Re: Every day self defense

> > You practice it like anything else.. you make a conscious effort to take
> > note of where you are and who's around you at any given time..
>
> No- that's manifesting your awareness, not training it.

In the case of awareness, manifesting *is* training.

When I started bouncing, I was given all sorts of great advice on how
to spot a potential troublemaker. But it wasn't until I was actually
there looking for troublemakers that I really good better at spotting
them. Same goes for trying to determine when someone might be carrying
a weapon - there is plenty of advice one can give, different tells to
look for, but it's not until you're doing it that you improve at doing
it.

Good poker players can read what kind of hand you have from various
tells, but no matter how well they describe it to you, it's not until
you start playing and learning from experience that you get good at
reading an opponent in poker.

A quarterback can be told how to read a defense; but he doesn't get
good at it (or even okay at it) until he's played for a while.

In all of the above cases, the training is in the doing. The doing
*is* the practice, and is really the only practice that's available.
Because like awareness, all of the above examples are based on your own
intuition. You can only be told so much about how to do it because
most of it comes from your own interpretation of the data.

You learn to be aware by being aware. By paying attention to the world
around you. Most people edit out a large portion of the world around
them. They ignore what they see or hear, or decide not to worry about
it, or whatever. People with high awareness aren't seeing or hearing
anything more - they're just paying attention.

You want to build your awareness fast? Play paintball. Don't have to
spend money on a professional course - find an old abandoned building
or house, or a patch of woods. Play last man standing - no teams.
Your awareness will skyrocket - I guarantee it. I used to play with a
group of friends - we used an old coal mining yard, it had a lot of
walls, a large warehouse, and lots of silos and whatnot to hide behind.
We'd all start in the middle, pick a direction to run off towards, and
then the game would start after a set amount of time. Last one "alive"
was the winner. Hell of a lot of fun, and it does wonders for
awareness. We'd also play in some woodlands my grandparents owned -
acres and acres of almost untouched forest.

Play basketball, football, soccer - anything that requires you to pay
attention - to be aware of where you are, where others are, what
they're doing.

.

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