Folks have been sucking on the rotten teet of politically charged shite for so long, and been taught out of some kind of idiotic need to be seen by others as ‘virtuous’ to ‘rise above’ the animalistic behavior of those who dwell in the underbelly of society, that they have lost their connection with reality, due to being coddled and pampered by those who seek to make us weak.
Those who choose to sit around debating why criminals behave the way they do, and waste time discussing what must have gone wrong in their past, and how we as a society can ‘help’ them to learn how to behave… instead of coming up with real world solutions such as how to take these fucking degenerates apart when they lay their hands on us and those we love… have their head in the clouds and are playing right into the hands of the scum we all have to tolerate everyday, who walk around scot free because nobody has the balls to do what should be done about them.
In my experience, for what it’s worth, from getting in with bad crowds when I was younger, and from living in various city’s where I unfortunately experienced and got to know some absolute pieces of shit who scared the living crap out of me on many occasions… and who are often very difficult to get away from once you are ’in’ with them, unless you move to a different city (something I did for this reason and it only worked because I was fortunately unimportant to them) or unless you have what it takes to face them in the only way that they understand (something I certainly wasn’t equipped to do I’m not ashamed to say)….
I am aware that those who have not really experienced criminality or known those who have absolutely no moral code or suffer any kind of guilt for hurting others have NO UNDERSTANDING of what it takes to deal with such a person!!! these people have a lot to learn if they are ever going to prepare themselves to deal with a real threat and need to get their heads out of themselves and stop preaching their bullshit pseudo-moral ignorance while some of us are putting honest blood sweat and tears and a lot of time and money into learning how to be the change we want to see in society, and to keep ourselves and our families safe in the absence of a police force that gives a toss about anything except statistics.
Stroud (a place I escaped age 16 because I couldn’t deal with the ignorance and the lack of get up and go) and where I ended up coming back to after spending my whole adult
Life in various city’s working my butt off to pursue excellence in that which makes me feel human… is a place of great beauty! The valleys are picturesque, and I feel blessed that I got to grow up here in my early years, BUT it is and always has been so full of dreamy, clueless, self interested, floaty clowns who like the sound of their own voices that it literally makes my head spin!
And from growing up around these types I know that all their rainbow bullshit quickly falls away when their bubble gets burst by some realworld shit.
I truly feel for you trying to empower people in this way in this place! And I can imagine that at times it may seem hopeless! Also it makes me pissed to hear how many of those fools have tried to shut you down clearly before they have even given you or what you are about a chance.
Speaking as somebody who has been blessed enough to have found your classes a few years back and as a result has been put on a very important path in my life, one which I know I will be on till my last day on earth…. I thank you for NOT being another prick selling their wares… for NOT just trying to make money and capitalize on the goings on that we should all be paying enough attention to that we are NOT surprised when some poor woman is raped…. Or when some teenager is cut to ribbons for making a bad decision… have you all not seen the kind of scum that lurk around the streets of our towns and villages? of our city’s? If you don’t see them you must have your eyes wide shut and your mind must be somewhere else! these parasites only get to be this way and to carry on uninterrupted because ordinary people prefer to put their fingers in their ears and say nothing instead of standing up for each other or for themselves, and so the cycle continues.
In my view ALL women should be cultivating a ‘kill-switch’ for lack of a better term, and learning how to hurt those who would seek to enter uninvited into their personal space! I know that my daughters and my other half will be taught how to look after themselves from as young an age as is appropriate, starting with cultivating a sense of awareness. And to decent men out there who live by a moral code, you too should know how to look after yourselves and the ones you love! And for that you need a teacher with integrity who cares more about the real-world functionality of what they are teaching than about the size of their pay cheque.
I for one am incredibly grateful that there is somebody in this place with the passion and the drive as well as the skills to teach those of us who are serious about learning how to look after ourselves, and I know I am far from the only one! Keep doing what you are doing and know that you have my utmost respect and absolute dedication to what you are teaching us.
I think the conditioning around not fighting back, and “rising above it”, which is so prevalent with parents and schools, has a lot to answer for here, in terms of people not wanting to think about protecting themselves.
I’ve had to really give some thought to what I might be prepared to do should the need arise.
