protecting your self

Protecting your self is in my eyes do you have the will to take a stand and stop the hate that is attacking you. if you have training of some sort you have a more likely chance of not being hurt as badly. but if you truly want to protect you then having the will to stand up and say this will not happen. it is truly what will keep you alive. please replie and tell me what you think and before we go off and metion training of any kind you need to have the will to use it. because if you don't have the will then when the time comes that knowledge is worthless.

Greetings

In my view there are many ways of protecting yourself. Self defence, confidence building etc . I think one of the best ways is to avoid any situation that may endanger yourself or those with you.

Yours in the Spirit of Budo

Mike

but if you cant if this situation forces its way in to your life you cant just turn around and walk off. so what do you think ill give a simple scenario and you all tell me your thoughts and what you would do.

its late you walking home from a fends house. your in a big city like new york.(not piking on new york just first big city that i thought of) you walk by an ally way and you get stopped by a man hes bigger then you by 50 lbs he ask for your cash and valuables hes unarmed. what do you do.

MikeBudo wrote: Greetings
I think one of the best ways is to avoid any situation that may endanger yourself or those with you.

We cant all have pollyanna syndrome. Avoiding only keep You safe. There are other people at stake. Its really up to the person and the situation. If your sure you can defend your self well you can try. However keep in mind that you could get hurt or worse. Then again sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all...

Greetings each.

The situation you describe is exactly what I mean by avoiding. Ok to be honest I am trained in dealing with situations like like these. If was leaving a friends house late at night I wouldn't go down any ally. I would arrange transport of some sort before hand. If I was forced to walk I would make sure the streets were at least fairly busy. If I wasn't sure I'd stay put.

Keeping ones self and those around you safe. Takes a fair bit of thought . Much the same as walking across a road.one would look first to make sure the crossing is safe.

Every situation will present different reactions. You just have to be aware of you environment weigh up the risks and take the appropriate action. Some of these things we do automatically. Wearing a seat belt. Locking your house up when you go out.Even putting sufficient clothing on in winter.

If someone you are not sure of is heading towards you. move out of the way at least one body length.The best form of any self defence is distance and movement.

Yes sometimes doing nothing is very much the best way .

Yours in Budo

Mike

Well said Mike.

It's interesting because, for those who don't know I study ninjutsu.

Now, nobody would say that a ninja would be afraid of a fight, trained to deal with almost any scenario with a vast array of techniques.

What you might not realise, is that ninja also train in avoiding conflict. We study topics such as geography, meteorology and psychology.

For example, you are at a disreputable bar, or at least a bar with disreputable people. A group of young men are at a booth and a couple seem to keep looking in your direction. They are talking quietly. Then over a period of a few minutes, they all go to the toilet one after another, what does this tell you?

It could be that they are a group of friends out for a good time and you are of interest to them for some reason, they might think you're cute or might be talking spit about you or whatever, and they just happen to need the toilet in quick succession.

However, they might have decided that you are their next victim. They might be going to the toilet to tool up and empty their bladder so they don't wet themselves in a fight.

They could also be doing any number of other things, the point is, you cannot be sure until it might be too late. Does this mean you should live in fear and assume that everyone is out to get you? No, that would be paranoia. Instead, you should be aware that they might have ill intent, and perhaps watch them more closely, and if you are concerned, go elsewhere. You might take the "I'm not gonna let some bunch of punks chase me out of a bar" attitude, which is fine, as long as you are ready to deal with the escalation of the situation if it occurs. Better to leave and be grumpy, than stay and end up hospitalised or worse.

Simple things like choosing a safer route, travelling with friends and using safer modes of transport are easy ways to avoid conflict with little impact on quality of life.

If it does come to conflict, the ninja also has a few tricks up their sleeve to escape.
The ninjas of old would go so far as to carry smoke bombs and calthrops (very pointy like tacks but whichever way they land there is a point up) and would set traps if they were planning ahead.
These days, the ninja is trained to, for example throw loose change at the foe, it startles them and gives you a head start. You can also use legal takedown measures such as pepper spray (mace) or blinding powder, a simple mix of irritant spices, all totally legal, that are powdered into safe but effective levels, i.e. will stun, hurt and affect the victim's vision but won't do permanent damage.

Then there are "safe" techniques in the fight itself. Things like standing with your back to the sun, then when they advance, duck so they are dazzled, this gives a great opportunity for a safe disarming technique

Such techniques involve various methods of disarming the foe and generally getting them on the floor with you on top of them before explaining to them that you don't appreciate being attacked and since they are clearly out-classed, would they be so kind as to bugger off. Or something like that

If these techniques just don't work, then by all means use the rest of your techniques to end the fight rapidly.

What I hope to show with the above is that; even a martial art with a reputation for being more aggressive and more "dark side" still teaches how to avoid fighting all together or how to manage a fight safely.

MTFBWY All

Dave

proper ninjas would actually avoid fights. they were the sneaky kind of spy/assassin and had gadgets james bond would be jealous of. Overall, their job was similar to that of the CIA now.

I quite agree ren, however the ninja of today are more 'public friendly' and more self defence than assassins. Having said that, it does depend on how you choose to use your skills...

now that we have gone over the idea of some one you don't know trying to hurt you lets talk about what happened to me about a year ago. i was getting some sprites off a friend mind you i was 19. he left to get them and his buddy whom i know Farly well and considered a friend came up and tried to rob me at knife point. i was a little surprised that this kid would do this but when we moved to the location be hind the store i put a wrench in my car it was an old monkey wrench i talked to him so i could get to my car were i left the windows down and grabbed the wrench i talked to him and talk to him during the situation and eventually scared him off. he had a small blade so my umm warnings weren't so fake but if the knife was bigger i couldn't make the treats i did to save my life.

so what do you do when that happens but your caught off gard.