the self-defense student. It is very easy to learn one or two aspects of awareness and then decide that is the whole of the large topic of awareness.
In martial arts awareness is often describe in very narrow ways and it is important to know and understand that the totality of awareness, if it is to be used in combative, fighting or defensive situations, one should at least be aware of all the models.
In the martial arts they teach a limited term toward explanation of awareness, they call it, “Zanshin,” meaning the state when the mind is fully vigilant and aware of its surroundings; when the mind remains still without being attached to anything and is totally present during every moment and action in the here and now.
As you can determine from this short descriptive terminology the martial artist that does not seek out additional knowledge on the subject may limit their ability to defend in a conflict and/or violent situation. The next grouping of terms with definitions provide a somewhat comprehensive listing of awareness subjects that should inspire further research and study toward another larger and complex concept the self-defense community uses in study, training and practices of self-defense.
Awareness of our own body: Understanding those sub-principles of physiokinetic’s along with anatomical weapons and weaknesses - anatomy, physiology, and kinesthetic’s - your own posture, structure, movement patterns, rhythms and tendencies. (Physical Awareness?)
Awareness of the adversary’s body: All the same things apply. Both trained through touch and sight senses to know what the body, both yours and his, is doing now but what it can and will do. Sensing actions an adversary is about to make, i.e., sensing the tells with touch/tactile and sight, such as by slight contact/tactile, by sensing shifts in balance and rotation around the spine. (Physical Awareness?)
Awareness of the situation: To perceive and use our environment to your advantage. (Situational Awareness?)
Awareness of the dynamics: The recognition of the pre-assault indicators so you can prevent/counter the situation. Dealing with the situation dependent on social or asocial situations, i.e., the monkey dance vs. predatorial attacks. Development of a ruthless dedication dealing with the situation in the moment as it is and not responding to imagined fears or wishful thinking. Lean about the predictability of violence. Lean how you contribute to or create the potential for violence. Know when physical skills are necessary and when they are not. (Dynamic Awareness?)
Awareness of duty, beliefs, and your place in life: Develop your “go” buttons. Gaining an internal, deep, understanding as to what it is you are going to fight for, die for, or kill for along with what you can or cannot do. To consider your capability vs. your capacity in conflict and violence let alone in ever day life - distinguishing the differences, etc. Know the difference between learning a thing vs. actually applying a thing especially in regard to violence. You need to be aware of your capacity to do things before you have to do them. Know what must be done, give yourself permission to do what must be done and the do it. No hesitation, no wind-up/tells, no telegraphing, just act when it is time to act with being aware of what needs to be done. Decide up front, ahead of any situation, what you feel is worth fighting for, dying for, or killing for then act decisively when the line is crossed - your go button. Commit to never making half-assed decisions. In defensive situations be aware, know what needs to be done - Do IT! Train to switch from friendly/social to fighting - IN AN INSTANT. (Ideological Awareness?)
Criminal Awareness: Lean how the criminal element thinks and acts especially when it comes to how they attack. Lean the differences between criminal use of both social and asocial types of violence. Understand the criminal has more experience dealing with you, more than you have dealing with criminals. Lean to set aside your social friendly side and allow your fighting/survival/animal side rise up to deal with the criminal decisively be it through verbal or physical means as appropriate to each situation.
Danger Awareness: Performing a personal threat assessment for yourself, your family, your home, your work place, your neighborhood and those places you go to or travel through in daily life. Lean to see when things change and what the circumstances are those that cause the changes. Lean how criminals fill their different needs. Lean how criminals choose their targets and how they attack in different ways. Lean that their goal drives every aspect of the attack. Lean to analyze danger signals by telling what is social vs. asocial vs. predator resource processes. Lean to recognize the signs of adrenal flooding, i.e., such as how to tell experienced the adversary is when adrenalized.
Environmental Awareness: Lean, know and avoid places where bad stuff happens - know the qualities, the difference between social and asocial, both are predictable. Lean about social, group and alcohol monkey stuff vs. asocial resource predator goals. For asocial predators how they use isolation to achieve goals, i.e., learn about staying in area’s where isolation is preventable and escape avenues are available and accessible. Lean to quickly and easily see the differences between safe environments and unsafe environments. Lean to read terrain. Recognize the social scripts vs. the absence of normal social cues. Lean about proxemics, orientation between humans and foot placement, i.e., normal social interactions vs. attack stances, etc.
