from the April, 2010 issue of Kiai!

Self-Defense in the Real World

By: Lucia Frisancho, Seventh grader at Andrew Jackson Language Academy
and Advanced Brown Belt in the Teen Karate Program

Taking the four-week self-defense workshop is one of the requirements of testing for junior black belt. So last month I took it. When I got there, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, though I’d heard good things from everyone who had taken it, including my mom. I was also nervous to be taking the class with my stepdad who, as an adult member, was also required to take it. I thought that might be awkward, but we did not have to partner with each other much, so it really did not matter. In the end, I learned a lot of valuable skills and ways to use them.

Self-defense is obviously used to defend yourself. But it also can be used to defend others around you. At my school, for example, people often talk about other people behind their backs. They talk about their appearance, their clothes, their grades, just about everything. It’s not always very nice either. If you are sitting next to a friend, and people start saying mean things about your friend, you shouldn’t just sit there and listen.  You should stand up for your friend and tell others to stop talking about your friend that way.  Lots of people have made comments about the way I dress. I constantly get taunts about being “emo” or “goth.”  These comments bother me. At first, I would just ignore them and walk away. But then, people started talking about a friend of mine the same way.  Eventually, I got fed up. I heard someone talking about us, imitating some one cutting themself (which neither of us do).  I turned around and told him to stop and that we did not cut ourselves and didn’t like being called emo. The comments kept coming for a while, but I felt much better knowing I had spoken up. Eventually they died down. We still get the occasional comment, but not so often.
         
Our situation was not that bad. There are people in the world who are in very dangerous situations. Thankfully, I have never been in one., but the class also prepares you for more physical kinds of threats. It teaches you how to get out of grabs and ways to fight back if someone tries to hurt you. We even did an exercise about what to do if someone threatens you with a gun. Now, after learning all this, I feel much safer. Now I know that I can defend myself if I need to.

Before taking the class myself, I didn’t understand why it was a requirement for junior black belts to take the class. Now I get it. As karateka, we should use our karate to help those who need it.  Taking the self-defense class teaches you better ways to do that. It teaches you to speak up and to fight back in ways that are different from those we learn in our formal training. You should know how to apply your karate in situations outside the dojo.  I think I learned a lot by taking the class. I learned to keep calm, and to protect myself and others. I’m glad I took it. It was fun, but also informative. I hope many others benefit from the class as I did.

Violence Prevention: Opening Doors,
Setting Waves in Motion

By: Margarita Saona, Associate Professor in the School of Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Brown Belt in the Adult Karate Program, and Assistant Instructor in the Violence Prevention Program.

I was coming back to my office to hide again behind a closed door and try to get things done. When I first started working at my university I hated those closed doors, but I soon accepted the culture of favoring privacy and individual productivity over a sense of community. And so, going back to my office and closing the door was the natural thing to do. But something caught my attention. A student and a teaching assistant –one of the graduate students in my program- were standing in the hallway. That in itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but there was something in the air. The student was upset. She was taller than the T.A. He seemed to be trying to respond to a request, but his tone revealed a hint of impatience. Their bodies and their voices were tense. Though I did not hear the exact words, I saw the student mumble something and as I closed the door behind me I heard the teaching assistant raise his voice to say “What did you say?” Oops, I thought.

I sat down in front of my computer trying to ignore the voices in the hallway, which were escalating into an argument that seemed unlikely to lead to any kind of positive resolution. I started wondering if there was no authority figure to settle things down, if there was not a grown-up around to bring things back to order, to do something about this. Well, I thought, I guess I am supposed to be an authority figure, right? I am, after all, the director of graduate studies and therefore, the graduate student is, in a certain sense, my responsibility. Did I need to call security? I grew up in a country in which the majority of the people fear authority. I grew up thinking that perhaps calling the police when you were in trouble was not the best idea.  But university security should be OK, right? Nonetheless, calling security at this point seemed paradoxically too premature and  too late. Nothing really threatening had happened. But something could happen and, if it did, security was probably not going to get there in time to prevent it. Then I thought, “I am supposed to know how to handle this. I have taken our violence prevention class. I have assisted in workshops at Thousand Waves and around town.”  In a second all the lessons of the intervention and de-escalation sections of our course started flashing through my mind. I opened the door.

I stepped out of my office and, trying to remember all the lessons I had been taught, struggled to articulate in a firm and clear voice: “What is going on? Do you need help?” I am sure my voice was not firm and clear and as I tried to assume the “assertive stance” I noticed I was trembling and hoped nobody else noticed.

