Do No HARM, Do Know Harm

Facebook is reminding me that one year ago we were hosting another tac med course with a good friend and great instructor.   Coincidentally, I recently came across this patch with a common phrase (at least in some circles) that both references the Hippocratic Oath and is also a play on words with a poignant message.    While it might not be as well known in martial arts circles, it should absolutely resonate with martial artists.   Martial arts practitioners should be regularly wrestling with the paradox of studying “the sordid mechanics of mortality” with concepts of peace, self-betterment, and BEING GENTRY.   The dichotomy places out on both the practical and philosophical level, but for brevity’s sake this musing will focus on the practical side.

Historically, knowing how to harm and how to heal has always been two sides of the same coin.   In many cultures, the martial arts master and the medicine man/bonesetter was one and the same.    It makes sense.   If you know how to fix something, you also know how to break it, and that includes the human body.    The folk medicine healer with herbal remedies also knows the poisonous look a like plants to avoid.   `

It is interesting to note that this holds true in not just in the traditional Asian medicine paradigms, but in Western medicine too.  Both is a methodology for understanding the workings of the human body. Human anatomy books  aren’t just required reading in medical school, they are also required reading for many prison gangs.  Wonder why that is? Because they want to know harm.

On an individual level,  if you want no harm to come to you, you might need to know both how to harm and how to mitigate harm.  If you do take damage in a violent encounter, the best person to provide aid is yourself.  Do you want to count on a passerby who doesn’t want to get involved or faints at the sight of blood?   But before you can render aid onto yourself, you have to stop the person who is causing the harm in the first place. Standard operating procedure for everyone is make the scene secure/neutralize the threat before rendering care.   Of course, being able to defend oneself effectively obviously limits damage and helps in your long term constitution.   I would suggest knowing how to fall is an important part of that—in case it is your own clumsiness that is trying to harm you.  

Many people say their motivations for training is to protect others as well.   Protecting should once again mean being able to minimize damage.    This a concept that should be covered in good self defense training, so why should we not be prepared to do that when it goes into the tac med realm.   You have practiced day and night on how to take a gun away from somebody if they jab it in your face, but what if the shooting started the next room over, then you are clueless?  Even if you take out the attacker, if you are your loved one takes serious damage, can you minimize the damage or will it be a double homicide? 

It is worth noting some people are exclusively on the other side of the coin.  They will take a CPR/First aid class, they are ready to spring into action if someone is choking, but they want to put their head in the sand when it comes to mass casualty events.   Many of the biggest active shooter tragedies could have been seriously mitigated if everyone just knew how to use a torniquet or chest seal.

If you want to be a true protector, you need to have both sides of the coin. Then and only then can we BE MORE prepared for most anything.  Now go do both.  

Learn more about us at http://www.gentrymartialarts.com

Embracing Chaos and Finding the Opportunities Within.

As most of you at the school could surmise, I am writing this while I am recovering from a long overdue hip replacement surgery.  While I have been lying down a lot, I have not been laying around a lot.   While there are certainly some challenges to my recovery as it relates to me and GMA,  I am choosing to look for and take advantage of the opportunities that it creates instead.

While I am looking forward to the long-term outcome, in the short term it is a huge disruption—to lifestyle, to routines both professionally and personally.  And it complicates things for both my personal and GMA family.  In short, there is some chaos involved.  Thankfully, one of the key concepts of certain training modules is embracing chaos.  It isn’t easy, but if you are able to keep a bigger picture view—there are often incredible “gifts”—such as momentum, positioning, or an overextended limb, to take advantage of.  Within the chaos are also incredible opportunities if you can recognize them.   And what is true in the fight is true in life as well.     

Not only did I write this, but I also worked a lot on my next eBook.    That is a project that always seemed to get pushed the back burner.  

            One of my personal goals this year is to drastically improve my competency in Korean before our upcoming trip.   I have not only been meeting my daily goal, but almost doubling it while I am down. 

            While I miss being on the mats doing BJJ, I am watching the Logic BJJ tutorials…something I should have been more consistent with before, but never found the time or sometimes motivation. (I will admit, at times it is hard to do BJJ, get home late, and watch more BJJ.)  I don’t have that roadblock now.    

            I typically did a lot of listening to audiobooks while driving, which I won’t be doing anytime soon.  So, I have been listening while doing my physical therapy instead. 

            My arms work just fine, so I have been able to at least do some dry fire exercises with my SIRT laser pistols.  Something that makes me usually mutter to myself that I should find the time to do it more often.

            There is a long list of things I will do when things settle down that I hope to tackle in the upcoming weeks. 

            The moral of the story is no matter the situation, there is almost always a way to continue to BE MORE.    Constant improvement, the attitude of continuing to move forward, is a mindset, and it is not dependent on circumstances.   I had several doors shut for me short term, including the ability to teach at IU this semester.   I have to take advantage of the extra down time to kick open other doors I had previously just been peaking through.

            In contrast, some people might accept the chaos but don’t really embrace it.  They don’t actively look for gifts.  This isn’t the same as just having the positive yet also cavalier attitude that when one door closes, another will open.  Although I try not to ever underestimate the power of the hand of Providence on matters, I am not talking about trusting things will work out.   A month before my surgery I already had a long list of goals of things that I wanted to work on to ensure that they did work out. 

            Other times, just as an attacker can use the chaos of the fight to steal your wallet, the chaos of life will steal your ambition.  We have all had an ambition, a project, or dare I say a dream, that you thought would fulfil yourself or make life better, if you just had that extra time in the day to accomplish it.   And then, you find yourself with some unexpected free time, and you forget what it was you wanted to do. Or worse yet, you can’t seem to find the motivation to do what you kept telling yourself you wanted to do.              As usual, I am biased, but the lessons the martial arts have instilled in me, including the attitude of embracing chaos and finding the opportunity within, and the attitude of continually BEING MORE, to keep the disruptions of life from derailing me. Now I am worried that I won’t have enough of the “extra time on my hands” to accomplish everything.

learn more about us at http://www.gentrymartialarts.com