And that’s partly because, having moved from Milton Keynes to a much more rural location, the incidences of verbal and physical assaults were so much reduced that I had sort of forgotten the loathing I felt towards the flashers, wankers, and ‘isn’t it funny if I poke a stick through the spokes of your bike’-ers.
It is possible to float around on your own cloud and not really be aware of what’s going on. Like you, I am very grateful to have someone with integrity and skills to learn from. It’s been pretty transformative so far!
Yes! Living around here is a far cry from my years for example living just off Camden high street, or just up the road from Brixton, where extremely distasteful people were everywhere and the threats were very real especially if like me you lived at night and walked around alone a lot… it scares me to think that I used to do that most nights of my life without any kind of training or sense of awareness, and luckily for the most part managed to talk my way out of threatening situations that arose while doing so… mostly my sense of awareness was useless and I never saw the threat coming Until it was in my face… it’s all too easy when living in a sleepy town to forget what it can be like out there… but a little adventure into Gloucester or Bristol… even Stroud on a Friday or Saturday night quickly refreshes those memories and reminds me how important it is to be aware of your surroundings and to have some clue as to how to avoid those situations, as avoidance is always the best thing! But also it reminds me how important it is to also learn how to handle yourself if for some reason you have not been alert enough to see a threat coming and have to try to make good of a terrible situation.
My final note is that pursuing this kind of training has also brought a clarity to my life in the sense of my personal development on the road to becoming the type of person I want to be… there is much more in this pursuit than just learning how to throw punches… it seems to me now after however long it’s been since I started with FN that the physical skill set is only part of what is important, but the being switched on and alert part is actually perhaps even more important… of course the tools with which to deal with a bad scenario are integral but cultivating the mindset is i am finding the part which has woken me up the most.
Always with thanks to those who take the time to pass on these skills and this important knowledge.
Yeah, and for me I moved into a really rural location, and I felt very safe: we never locked our doors and we left the keys in the car so we knew where they were. We locked the tack room where the quad bike, lived, though, and that thing never got stolen, which was remarkable. The only concession I made to safety was not to run at the same sort of time every day, but I used to don a head torch and run for miles on the country roads. The dangers came from the landlord’s out of control dogs, riding dodgy horses, and occasional poor choices in workers.
It was exactly thinking that I might find myself in Gloucester on a Friday night collecting a child that found themselves somewhere they didn’t want to be that made me look into self-defence in the first place, but I now think I was a bit naive about what’s out there. I can only see it getting worse as the quality of many people’s lives deteriorates.
I think there’s an element of shooting the messenger. And there’s often such a strong desire to not believe in the danger out there that alerting people to the fact can be very unpopular. It’s seen as alarmist, or fear-mongering by some, and those that are aware of the dangers can be equally disparaging of those of us that attempt to take responsibility for their own safety: because it’s seen as ultimately not possible to really defend yourself, so the safest thing to do is stay at home, especially at night, even though statistically the home is the most dangerous place for women, especially at night.
I tell everyone that I train, principally because I want every decent person to consider doing so, and although some people are genuinely interested, I would say that most people are either disapproving, or amused.
For me, the more realistic the training, the better. Surely. Of course, it needs to be progressive and not lead to overwhelm, but self-defence that fails to address common scenarios - such as finding yourself on your back - is surely failing the trainees.
I’m a fan of trigger warnings, I really am. I post about a lot of things, and I like not to shy away from the darker aspects of life. I put a TW on a post recently dealing with death, baby death and sexual assault. My friend, the husband of my friend who died, could thus avoid the post about his wife’s death. He very much enjoyed my post about planting leeks, instead. I think that’s kind, and I appreciate being able to at least be pre-warned about certain posts, and not get ambushed. But common sense would suggest that a self-defence course featuring “simulated confrontation and language” already strongly and explicitly carries the trigger/content warning that that trainee seemed to want spelled out at the beginning of every class. Or pre-class, so she could avoid the unsavoury ones.
People are not always in the position to appreciate what you do. As you say, those that get it, get it, and those that don’t, don’t, at least not yet.
This is a tough community to operate in, that is for sure.
I'm not a messenger, I'm just the guy that provides clearly labelled potential solutions and training for a specific set of problems.
People seek me out as they have already flagged the problem and are wanting to do something about it.
I'm not persuading or trying to change minds.
