Sunday, August 15, 2010

Meeting Devi

The more comprehensively you understand the game, any game, the better you can play. When the game is like life, where most of the rules are imaginary anyway (you bring theses rules to the table and you enforce them on yourself) there is immense freedom in seeing things as they are.

It's broad, too, and the second I wrote 'games' part of your brain locked in because games are defined by rules. If you break the rules you cease to be playing the game. Really? Always?

The ability to see the problem broadly (since this is about conflict and self-defense, you know where this is going) amounts to a super-power. Too many people think that self-defense starts when the first strike begins. That is narrow, in both perspective and time.

Teja showed up at the seminar in Boston, despite her injuries. You could tell it was driving her nuts not to play hard.

She also gave me a copy of her video. It is an introduction to a woman's self-defense program designed by women and for women. In most of my encounters I've been the small guy, but never to the extent that Teja is: routinely out-weighed by three times and out-powered by five, that is Teja's world. That is the world of many, maybe most, women who face violence.

It must ring hollow when a six-foot male martial arts or self-defense experts advises walking tall with your shoulders back or tells you that move X or position Y or the attitude of naked (testosterone driven) aggression will save the day.

I love the thought process that Teja put into her work. It is easy to fall into the trap of seeing self-defense or even fighting as problems of applying strength, size and speed. Many systems maximize the efficiency of delivering size, speed and strength... what if you don't have it? How can you see the problem more broadly?

I want to split the post here, partially exploring the other options-- how strategy and positioning can substitute for speed and strength; how environmental awareness can give you more options for greater damage than perfecting a strike... all that stuff.

I also want to rant about the inefficiency (is that the word I want? Not quite) of self-defense programs designed by fit young men, or adapted from military systems that are designed around young men, full of hormones, eager to show their courage at a time when joints and bone heal most easily. Programs designed to be used by people that don't fit the victim profile.

Teja understands her vulnerability and faces it square on. She is a trained (and efficient and aggressive--she couldn't play hard but we got to play and she played well) sayoc kali fighter. But she doesn't look at things just through that lens. She works mental and physical skills. She thinks about protecting her child. She does not tell students the answers, but gives them lists of options. The students work it out: What could I do? Where does that choice naturally lead?

If it seems like I'm going all fan-boy, tough. That's a lot of my own ego. One of the fascinating things about this exploration of violence is that there are very few people doing the field research. Before the internet, most of us were pretty damn isolated and consequently each of us had to invent our own language for some concepts. We all wondered if anyone else saw what we did.

A lady on the wrong (I mean East) coast, with different experiences, a different martial lens, different attitudes, experiences and parameters, has created teaching that resonates. It makes me happy. It makes me feel like I did better than I realized.

7 comments:

  1. I particularly liked this quote from her website:
    "Aerobic Martial Arts may get you in shape, but a real, evolving martial art moves with you and comes to fit like your favorite shoes. A martial art should train your mind as much as your body."

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  2. I love this Rory. This is the angle I have been working for my own classes and book. How to translate things that work for large men... or even just men in general and adapt it to fit women's needs and capabilities. Violence against women is different than violence against men. It IS a game that I must play with my own "weapons", using skills, bio-mechanics, leverage and smarts to defeat strength. I cannot play this game by men's rules, I would be defeated.
    I must meet this wonderful lady. Sounds like we'd have a lot to talk about ;-)
    Thanks again for sharing your wisdom

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  3. jks91998:14 PM

    One of the most effective things in teaching self-defense was my teaching partner: a woman. Much smaller than me.

    First, it gives us a reality check for teaching women's self defense. If she, with training and deceptive strength & flexibility, can't pull off some technique or approach -- there's no way a woman who's first step into the world of violence is a self defense class will.

    Second, it really makes a point to the students if she can pull something off against me. It's a great convincer if she throws me...

    Finally, she's a damn sight more familiar with a woman's body and physical/emotional/psychological responses to things than I am. Ladies don't think or feel or move the way men do... and it's a mistake to forget that.

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  4. I've turned into a bigger then average guy but spent the first 2 decades as a scrawny bean pole, if I outweighed anyone it was purely by height.

    When I firsted started this whole 'learning to fight thing' I purposefully read women's self defense books on the grounds the good stuff would be hidding there. (Well, there and in Ninja magazines!).

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  5. The approach in teaching self-defense for women should be different from men. I agree with Lise about this issue.

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  6. Anonymous8:08 PM

    Is the word you were looking for 'insufficient'? (it's bugging me too, now :P)

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  7. Conditioning one's mind is very important,all the techniques all the studies will be worthless without a mindset.

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