And then the miracle happened: three other doors opened and familiar faces came out of the other offices. I told the student and the teaching assistant to lower their voices, that people were working in the offices, and that their behavior was not appropriate. The student and the teaching assistant both started to tell their versions of the story. I tried not to engage with the upsetting details and instead looked for a quick resolution that would remove both of them from the situation: the student needed tutoring, she had waited for too long; the T.A. had been late getting to his office hours and had come with another student he already agreed to help.  I asked the student if she still needed help. When I asked the teaching assistant if he was available to help her now, one of the graduate students who had come out of the other offices offered to help instead. He led the student to an empty classroom and we all went back into our offices.

I felt a sense of wonder, as if something simple, yet magical, had just happened. It works, I thought. It was a powerful feeling. I had taken a few simple lessons that had sounded good, but very abstract, and had changed the direction of a potentially threatening interaction. And people had come out to support me. It works! I had been scared, and probably had not done things perfectly:  Did I stand too close to them? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?  But I also knew that second-guessing myself at this point was not helpful. Everybody was safe, the student was getting the help she needed, and I checked with the T.A. to make sure he was all right. ( I also successfully bit my tongue to refrain from saying some things my bossy personality was driving me to say about how he could have done things differently…)

I did what I was taught and it worked and since that day the feeling of the rippling effects of Thousand Waves has had a more tangible dimension. It was much simpler than I ever imagined: I was just following recommendations learned in a class. All those things that sounded so nice, but had required a bit of a leap of faith from my skeptical self; the things in which I wanted to believe, but which I thought I would probably never try… worked. I want to share this knowledge with others not just because I find it intriguing or interesting but because it really has the potential to change the way we interact with the world and with each other. It made me open my door -- and that immediately prompted others to open theirs. My students, my colleagues and I suddenly recognized ourselves as part of a community ready to take care of one another. For me this is what violence prevention is all about. It was a moment of revelation. It gave me a sense of wonder. My skeptical, pessimistic self had to take back stage for a moment, and let a bright-eyed woman be in awe at the power of a peaceful wave in motion. In a small way, for a brief moment, what I learned from Violence Prevention changed my world.

Learning to Live with That Guy

By: Jeffrey Gore, Academic Advisor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Advanced Yellow Belt in the Adult Karate Program

At the beginning of each semester, I start my university English courses with personal introductions and an introduction to the content and policies of the class.  I do my best to describe all the things a person should not do by humorously personifying the behavior:  “You know that guy.  It’s not always a guy, but it often is.  He shows up late, he disrupts classroom discussion, and then he often dominates it.  His homework is usually late or missing, and then he complains about his grade.  You know that guy; don’t be that guy.”  Of course, no one wants to be known as that guy, and actually describing his behavior in a humorous way before it arises has really helped me to avoid seeing the likes of him again in my classrooms.  Consequently, we as a class can devote our energies to the purpose of the course, whether it is understanding Shakespeare’s plays or exploring the ways that Marxism, Queer Theory and Deconstruction are helpful in literary interpretation.     

When I came to my first self-defense class at Thousand Waves, however, it was clear that I was going to encounter that guy as a central part of the course.  One of my favorite aspects of self-defense was de-escalation:  the careful, non-aggressive posture and the statements one can employ to take control of a situation when someone is angry.  We learned techniques of listening to another person and recognizing that the source of his or her anger is legitimate in order to prevent the escalation to physical violence.  We were learning to “talk a talk” so that we appeared to care about another person and to act as if we had options besides arguing or violence. 

It was in our lessons on de-escalation that I really started to enjoy my time with that guy, thanks in part to Senpai Eric Francque.  In one of my favorite demonstrations, Senpai Susan Barney played the part of a driver who rear-ended Senpai Eric’s car.  Immediately, he jumped out of his imaginary car, slammed its imaginary door and started yelling at her before he even looked at the imaginary dent.  He looked down at it, stared back up at her and went back to yelling:  “Look at what you’ve done.  Do you see what you’ve done to my car?  Look at what you’ve done to my car!”  Senpai Eric brilliantly portrayed that guy, but Senpai Susan was having none of it:  “I’m really sorry this happened.  Here, let’s get off the road and see what we can do to fix this situation.”  Eric kept finding ways to blame her or threaten her.  She listened and responded to his concerns, but she was never willing to “take the bait.”  He escalated.  She de-escalated.  Eventually, she won. 

