the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

origami_itto wrote:Generally you can escape 95% (random number, how can you prove a negative?) of potential violent conflicts either by de-escalating or evacuating.

In the developed world, it's probably more like 99.99%, across all populations (male, female, old, young, whatever, not counting domestic violence, which is a whole other thing). Violence never happens "out of nowhere". While it's true that anyone can have a bad day, be distracted, or whatever, by far the greatest value in self defense is understanding how violence happens and developing habits that cut things off before they start. It doesn't require any sort of paranoia or hyper vigilance, just do basic things like be polite, don't mess with stuff that's not yours, and pay attention to (and enjoy!) the world around you. If you eat sensibly, exercise sensibly, and make some friends, you might live forever!

GrahamB wrote:Being able to do a backwards break fall/roll would have saved her there. Do you teach break falls in Tai Chi Chuan? Most don't...

Everyone should learn breakfalls, and practice them throughout life. Not sure about other countries, but in the US the #1 cause of death for people over aged 55 is falls in the home. Tumbling is also fun and good exercise! Win-win-win!

And that's really it, situational awareness isn't about paranoia or hypervigilance, it's about being present. Seeing things before they become problems.

I could write volumes on that idea alone honestly.

the last "violence" and "injury" i encountered was me kicking the shit out of a bar stool by accident (with great relaxation lol), and now my toe ligament is sprained. taking months and months to heal. did it repeatedly. talk about "no situational awareness" and "home dangers". i'm not even that old. the stupid legs stick out at a diagonal so peripheral vision and "taijiquan" failed me. luckily no breakfall needed. so much for practical martial arts and blah blah blah blah blah.

origami_itto wrote:And that's really it, situational awareness isn't about paranoia or hypervigilance, it's about being present. Seeing things before they become problems.

I could write volumes on that idea alone honestly.

Right on! I completely agree. It's one of my favorite areas of personal research. I even started an ongoing thread about it here:

https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php ... cb#p249392