7 Essentials for MA students and teachers

Last of the information I'm going to post from the Miller Seminar, I debated back and forth about whether to post this or not, but I feel this is pretty essential information. These are all things most dojos don't cover but SHOULD. This is essential for both students and instructors to know. If you're interested, Meditations on Violence covers everything much more thoroughly. I'll be posting information from and a review of Facing Violence once Sensei Nick brings it back from Singapore and I get a chance to read it. ¬.¬


Self Defense - 7 things you (and your students (or teachers)) NEED to know:

1. Legal and Ethical - Legal - Don't go to prison for doing something you thought was ok. Disarm/disable the attacker and get the heck out. Don't disarm him and then stab him with his own knife and kick him while he writhes in pain on the ground. Ethical - know your own laws. Know where your glitches and lines are, know what you can and can't do.
2. Violence Dynamic - its stupid to study Martial Arts/Self Defense without studying how violent predators attack. That is the question, Martial Arts is the answer. You cannot study the answer without knowing the question. In addition, do not train against stuff that never happens in real life. Study how people really attack and work to that. 
3. Avoidance / Evade and Escape / DeEscalate - Avoidance - Avoid places where violence happens. If violence does happen, Evade and Escape! Run towards safety and away from danger, this means running towards lights and people, remember witnesses, etc. Deescalate - know when you can and when you can't. If someone is in an altered state of mind, you probably won't be able to talk them into calm, rational thought, so best just get out and notify the authorities.
4. Operant Conditioning  - when confronted with a new situation, people go through the OODA loop. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. To limit the amount of time it takes you to get through the OODA loop, you need a decision stick instead of a decision tree. Keep things as simple as possible to narrow down your reaction to Stimulus - Response Stimulus - Response Stimulus - Response etc. 
5. Freeze - EVERYONE freezes, this is normal, the only thing you can do to try to break the freeze is to tell yourself to do something, and then you have to make yourself do it. Then you'll want to freeze again, so you have to make yourself do something again. 
6. Fight - in a fight, your skills WILL go to shit, you won't know anything, you won't know who or how or why, or anything, bad guys smell and they don't care if they get in your space and they hurt you. If you are losing badly, then you have nothing to lose, so anything and everything goes. If you're going down, take the guy with you.
7. Aftermath - there will be legal, medical and psychological aftermath. As far as the immediate goes, GET SAFE, CHECK YOURSELF FOR INJURIES, and then CALL IT IN ASAP. If you are OK with what happened, THAT IS OK, don't let some counselor tell you that you are broken and should have damage and trama. If you aren't ok with what happened, that is ok too! You WILL be ok, You will change and grow and you will never be the same again, but you will be ok.