From The Connection Principle Chapter...
Imagine you're in a local supermarket. You've just advanced the cart you're pushing toward the checkout line. Somebody behind you believes that you've cut the line. They're also screaming that you have twelve items in your cart instead of ten (the allowable limit), and you don't belong at the express register. They become overly angry at you and are on the verge of losing control. The person takes a step forward toward you. You quickly spin your grocery cart around, using it as a buffer, a safe space, between you and this irate customer. You begin to use your words as a secondary buffer, assuring the person that you respect them and had no intention of cutting in front of them. Despite your efforts to quell the conflict, this person shoves their cart into yours. Yes, it's way over the edge on their part. But thinking as a jiu-jitsu practitioner, you realize that you now have a physical connection to something. You can feel the tension of their cart pushing up against yours.
As the angered customer rears their cart back to ram yours again, you feel the release of tension. Your connectedness has allowed you to predict the next move in real time. So you advance your cart forward in the direction of theirs, reestablishing the connection and not allowing their cart the kinetic energy to rush forward with any real momentum. All the while, you're continuing to use your language and communication skills in an effort to connect to their better judgement, in hopes of defusing the situation.
Profile: Maria Liana Mutia
Maria Liana Mutia has represented the US in judo at the Paralympics.
"Judo has influenced how I conduct my everyday life largely in terms of confidence," says Maria Liana Mutia. "I became visually impaired and began judo in my teens. Had I not done so, I am certain that I would have much less spatial awareness, as well as less confidence in my physical movement.
"As a blind woman, judo has taught me to be unafraid. Many times, I was followed while taking the train when I lived in the city–whether it was because of my gender, appearance, or obvious disability, I cannot be certain," said Maria. "While the experience of judo may be different for sighted or able-bodied individuals, judo training has taught me to be confident, aware of my surroundings, and surer of my ability to defend myself. Judo training allowed me to address potential situations by giving me the spatial awareness to prevent the situation from escalating further."
From The Distance Principle Chapter...
Recognizing and computing distances between ourselves and others is a function that we perform constantly. And whenever we fail at that function, or more likely, have a difference of opinion, we may hear the phrase: Please, you need to respect my boundaries. My personal space. Personal space is commonly defined as the physical space immediately surrounding someone into which any encroachment feels either threatening or uncomfortable for them. How does it work? Researchers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and zoology maintain that the brain, in a mostly unconscious manner, computes a "safe zone" around the body. It's a purely defensive mechanism. In the animal kingdom it's referred to as the "flight zone," where animals will either choose to make a stand and fight or take flight from predators.
In human society, our accepted personal boundaries are always being recomputed depending upon the situation. It has long been observed that a quartet of strangers in an elevator are very likely to occupy the four corners of the elevator car, giving each other plenty of personal space. However, when the elevator takes on more passengers, usually an arm's length of distance leaves most people feeling comfortable about their boundaries. But if the elevator adds several additional riders on the next floor, we further adjust our accepted personal space. Those who cannot accept the change in their personal boundary may even choose to get out of the car and wait for the next elevator.
From The Acceptance Principle Chapter...
Changing your stance from resisting to yielding can also throw your opponent off-balance. How so? Imagine that you're at a company picnic. There are two rival departments at your workplace, shipping and receiving. And the members of each department are always bragging that theirs is more important to the company's success than the other department. At the picnic, the two departments decide to have a friendly tug-of-war, a contest staged with a deep mud puddle between the rival squads. Though there are seven participants on each side of the rope, the department against which you are competing outweighs yours by approximately 150 pounds. To make matters worse, you're at the front of the line with that mud puddle practically staring you in the face. You're also wearing a brand-new pair of white sneakers.
Thirty seconds into the competition, you can feel the inevitable coming. Your side's strength is slowly but surely beginning to wither, with you inching closer to that impending mud-soaked fate. "Heave, ho!" the other squad hollers in an attempt to end it. Just as they put all of their effort into one ferocious tug, you scream out, "Now!" to your teammates, who all release their grip on the rope. Your already forward momentum helps you to leap the mud puddle as the rival squad tumbles to their now grass-stained backsides. "Congratulations, you were truly the stronger team," you acknowledge with all sincerity, in a much cleaner position than you'd be if you hadn't employed the Acceptance Principle.
Profile: Anthony Pepe
In his second career Professional Bowlers Association tournament, Anthony Pepe found himself in the finals of a 2014 event being televised on ESPN. The left-handed Pepe was already being recognized by longtime professionals and commentators for his remarkable balance during his approach and delivery of a 15-pound bowling ball to a waiting tensome of pins sixty feet away.
"Balance and tempo. That's the key to ability and repeatability," said Pepe who, in a three-way match to determine which opponent would face the tournament leader, bowled a 295, just one strike short of a perfect game, reaching the final. "I only got five pins with my last ball. I was all nerves and a little too quick to the line. Let's just say after eleven straight strikes, it wasn't my best attempt." But Pepe, quickly accepting the results of his poorest attempt of the day, brushed aside any disappointment before decidedly dispatching the tournament leader to secure the tournament victory. "It's about visualization and imagery. Before you can achieve it in reality, you need to see yourself doing it in your mind."
