Wing Chun's Foundation: Siu Lim Tao by Jason Korol

Author:Jason Korol [Korol, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Martial Way Press
Published: 2020-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

11

Knowing When To Fight

Because you won’t hear a bell on the street!

Awareness depends on Attitude.

Just about every self-defense instructor and program advises students to “be aware of their surroundings.” That’s certainly good advice. But it starts mid-stream and doesn’t provide the proper - and critical - context we need to make sense of the varied environments we encounter every day. It’s like a financial advisor telling you to save and invest money. Well, duh. People already know that. The question is how to do it? In short, the goal here is to basically ignore (that is, push to the background) non-relevant data while keeping the sub-conscious mind alert for threats.

Think about it this way, though it’s a somewhat crude example. Most young men, when they’re out in public, see but ignore a whole class of women. But when they see someone they find attractive, that woman draws their attention. What’s going on is that the young man has allowed his brain to set categories of interest and his sub-conscious mind is trained to react according to those pre-determined standards. Everyone does this in different ways. The conscious mind is free to focus on a conversation you might be having or something like that, but the sub-conscious is trained to notice other predetermined things.

For example, if a young man happened to walk by a pretty girl in a store he’d almost certainly notice her. If she was walking with another man who appeared to be her boyfriend, he’s going to basically dismiss her from his conscious focus. On the other hand, if he looked at her and she returned his gaze and smiled at him, that could lead to a conversation and so on. We literally do this all the time, so there shouldn’t be a mystery over how the sub-conscious/conscious mind works and how to apply it to self-defense. The goal is to understand the type of people and situations that are potentially violent and then train our sub-conscious to watch for them in case they pop-up.

In reality, it’s not possible to be aware of everything around you. That would require omniscience. No matter how smart and well-trained a man/woman is, there will always be gaps and limitations to one’s ability to be mindful of their surroundings. That’s just a fact of reality. Telling people this without providing the rest of the story (as Paul Harvey used to say) can lead to a degradation of confidence because the subconscious mind is honest and knows that we can’t, in fact, always be aware of things. In that event, the average person simply thinks that awareness is some sort of talent of super-soldiers, not a characteristic of the common soul. What happens next? Their confidence doesn’t grow; it evaporates and eventually, tragically, they give up.

In that event we repeat that no one can be aware of everything. It’s simply not possible. The goal is to learn “what” to be aware of rather than be cognizant of every detail. In other words, your

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