Mindful Awareness: Awareness is being mindful. Mindful is an inclination to be aware or having awareness. It is a certain vigilance in observing what one experiences. To have "Mindful Awareness" one is to be aware of awareness. This implies that one is aware of self and has a capacity to reflect. This experience is not limited to conflict of fighting yet it must be taught and practiced by individuals so they remain aware of all the present moment experiences that may or may not include any form of conflict. Remain aware of the self to control our actions and reactions as we experience life and what it offers us at each and every unique moment, not past or future but the now of the moment as fleeting as it is or may be.
Self-Awareness: Becoming conscious of one’s own character, personality, feelings, motives, and desires. Creating a capacity for self-perception thus becoming self-conscious. It is becoming a person with the ability and capacity for introspection. To recognize oneself but most important to achieve a level of emotional intelligence so as to recognize one’s feelings and emotions with emphasis on emotions.
The result is a knowledge and intelligence toward over very feelings. Feelings that govern our thoughts and reactions. To know if our thoughts and emotions are ruling a decision rather than the human mind, i.e. the monkey is driving the bus. It is about seeing deep within so that one can see the consequences of allowing the monkey to dance so that alternative human mind choices can be made and then apply them to create decisions about handling such things as conflict, anger and violence, etc.
Self-awareness is about recognizing and acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses; seeing within yourself a self that is positive and realistic so as to avoid the more common pitfalls that come from the effects of allowing the monkey free reign in conflicts.
Managing the monkey means managing your emotions and to do that you have to have that emotional intelligence so as to identify, name and address such emotional effects. You need to realize what is behind such emotions such as when some perceived hurt triggers anger when that hurt is more emotional than actual or real.
SA is about taking responsibility for the self, i.e. the human, the monkey and the lizard, so all your decisions and actions are right, correct and acceptable to society as a whole.
It is about the ability to see reality so that you can distinguish between what someone says or does so that your own judgment and reaction is appropriate to the situation at any given moment. It is about being assertive over being angry or fearful. It is about creating the ability to provide conflict resolutions to yourself and thereby to others as conflicts arise.
Look at it as Aristotle did so long ago, it is about developing a higher level of emotional intelligence or as he said, “Emotional Skillfulness.”
Situational Awareness: Having the ability to read the environment and the process of accurately assessing particular situations within an environment. Primarily to monitor when things are normal for that environment and therefore safe.
"Awareness without knowledge is paranoia." ~ Marc MacYoung
If you don't know what normal is for a situation, there is no way you can tell when something is abnormal, much less dangerous. Situational awareness is more than just receiving information (looking around and being 'aware'). It's having a working knowledge to process that incoming data, shift through, file and pick out anomalies -- especially ones commonly associated with trouble, unacceptable behavior and danger.
Situational awareness, but one of it's foundations, environmental knowledge. What is environmental knowledge (EK)? Well, it's kind of like a blend between cultural anthropology, psychology, data collection and reading. But most of all it's knowing that you can know this stuff and apply it.
Anywhere you go, there are certain elements that must be addressed when humans live together. Knowing that is the first step in understanding EK.
Among the many issues that must be worked out among the locals is acceptable distances between different people, personal space and tone of voice appropriate to the situation. These change according to the relationship and the task. There are also scripted behaviors and patterns on how you 'handle' different situations.
When you deal with the person there are differences in attitudes, values and beliefs. What are they? That is environmental knowledge. You cannot assume every one of the same skin color thinks and behaves the same way.
What are the cultural norms? What are the socio-economic differences between places? What behavior is acceptable among the locals and for that situation?
Why? How can you tell when something is abnormal, if you can't identify what is normal? Without the baseline of environmental knowledge, your situational awareness is meaningless.
The people, the places, what they do and the time they do them, that's environmental knowledge. Fictional or not, that's a good starting point.
“You're smart, so if you don't understand something, it's not because you're incapable. It's because you're missing information. You need to start asking questions to fill in that missing information instead of making assumptions about what fills in the gap.” ~ Marc MacYoung
Kind of hard to have situational awareness without having a clue about what the components are. What the process is. How you apply it. What are you looking for and why? Most of all, what's involved in developing it?
“ … start working at replacing your assumptions with verifiable knowledge of the environment.” ~ Marc MacYoung
SSgt Grizzly Bear has a saying, "Ignorance is not a sustainable paradigm in violence professions."
Self Defense - It is a legal standard your behavior must meet given the circumstances and the level of danger.
Someone asks me to teach them situational awareness I can immediately rattle off three questions
1) For what kind of environment?
2) For what kind of circumstances?
3) How deep do you want to go?