The Acceptance Principle didn't just prove effective for Anthony Pepe in his professional pursuits. He wanted to be the truest reflection of himself possible. "When I made the announcement about my sexuality, at the time, I became just the second openly gay bowler," said Pepe. "I mainly made the announcement for myself. I felt like I needed to have closure with my own feelings. I honestly didn't know what to expect from the sport. I did experience some worries and stress about making the announcement. But that didn't stop me. In the end, I received an incredible amount of support from the bowling community. And it's certainly been a positive in my life to have their acceptance of who I truly am."
From The River Principle Chapter...
Perhaps you're a student taking an important exam. Maybe it's a mathematics final or midterm, with just fifty minutes to answer forty questions. The teacher places the exam face-down on your desk. Looking at the multiple pages stapled together, you take a deep breath. You're concerned about not having enough time to finish, because that's been a problem for you in the past. "Students, you may begin," says the teacher. You turn the exam over and hurriedly write your name at the top of the page. The first several questions offer you little to no resistance. Confident in your answers, you develop a rhythm. A flow. Everything is moving smoothly. Then comes the question that stops your natural momentum forward.
To make matters worse, there's a specific equation involved in solving that question. It's an equation that you had committed to memory five minutes before the exam started, but now you're drawing a blank. You become frustrated. Suddenly, you're at a standstill. You can hear the other students turning the pages on their exams. They're moving forward while you remain immobilized. The River Principle teaches you to move on to a better position, to understand that you've hit an obstacle that shouldn't consume all of your energies. You need to sacrifice that smaller struggle with an individual question in favor of the larger battle with the many questions that still lie ahead–and the ultimate goal of passing the test. Test-taking experts will tell you exactly the same thing, not to mismanage the allotted time over a single problem.
Profile: No Soup for You!
Actor Larry Thomas stormed onto TV sets in 1995 in an episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Soup Nazi." Thomas played Yev Kassem, a proprietor of a New York City soup stand, and was nicknamed "Soup Nazi" by the cast of characters. His curt, no-nonsense tagline "No soup for you!" resonated with audiences worldwide. A trained martial artist in Shotokan karate, typically considered a "hard" martial art reflecting more yin (harder side) than yang (softer side),
As a beginning actor, Thomas initially considered running over the obstacles placed in his path. "Karate, of course, made an insecure kid confident as a man, and resulted in helping me protect myself on the street. Acting, on the other hand, could not be muscled. I needed to develop a different confidence... I had to surrender. Get hit and not hit back. Yes, the Soup Nazi was impatient and stood up for his own rules. But in the end, he was defeated for his actions," noted Thomas, who prior to acting held jobs as a bail bondsman, bartender, and janitor. How can acting draw a parallel to the River Principle? "When starting out as an actor I had to lose a lot of the standing ground and concentration that was prevalent in Shotokan for the more floating feeling you get when you give yourself over to a character. In acting, you must surrender to the moment and bend to the script."
Martial Arts Etymology
We have Mars, the Roman god of war, to thank for the phrase "martial arts." It comes from Latin and means the "arts of Mars." The phrase first appeared in sixteenth-century Europe and was originally used to describe the skills and knowledge of professional warriors. Nowadays, however, people study and train in martial arts for a variety of reasons such as health, exercise, self-discipline, improved focus, and fun.
The term "jiu-jitsu" comes from the Japanese language, and it literally translates as a gentle, soft, or yielding art. It's a spot-on description considering that jiu-jitsu manipulates the opponent's own force against them. It was first developed to combat feudal Japan's fierce samurai warriors, with the art's written history dating back to the beginning of the eighth century.
"Karate" has a pair of translations. It originally meant "Chinese hand" or "a martial art for China." Then a homophone was introduced into its character spelling and karate became more commonly interpreted as "empty hand." It was a martial system embraced by several provinces of Japan after starting to trade with China's Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century. Its forms, comprised of sequenced moves, are called "katas," meaning "shapes" or "models."
The Chinese art of kung fu translates as "time plus effort equals a skill." Of course, in Chinese culture, the term "good kung fu" doesn't exclusively refer to being adept at fighting and self-defense. It also means being a good-hearted or skilled person. It's not uncommon to see Chinese shops with names such as Kung Fu Tea or Kung Fu Bread, suggesting that, over time, their proprietors have developed great skill at their particular craft...
From The Posture Principle Chapter...
The Posture Principle often means focusing on isolating the linchpin of the opponent's point of view. This occurs constantly in court cases with trial lawyers attempting to destroy the foundation of the opposing side's argument. Sometimes those cases are about traffic circle fender-benders, property line disputes, or slip and falls. Other times, they can be much more significant. In Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, lawyer Thurgood Marshall, who was representing the right of Oliver Brown's daughter to attend a non-segregated elementary school, argued that the notion of "separate but equal" was inherently unequal, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause, Fourteenth Amendment, and the US Constitution. Marshall continually hammered away at the foundation of the opposition's flawed premise, exposing every crack, fracture, and fissure. On May 17, 1954, the US Supreme Court, a body on which Marshall would eventually serve as a judge from 1967 to 1991, resoundingly agreed with Marshall's argument, voting 9-0 to end racial segregation in public schools.