"Bubble people" will avoid me like the plague as I'm a reminder of the sharp surfaces that even the most pretty of bubbles can encounter and go..."Pop!".
As far as trigger warnings go, I feel that in a clearly marked and separate environment there is little need for them among healthy adults.
If one constantly wants trigger warnings at every turn, this is an indicator of deeper psychological problems that one needs to seek help with.
Just as uncontrolled anger is directly flagged in the FN course at level 4 as a problem needing self reflection and possible medical help with, so is excessive, crippling anxiety and fear.
Sadly, trigger warning culture is also a form of creeping censorship and must be guarded against being used by those seeking to infect every group and organisation with this type of control.
You must look at cancer directly to perform surgery and cut it out - you can't do the same with personal safety if you are not even allowed to discuss it in a mature and respectful manner in an adult setting for fear of someone trying to score virtue points and projecting their own carefully hidden prejudices.
Communities that advocate this type of thought policing aren't tough, they're weak.
Folks have been sucking on the rotten teet of politically charged shite for so long, and been taught out of some kind of idiotic need to be seen by others as ‘virtuous’ to ‘rise above’ the animalistic behavior of those who dwell in the underbelly of society, that they have lost their connection with reality, due to being coddled and pampered by those who seek to make us weak.
Those who choose to sit around debating why criminals behave the way they do, and waste time discussing what must have gone wrong in their past, and how we as a society can ‘help’ them to learn how to behave… instead of coming up with real world solutions such as how to take these fucking degenerates apart when they lay their hands on us and those we love… have their head in the clouds and are playing right into the hands of the scum we all have to tolerate everyday, who walk around scot free because nobody has the balls to do what should be done about them.
In my experience, for what it’s worth, from getting in with bad crowds when I was younger, and from living in various city’s where I unfortunately experienced and got to know some absolute pieces of shit who scared the living crap out of me on many occasions… and who are often very difficult to get away from once you are ’in’ with them, unless you move to a different city (something I did for this reason and it only worked because I was fortunately unimportant to them) or unless you have what it takes to face them in the only way that they understand (something I certainly wasn’t equipped to do I’m not ashamed to say)….
I am aware that those who have not really experienced criminality or known those who have absolutely no moral code or suffer any kind of guilt for hurting others have NO UNDERSTANDING of what it takes to deal with such a person!!! these people have a lot to learn if they are ever going to prepare themselves to deal with a real threat and need to get their heads out of themselves and stop preaching their bullshit pseudo-moral ignorance while some of us are putting honest blood sweat and tears and a lot of time and money into learning how to be the change we want to see in society, and to keep ourselves and our families safe in the absence of a police force that gives a toss about anything except statistics.
Stroud (a place I escaped age 16 because I couldn’t deal with the ignorance and the lack of get up and go) and where I ended up coming back to after spending my whole adult
Life in various city’s working my butt off to pursue excellence in that which makes me feel human… is a place of great beauty! The valleys are picturesque, and I feel blessed that I got to grow up here in my early years, BUT it is and always has been so full of dreamy, clueless, self interested, floaty clowns who like the sound of their own voices that it literally makes my head spin!
And from growing up around these types I know that all their rainbow bullshit quickly falls away when their bubble gets burst by some realworld shit.
I truly feel for you trying to empower people in this way in this place! And I can imagine that at times it may seem hopeless! Also it makes me pissed to hear how many of those fools have tried to shut you down clearly before they have even given you or what you are about a chance.
Speaking as somebody who has been blessed enough to have found your classes a few years back and as a result has been put on a very important path in my life, one which I know I will be on till my last day on earth…. I thank you for NOT being another prick selling their wares… for NOT just trying to make money and capitalize on the goings on that we should all be paying enough attention to that we are NOT surprised when some poor woman is raped…. Or when some teenager is cut to ribbons for making a bad decision… have you all not seen the kind of scum that lurk around the streets of our towns and villages? of our city’s? If you don’t see them you must have your eyes wide shut and your mind must be somewhere else! these parasites only get to be this way and to carry on uninterrupted because ordinary people prefer to put their fingers in their ears and say nothing instead of standing up for each other or for themselves, and so the cycle continues.