The point of this exercise, of course, was to learn how to imitate Susan’s approach, not Eric’s.  And these were great lessons for me to learn, because de-escalation is a central part of my working world.  One might say that ridiculing unproductive student behavior before it happens is a form of “preventative de-escalation” because it never involves confronting an actual person.   (Needless to say, my approach is much different once that guy actually emerges as a real person with real concerns.)  But it is in my work as the English department advisor that I use some version of these techniques regularly.  I am normally the contact person when students have grievances about their grades, a professor’s behavior, or the generally alienated feeling many of them can have towards “the system.”   In this role, I often find myself both the student’s advocate and an institutional administrator, protecting the interests of my colleagues and the curriculum we have established.   I regularly act as a mediator between faculty or students and the Dean’s Office, and, every once in a while, I upset others when my active assertions appear aggressive.  I have found, however, that an optimistic belief that “we’re all on the same team” has been a great starting point for getting anything done (or even started, for that matter). 

However, when it came time for us to role-play, I think I might have learned as much from playing the role of that guy as I did from watching Senpai Susan’s de-escalation technique.  Although I bow in great respect and appreciation to Senpai Eric’s acting abilities – osu! and gassho! – I happily stepped up to the challenge to play that guy in his many manifestations, whether he is arguing for his right to read his roommate’s mail, demanding payment for a debt owed, yelling at his friend for being late to a play or becoming dangerously upset with a veterinarian’s receptionist.  I usually found that I provided my partner – the de-escalator – with a better challenge if I actually tried to imagine what had so upset that guy.  Viewed most charitably – and we actors have to be charitable to our characters – that guy is actually upset because he has worked really hard, and he believes that others aren’t playing by the rules.  He believes in something, and he has become kind of desperate.  His dignity is becoming worth fighting for. 

In role-playing that guy, I came to learn something invaluable about him:  I am he, or, at least, I am never that far away from him.  As a recovering passionate hot-head, I have been learning to live with him for a long time.  Some time ago, I was the captain of my high school football team, and I’ve always loved participating in contact sports.  I have long since sworn off my desire to dominate situations physically, and my training at the dojo is a different activity altogether.  Sparring is difficult not because I am repressing the “beast within” but because I’m new at karate.  I think I sometimes look very serious when I’m sparring, but it’s because I have a hard time actually raising my leg up high enough to kick legally, and it’s still nearly impossible for me to punch in a way that is accurate, quick and appropriate in its level of contact.  (I usually try to settle for an acceptable two out of three.)  But my greatest sense of victory when I spar now comes from the friendship and trust that I share with my friends at the dojo.  We’re all doing our best, and we know that no one wants to hurt the other.  

Where I live with that guy is in the difficult balancing act of all my pursuits.  I work at a job that requires me to be at my desk for 7-10 hours a day.  I am ever-so-slowly writing a book on education and Renaissance drama.  I teach.  I chauffeur two lovely girls to the sites of their educational pursuits.  I enjoy all the benefits of being a husband, father and friend.  Slowly, but surely, I am also learning new kata, and my kicks are getting higher.   I’m not so different from that guy, because he, very often, is someone pursuing something who has a belief about how things should be done.  I am a little different only because I’ve had enough good education to know that, when something goes wrong, we usually have options and we can often come to see that we’re really all on the same team.  One of the deeper lessons of de-escalation, I found, was not trying to solve things right away, but giving the angry person a chance to “vent” before rushing to a solution.  The effort that I have to make is to remember not to “pounce” on that guy, and assume he will de-escalate with me, right away, just because I believe we have options and can work together. 

Recently, I had an experience out on the road that put the role-playing to the test.  I was driving home from the dojo after karate class.  The class had been a wonderful challenge, and I had thoroughly enjoyed the time with my classmates.  However, I was hungry and I missed my family.  It was after 8:00, and I wanted to be home before the girls went to sleep.  At the stoplight, I stopped.  The car behind me didn’t, or at least not until it had run into my car.  Before emerging from the car to assess the damage, I took a single breath. This pause, I suppose, assigned me the role I would play.  A man emerged from the car behind me, and my lips formed the question “Are you OK?”  The man paused for a moment as if he had not heard me correctly.  I’m assuming he was expecting a confrontation with that guy.  Instead, I got to be something else.  Luckily, there was no visible damage to our cars.  We wished each other well and drove off into the night.  Of course, next time this happens – and there will certainly be a next time – I hope that I can remember the grace given to me by the pause of a single breath.  The next time this happens, I may be the driver in front or the driver behind.  The car might be dented badly, and someone might even be hurt.  I might provoke the anger of that guy,. I might even be that guy, at least for a moment, next time.  But I feel just a little more empowered as a result of this class and this real-world test.  I got the opportunity to play the role of someone I’ve always wanted to be.  

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