instill fear and cause pain

“Attackers have a goal, ‘to instill fear and cause pain; to assault from a position that gives them maximum safety while exposing you to maximum fear, pain and damage; to assault you by surprise; to assault you up close and from a position that dominates leaving you crowded with compromised balance and structure, etc.’” - cejames

Comment: serous self-defense tends to lean heavily toward the uncomfortable, to be taken out of that zone where humans tend to gravitate. Self-defense in all its complexities has become a “Profession.” It has become as serious and complex and confusing as other professions like the military, police and security. So, once you take the time to study self-defense and all that entails can you say that SD is a profession? SD is NOT a hobby and it is not a SPORT but it does involve a lot of serious aspects such as physical and mental damage along with legal ramifications not to leave out or diminish the long term effects on self and family and friends and socially. 

quicker, easier, more certain

“Higher levels of force -- quicker, easier, more certain. But the higher level of force, the more it takes to justify it.” - Rory Miller, Justified, Justifiable, Prudent and Smart dtd. Tuesday, January 13, 2015, Chiron Blog

Comments: See the last quotation and comments. 

In general, higher levels force

“In general, higher levels force are quicker, easier and more effective than lower levels.” - Rory Miller, Justified, Justifiable, Prudent and Smart dtd. Tuesday, January 13, 2015, Chiron Blog

Comments: Levels of force is another of those teachings left out of martial arts and self-defense. Once the use of higher levels of force were seen as combative and indicative of a warrior in battle but in modern society that socially condition against all types of conflict and violence that level becomes critical in remaining within the self-defense square. See the next quote.

one is stronger when

“No one is stronger when they're tense. No one is faster. No one is more flexible or agile. We all know this. All of us. And even the instructors would pay lip service to it... but there was an awful damn lot of practicing tension while talking about relaxation.” - Rory Miller, Chiron Training, Concretes and Abstracts

Comments: I feel, especially the American culture, we all are socially conditioned toward a tension, both mental and especially physical. We instinctively and naturally know that to hold tension is to incite stress and stress of all kinds tends to be detrimental to our overall health and well-being. It is even more incredible how we gravitate toward tension, something I suspect comes from a natural instinct to survive, i.e., tension is felt to be a natural armor of the body and it is but to hold it unnaturally and for longer durations is counterproductive toward health, well-being and toward survival. Our cultural society has been conditioned as well toward a more ascetic presentation meaning a leaner and more symmetric  body presentation that is seen in the discipline of “Body Building.” When we perform and practice kata the focus is primarily on that symmetric ascetic presentation with any flaw seen as fault to be punished by a loss of points toward winning that competitive trophy. 

hitting the heavy bag

“I was hitting the heavy bag, doing as I had been taught, throwing fast, loose karate punches and tensing them at the moment of impact when Mac said, ‘You realize that's unnecessary, right?’ I was flustered. It was the way I was taught. I hit hard. I started to argue and explain. Mac continued, ‘All you need to do is get these bones (he indicated my metacarpals) in line with these bones (the radius and ulna).’  Then he completely shifted my understanding of martial arts ‘Tensing and clenching are what people do when they don't understand structure.’” - Rory Miller, Chiron Training, Concretes and Abstracts

Comments: Uh-oh, an Oh-SHIT moment reading this one. Notice that his lessons involved the application of physiokinetic principles called structure, alignment and others?

efficient tools

“Memorizing techniques is easy. Nice and concrete. Teaching power generation, targeting and conformation is a good size to chunk the information. It gives beginners efficient tools and increases flexibility in hours instead of months.” 

Comments: To memorize is to encode the hard drive memory that is controlled and governed by our human brain and our human brain much like a hard drive is slow and cumbersome but teaching to understand is about encoding that Random Access Memory directly by the lizard brain. RAM is something that can be encoded in hours while hard drive memory is just files holding information not accessible to the lizard. 

experience leads to understanding

“Technique repetition may lead to knowledge. Actual experience leads to understanding.” - Rory Miller, Chiron Training, Concretes and Abstracts

Comments: To understand means you have achieved the ability to act appropriately, it means that when instinct and the lizard kick in the training becomes readily available when simple repetitive technique does not achieve availability in the fight. Repetitive technique training is easy, training to understand is difficult. If your goal is to look good and win trophies, fine - but - if your goal is to survive an attack then understanding is the path to take. The next quote explains more …