Chuntian Academy International

Director's Special Featured Article: FEAR

By Matt Plewes

February 4, 2007

Now that I am back in Japan from a very educational experience in Indonesia, that took me to some risky and isolated areas and situations . The experience inspired me to write about one of the most important if not the most important thing in martial arts if not life itself. FEAR.

Before the trip I put all of my affairs in order. But after my learning experiences, my fears of Indonesia are gone. Why? Let us look at this for a minute. I would like to talk about one of the biggest and most misunderstood problems in martial arts training, it is so prominent in many schools training and the number one complaint from "Black belts" that were victims of defeat in REAL situations, realizing years of wasted misguided training. I am not at all surprised at this, I also had a false sense of reality and was defeated on the street as well, after many years of training and performing confidently in the dojo (training hall). The cause of that defeat was the catalyst that made me get REAL with my defense training. What am I talking about? FEAR, or more appropriately the attempt to fight FEAR. It is bad enough to teach woman and children to try to intercept a knife in a simulated attack, not teaching them to run and to create obstacles, and the idea to stay and fight is a deadly macho misguided, aimed at bar fights, kind of mentality that will get you killed. But schools that have Rule# 1 No Fear, or FEAR NO ONE type slogans, really piss me off, and are setting up the student for a disaster, defeat, if not death. Rule # 1 should be RUN LIKE HELL !!. RULE # 2 ACCEPT FEAR, it will help you if you understand it, it will hinder or hurt you if you fight it or deny it. Embrace it, use fear as you ally, educate yourself, understand your fears and face them. Don't wait to they show up on the street and you break your school's number on RULE and feel fear, you then realize your breaking a RULE and your body and mind goes in to negative thinking and reacting and you can not perform, you are literally frozen in fear.
WHY? Because you are denying a human response that actually helps and prepares you for fight or flight, to think these feelings are wrong, you lose. Prepare and train with fear, FEAR is o.k., it is natural. Do you even know what fear is? What is fear? The dictionary reads,
Fear: "a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc. whether the threat is real or imagined."

You need to accept fear, before you can try to understand or conquer it. Fear is the tick, tick sound of sweat dripping from your chin onto a prison floor. Fear is the long ride down on a flaming airplane. Fear is the relentless onslaught of terminal Cancer. Fear is our perception of impending danger. Fear creates physical reactions that are designed to save us in an emergency. Rapid pulse, tightened muscles, adrenaline pumping and sharpened faculties. So when you feel fear, channel it into action, for God sakes don't try to be fearless, in doing that you are actually trying to be unprepared, and you will. But also fearful, focused on the, surprising to you, ill-effects. Such as heavy, numb and weak legs, loss of feeling, shaking, weakness, tunnel vision, nausea, loss of bladder control, self doubt, etc.. If you understand fear and the possible situations you may encounter, these effects won't be so pronounced or unexpected, learn what it is and use it. Train in reality, not karate vs. karate, Judo vs. Judo, Boxing vs. Boxing. Forget about conformed, out-dated rule ridden, or sport, "styles". Learn what works in fearful, real situations. Remember, the smarter, simpler the technique the more likely you can apply it, keep this in mind.

Fear is everything and fear is nothing. We all have fears, we can sense danger and we try and should work harder to replace fear with knowledge. Fear is a natural reaction that can be replaced by a calmness born of acceptance and the comfort of a life well lived.
The fear of danger is a normal human reaction to the unknown. I used to have a fairly mundane job, working ten years in a Paper Mill. The paper mill is a very dangerous, major industrial complex, with hundreds of large motors, moving gears, seen and hidden dangers, chemical, heat and many other dangers, loss of limbs, and death our not uncommon. But it was mundane because I knew the dangers and was trained to avoid them-the difference is knowledge, training and mental preparation. Lots of people defuse land mines, jump out of planes, fight wars, dive under water and even rob banks for a living. They are fairly comfortable with the risks involved and understand the consequences of not paying attention or screwing up.
Now every time I travel into an unknown area I don't feel fear; when I am in a dangerous situation I have learned to accept fear to channel it in to action.

So in summary, and more importantly understand that ignorance breeds fear, and you need to educate yourself to help to understand, accept and to channel your fear. So let us start with one small lesson on the understanding of fear and using it as our ally. Lesson # 1: Don't deny it, learn to channel it, find a school that teaches reality, not that claims to teach reality. A good indicator of a good school or teacher, is one that understands the fear factor and knows how to channel it. Techniques are useless if you can only do them in the dojo, but you freeze up in real life, just because your teacher misguided you. However, in his defense, he too was probably unknowing misguided as well. That's a dangerous side effect of training with a sport style, or an outdated traditional style, or with a student teacher (under 6th degree black belt) and not a true master that knows and understands that at least 90% of defense and survival is mental, emotional, spiritual, not technical. And most of all, it is 100% human. It you understand this, you are on the right path.