There is space all around us….in the street, in the car, in the very room where I’m sat right now. This space is essential for life…it allows us to breathe and to move and to go about our daily lives. We also each have our little piece of it…our own ‘space’. You’ll be able to tangibly identify your space when someone violates it, either by approaching you unexpectedly or moving towards you aggressively. In those cases, the person is ‘invading’ your space. This happens often in a conflict - I use the term ‘conflict’ here for the first time. An ‘attack’ indicates that violence has already ensued but a ‘conflict’ could just be a heated exchange of words. Unfortunately, when space is invaded, a simple conflict can often escalate into an attack.
During an attack, we must be aware of this space or find ourselves at its mercy. The first thing is to remember that the space is as much your opponents as it is yours. They will try and use that space to move to attack you and if you allow them this privilege, any good fighter will take full advantage. You must control the space both physically and mentally. Let’s first address the easier of the two, physically.
To physically control space, we must maintain contact of the opponent at all times. Whether you believe me or not, touch is a much faster sense than vision and hearing. There are exercises I can document which prove it but for now just take it as read that I have done the research and what I’m saying is true. By maintaining contact with the opponent, we do not allow them the space they need to attack. The majority of people do not know how to generate power at a short distance so their attacks will be less effective than someone who has trained to fight at this range. In addition, if we are intelligent about how we maintain contact, we can actually restrict the opponents use of weapons too; by pinning arms and legs for example.
Now, to mentally control space is a different story. This is unfortunately something that can not be easily explained….you have to feel it. If you do, your opponent will definitely feel it. Mental control of space is about your ability to sense your opponents movements and act on that sense. Don’t make the mistake of anticipating. Anticipating denotes cognitive thought which will almost always mislead. No, you do not ‘think’ about what your opponent might do, you ‘feel’ what he will do….what he ‘is’ doing. Animals already do this naturally. Dog owners know this every time the dog barks at the window as the milkman turns the corner at the end of the block. The dog can’t see him, and we have to assume can’t hear him but yet the dog still knows he’s there.
Long ago, humans had this ability. Its what kept Neanderthal man alive. We have simply lost our attunement to nature that we once had, dulled it through the use of technology. We no longer have a need to detect a predator, simply because we have no natural predators. We no longer need to be able to discern the scent of a deer at 1/2 a mile. If we are hungry, we simply hunt out the nearest McDonalds and have a Big Mac.
We are animals pure and simple and somewhere along the way, we have forgotten…reminded only by flashes of violence, the types of which are only seen when two Lions fight for a mate or an injured buffalo defends it’s calf. Martial arts enable us to partially reactivate these dormant instincts, make us into the human beings we once were…bring us a mere step closer to what we are capable of…
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