Your instincts, they can lead you to a good decision, warn you of impending doom, find love, and can even be the death of you.  Yup, that instinct you rely on can flat out lie to you.  Generally speaking, your instincts come from unconscious recollection of past memories and/or your instincts which developed thousands of years ago through evolution.  Or for the creationists out there, “Gods nudge”.

Our logic and rational thinking come from more conscious thought, past experience and overall knowledge we have gathered throughout life.  This comes from a “higher reasoning” brain function that evolved more recently on the evolutionary scale.  Have I lost you yet?  Stick with me, it does relate to martial arts.

Essentially, much of your instincts were developed thousands of years ago for survival purposes.  Some of these are still relevant today, others are not.  What we need to understand is that our “gut instincts” are simply warning signals, nothing more.  It takes our logical, rational thought to judge whether or not these signals are to be taken seriously or not.  Remember the flight or fight response I spoke of in a past blog “We can be heroes, but NOT for one day“?  If not, let me recap.  When the brain makes the assumption of a threat towards the body, it reacts by going into survival mode.  It releases hormones that boost strength temporarily, dilates pupils, and pulls blood away from appendages (including the brain affecting rational thought).

These things are meant to help you survive an attack, not fight off an attack with efficiency.   The key word in that previous statement is “assumption”.  The brain made an assumption based on previous experience and survival instincts.  If your fire alarm goes off, do you immediately call the fire department, grab the fire extinguisher, break down closed doors and start spraying everywhere going into hero mode?  Of course not, in most cases you just cuss under your breath that you have to now get up and figure out what just set it off.  Did the food you’re cooking produce smoke?  Did Uncle Larry light up a cigar?  Or are the batteries just dying and the alarm go off to let you know?  This is where our logic and rational thought come in.  We investigate and determine our course of action.

Fear, hunger, thirst, goose bumps, love, pain, the list goes on.  These are all just warning signals that were developed through evolution to help keep us alive.  They are also all signs that could be lying!  Through experience, training, and logical thinking, we can control and/or prevent these signals from affecting us in a negative way.  Eat a lot of sweets?  Your body will begin to send signals to eat more sweets, even if you are full.  I will talk about this in the fitness article for this month!  Drink a lot of alcohol?  Your body will send signals to drink, even if you are not thirsty.

I could go into depth on each one of the above listed signals but I want to stick to the martial arts aspect.  Let’s go back to the body’s reaction to a perceived attack.  Without training, the body has one of two options; run from the attacker or violently fight it off by any means necessary.  There is really no in between.  Using extreme violence is fine if your life is in danger, but most of the time it is not.

Most “attacks” are from people you know or drunks at the bar.  Violent reactions and attempts on a person’s life are not self defense.  They are illegal.  You may have defended yourself against a drunken barfly, but you just landed yourself in jail for life.  It’s only through proper martial arts training that one can defend themselves correctly and within the limits of the law.  Or better yet, recognize that there is no threat even when your body may go into that “flight or fight” mode.  Most high ranking martial artists will tell you, the ultimate attainment of physical self-defense is not only protecting yourself, but your opponent as well.  We re-wire our instincts through training to defend ourselves properly when needed.

We also intelligently think through situations and scenarios ahead of time during training knowing that rational thought may not be available during that “flight or fight” reaction.  Many times the “assumed” threat isn’t even a threat. That creepy guy walking up to you reaching in his pocket?  Your instinct may scream “attack!”, but maybe he’s just asking for directions and pulling out a map or his phone?  Wouldn’t you feel stupid pummeling the poor guy?  I’m guessing he and the police won’t see things your way!

Did you jump into a car and fly down a congested street when you were 16 before you learned how to drive and before you got your license?  No worries, you played plenty of “Pole Position” at the arcade!  (Did I just date myself on that reference?)  Of course not, that would be stupid!  So why do we think we can suddenly defend ourselves properly without any training?  YOU CAN’T!!

Please understand that instincts are just warning signs, nothing more.  Have I said that enough times yet?  We have to take the time to understand what these signals are and how to react to them.  If not, those little love butterflies in your stomach could lead you right into the arms of killer!  Don’t believe me?  A study done by Cornell University on identifying criminals on sight discovered that women had more trouble than men identifying men who were rapists.  Scary thought isn’t it?  My point is this, take the time now to train for self defense, don’t just trust an evolutionary process that occurred thousands of years ago and FOR thousands of years ago.  There have been a few changes in lifestyle in the past 10,000 years!