From The Prevention Principle Chapter...
Suppose you're sitting in a movie theater with your popcorn and soft drink. It's the most exciting part of the film, a car chase through crowded city streets. Your mind is in motion with those fleet vehicles. You're leaning left and then right in your chair with every turn of the steering wheel. Suddenly, you feel a hard kick at the back of your seat. The person behind you is totally revved up and involved in the movie too. So you think nothing of it. A moment later, your seat gets kicked again. It's both annoying and hurts. This time you turn completely around, get the attention of the person behind you, and ask them to stop. There isn't much of a reaction on their part, just an expressionless face. A few seconds after the car chase ends, you feel a third kick and hear a hint of laughter.
There are many things that could happen next, including you completely losing your temper. But let's not go there. Let's remain calm and think. Exactly how would you put the Prevention Principle to use here? I suppose you could give this person a speech on movie etiquette or briefly leave and return with the theater management in tow. But neither of those options feels completely correct. Just like on the jiu-jitsu mat, you would need to ask yourself, "What does this person want to achieve and what can I do to stop their progress?"
The person apparently wants to control you. He or she is making the silent statement that their actions can create a reaction in you that they will somehow find pleasing. But remember, their control of you requires opposition on your part. Perhaps the perfect Prevention Principle reaction would be to get up without a word and move several rows behind this person to a new seat. That would instantly take away whatever position they believed was theirs. Why move to a seat behind and not farther in front of them? Now you can utilize the Reconnaissance Principle as well. You can watch this person's movements without having to turn around. You could see what they might be preparing to do and not do. And if they approach you to carry on this annoyance, you'll have time to prepare.
From The False Surrender Chapter...
Playing Possum/The Greatest
The opossum is the only marsupial native to North America. This peaceful animal takes the False Surrender Principle, one of its natural defenses, to the next level by "playing dead" during tense and threatening situations. To lie there totally still while a predator considers you as its next meal means that the opossum, which can also bite and growl as a means of defense, has extraordinary confidence in its ability to deceive a foe. While in this state of playing dead, the opossum even emits a smell of decay from its glands, mimicking the odor of a rotting corpse. Now, that's how to really sell a technique!
Perhaps the best-known example of the False Surrender Principle was performed not on a jiu-jitsu mat but inside a boxing ring. It was superbly executed by one of the most recognizable people to ever set foot on the planet, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. In October of 1974, in a fight nicknamed "The Rumble in the Jungle" because it was staged in Zaire, Africa, Ali fought then heavyweight champion George Foreman. During several stages of the fight, Ali, in a protected stance, allowed the six-foot-three, 220-pound Foreman to throw large numbers of punches at him without returning fire. The tactic was later dubbed "rope-a-dope." Most of the blows by Foreman during that sequence were deflected by Ali's gloves. That caused Foreman to expend massive amounts of energy on an extremely hot night, before Ali successfully counterattacked in the later rounds against an exhausted opponent.
From The Centerline Principle Chapter...
Paul's Point of View
I remember my first week in a martial arts school. There was an older gentleman training there who routinely recounted stories to the younger students. And whenever he began to speak, I'd always find my ears acutely attuned to his words.
One of his tales was about an adolescent boy who had recently suffered a black eye at the hands of a bully, and who was studying martial arts for the first time. The boy could barely take care of himself in a fight, let alone anyone else. But he found himself walking from the corner bus stop to his school with an old man. The pair, strangers to one another, had just gotten off a city bus together. Stepping off that same bus were two older teens who for some reason had targeted the old man. Just as the teens approached the man, the boy turned to him and bowed. The old man returned the boy's gesture in kind, before entering a tea shop beside the school. Taken aback by the exchange of bows, the two teens stopped the boy. "What was that about?" asked one of the teens. "That's how it is when you study martial arts," replied the boy. "You always bow to someone with more knowledge than you. It's a sign of respect."
"Was that the master of this school?" asked the second teen. "Did you get that black eye training with him?"
"I'm sorry, it's not something I can talk about with outsiders. But if I were you, I'd leave him alone," the boy answered directly. The two would-be bullies looked at one another for a moment and then quickly walked away in the opposite direction.
Whenever I consider the synergy between the Mobility Principle and Centerline Principle, I think about that boy, who accepted that he couldn't physically defend the old man. Instead, he found another way to protect him by establishing a boundary propped up by the fear and doubt he was able to instill in the minds of those potential teen thugs.
When the older gentleman was finished telling his tale, one of the younger students at the school asked him, "Were you that boy in the story?" He answered, "That's not really important. The real question is: Will that be you one day?"
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