the mental game

[WingChunIan]

For those who don't come from violent backgrounds or who lead non violent day to day lives, the question of will this work for me in a real situation often raises its head after a period of training. Some students are well versed in street altercations and know how they will react and therefore what will and wont work for them, others simply follow blindly and accept without question that they will be transformed from the mild mannered janitor into a deadly fighting machine when confronted with a threat situation. For those that want to test themselves or who harbour doubts, often the answer is pressure testing and scenario training but how realistic can these really be made within the safe confines of training? (covered on a different thread). One way of filling the gap for me is mental rehearsal. As a practising hypnotherapist I have on occassion worked with students to help them experience the reality of a street confontation without the risk of physical injury. The visualisation can be honed to include the triggering of the adrenal rush and its associated feelings and can be very effective. It's not for everyone but I wondered if anyone else out there had used hypnosis, self hypnosis or visualisation for the same purpose?

 

[Cyriacus]

I guess ive kind of Visualised? I mean, its mostly a blend of deduction and logic with a few random fractals in there, but, I guess so.

 

[WingChunIan]

One of the techniques that I use is anchoring of the adrenal rush. If an individual can recall a time when they had the loopy loop stomach and the sinking feeling, shakes etc whatever the scenario then it can be anchored and triggered again later. One of the things that I like to do is to use reports / footage of violent assaults as primers to give the imagination somewhere to start from and then trigger the adrenal response by firing an anchor. You can then have the person go through the scenario full speed, in slow mo, and repeat several times until their response improves. Its only a tool but it gets the student used to fighting under adrenalin fuelled conditions.

 

[MJS]

For those who don't come from violent backgrounds or who lead non violent day to day lives, the question of will this work for me in a real situation often raises its head after a period of training. Some students are well versed in street altercations and know how they will react and therefore what will and wont work for them, others simply follow blindly and accept without question that they will be transformed from the mild mannered janitor into a deadly fighting machine when confronted with a threat situation. For those that want to test themselves or who harbour doubts, often the answer is pressure testing and scenario training but how realistic can these really be made within the safe confines of training? (covered on a different thread). One way of filling the gap for me is mental rehearsal. As a practising hypnotherapist I have on occassion worked with students to help them experience the reality of a street confontation without the risk of physical injury. The visualisation can be honed to include the triggering of the adrenal rush and its associated feelings and can be very effective. It's not for everyone but I wondered if anyone else out there had used hypnosis, self hypnosis or visualisation for the same purpose?

Never used anything other than visualization. IMHO, using scenario training is very useful. Yes, 99% of the time, when this is mentioned, people say the obvious...that you can't replicate things the way they happen in real life. Yes, that is true. However, you can get pretty damn close, providing the training is done right,and providing that the people participating the said training, have the right mindset, which translates to visualization.

IMO, scenario training is key, for anyone who is really serious about self defense.