The answers to those three questions will determine the details and the depth of situational awareness. Three, the triad toward SA, is environmental knowledge, rule knowledge, and domain knowledge as explained:
1. Environmental Knowledge (EK) is understanding the general makeup of a location/area/place/environment. For example, what the people do, when they do it, who they do it with, why they do it, where they do it, and how they do it. Having EK means you see the environment, as it truly exists, not as how you believe it to be. EK requires understanding basic human nature as well as social norms and cultural motivations. And how these desires and attitudes affect the inhabitant’s rules and behaviors. (See Marc MacYoung for the original deeper description of this concept)
2. Rule Knowledge (RK) is understanding “how things work” in the specified Environment. The Environment creates the Rules. All human societies, groups, organizations, tribes, families, etc have some form of Rules of Behavior. These rules are specific to the Environment, but underlying them are universal principles and concepts (that are not so hard to understand). It is not enough to know the environment, you also need to know how the rules guide behaviors, allow people to function/work, and to reward and punish behaviors. You need to know who implements/enforces the rules, what are the rules, how the rules are communicated, how the rules are enforced, how compliance/respect for the rules is shown. Understanding the “rules” of criminal behavior is essential to RK.
3. Domain Knowledge (DK) is having the knowledge and skills to deal with/operate in the specific Environment and to be capable of protecting yourself and others (within reason). It is here that understanding criminal behavior is critical. A major portion of DK is having both EK and RK. It takes EK to derive RK. It takes RK to develop the competency of DK. DK is what most people think of as “how to do self-defense”. What they don’t “see” is the underlying knowledge of when to do something, what to do, why to do it, where to do it, and against whom, or not against whom, and when it works, when it doesn’t, and what to do next.
Situation awareness is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time, or some other variable, such as a predetermined event.
Situation awareness (SA) involves being aware of what is happening in the vicinity, in order to understand how information, events, and one's own actions will impact goals and objectives, both immediately and in the near future. One with an adept sense of situation awareness generally has a high degree of knowledge with respect to inputs and outputs of a system, i.e. an innate "feel" for situations, people, and events that play out due to variables the subject can control.
AND
The ability to see problems looming on the horizon. It is about “being aware,” but the important part of this formula is, “aware of what?” If you are not savvy and know what to be aware of then your situational awareness is just another sound bite and you are going to pay the price for that one.
What you need to know for a fundamentally sound ability of “situational awareness” can be found, at least as a start, in the book titled, “In The Name of Self-Defense,” by Marc MacYoung. Marc states in the book concerning SA, “Awareness without knowledge is paranoia.”
An important statement he goes on to provide is, “In our modern world, personal safety is as much about quality of life as it is about self-defense. How do you synch being safe with the rest of your life - without becoming a paranoid survivalist nutcase?” One final note regarding that knowledge, it must be “accurate knowledge.”
SI is about scaling it up or down according to your location and situation. Think of it as a muscle. Like any muscle you need to exercise it by tightening and relaxing it, called a work out. The purpose here is not about the exercise. It is so you can do other things with those stronger muscles. You build endurance so you can last longer. You use SI so you know when it is safe to relax or when to buy yourself “time” when you need to shift mental gears. Mr. MacYoung provides an exercise or practice that will strengthen your SI muscle, i.e. it is about using both the negative and positive. When you are relaxing that muscle, i.e. exercising it but without the negative drain, you become aware of something beautiful, cool, interesting, or something similar. This positive use of SI counter balances the negative you need when you “need it.” Learn to apply SA to all situations and circumstances. Not focusing on the negative or the bad is the counter to burning out trying to be tactically aware of danger all the time.
As can be seen here this information is not considered complete nor comprehensive but does present some of the complexities that can lead to misunderstanding when training martial arts especially for self-defense (even combative’s and fighting).
One last form of awareness is as follows (although this explanation may belong under other categories of awareness I split it apart because of, my perception, its level of importance.):
Comparative Awareness: A full awareness of the distinctions between such categories of conflict and violence such as between the sports oriented, combative oriented, fighting oriented applications of the psychological and physical methodologies. The ability to distinguish between the different disciplines so that confusion, misunderstandings and misconceptions don’t hinder the application of any or all of said disciplines. There shall be an emphasis toward self-defense because the majority of martial arts in today’s modern society must deal with the social impediments governing the use of conflict and violence to resolve conflict and violence.
In the end, any martial artist who studies, trains and practices this discipline must embrace the full spectrum of the system studied because not have a totality of awareness of such principles leaves holes an adversary can drive a fist or foot though.
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