In my view ALL women should be cultivating a ‘kill-switch’ for lack of a better term, and learning how to hurt those who would seek to enter uninvited into their personal space! I know that my daughters and my other half will be taught how to look after themselves from as young an age as is appropriate, starting with cultivating a sense of awareness. And to decent men out there who live by a moral code, you too should know how to look after yourselves and the ones you love! And for that you need a teacher with integrity who cares more about the real-world functionality of what they are teaching than about the size of their pay cheque.
I for one am incredibly grateful that there is somebody in this place with the passion and the drive as well as the skills to teach those of us who are serious about learning how to look after ourselves, and I know I am far from the only one! Keep doing what you are doing and know that you have my utmost respect and absolute dedication to what you are teaching us.
Underwolfe
I think the conditioning around not fighting back, and “rising above it”, which is so prevalent with parents and schools, has a lot to answer for here, in terms of people not wanting to think about protecting themselves.
I’ve had to really give some thought to what I might be prepared to do should the need arise.
And that’s partly because, having moved from Milton Keynes to a much more rural location, the incidences of verbal and physical assaults were so much reduced that I had sort of forgotten the loathing I felt towards the flashers, wankers, and ‘isn’t it funny if I poke a stick through the spokes of your bike’-ers.
It is possible to float around on your own cloud and not really be aware of what’s going on. Like you, I am very grateful to have someone with integrity and skills to learn from. It’s been pretty transformative so far!
Yes! Living around here is a far cry from my years for example living just off Camden high street, or just up the road from Brixton, where extremely distasteful people were everywhere and the threats were very real especially if like me you lived at night and walked around alone a lot… it scares me to think that I used to do that most nights of my life without any kind of training or sense of awareness, and luckily for the most part managed to talk my way out of threatening situations that arose while doing so… mostly my sense of awareness was useless and I never saw the threat coming Until it was in my face… it’s all too easy when living in a sleepy town to forget what it can be like out there… but a little adventure into Gloucester or Bristol… even Stroud on a Friday or Saturday night quickly refreshes those memories and reminds me how important it is to be aware of your surroundings and to have some clue as to how to avoid those situations, as avoidance is always the best thing! But also it reminds me how important it is to also learn how to handle yourself if for some reason you have not been alert enough to see a threat coming and have to try to make good of a terrible situation.
My final note is that pursuing this kind of training has also brought a clarity to my life in the sense of my personal development on the road to becoming the type of person I want to be… there is much more in this pursuit than just learning how to throw punches… it seems to me now after however long it’s been since I started with FN that the physical skill set is only part of what is important, but the being switched on and alert part is actually perhaps even more important… of course the tools with which to deal with a bad scenario are integral but cultivating the mindset is i am finding the part which has woken me up the most.
Always with thanks to those who take the time to pass on these skills and this important knowledge.
Underwolfe
Yeah, and for me I moved into a really rural location, and I felt very safe: we never locked our doors and we left the keys in the car so we knew where they were. We locked the tack room where the quad bike, lived, though, and that thing never got stolen, which was remarkable. The only concession I made to safety was not to run at the same sort of time every day, but I used to don a head torch and run for miles on the country roads. The dangers came from the landlord’s out of control dogs, riding dodgy horses, and occasional poor choices in workers.
It was exactly thinking that I might find myself in Gloucester on a Friday night collecting a child that found themselves somewhere they didn’t want to be that made me look into self-defence in the first place, but I now think I was a bit naive about what’s out there. I can only see it getting worse as the quality of many people’s lives deteriorates.
Thanks Underwolfe.
I think there’s an element of shooting the messenger. And there’s often such a strong desire to not believe in the danger out there that alerting people to the fact can be very unpopular. It’s seen as alarmist, or fear-mongering by some, and those that are aware of the dangers can be equally disparaging of those of us that attempt to take responsibility for their own safety: because it’s seen as ultimately not possible to really defend yourself, so the safest thing to do is stay at home, especially at night, even though statistically the home is the most dangerous place for women, especially at night.
I tell everyone that I train, principally because I want every decent person to consider doing so, and although some people are genuinely interested, I would say that most people are either disapproving, or amused.
For me, the more realistic the training, the better. Surely. Of course, it needs to be progressive and not lead to overwhelm, but self-defence that fails to address common scenarios - such as finding yourself on your back - is surely failing the trainees.
I’m a fan of trigger warnings, I really am. I post about a lot of things, and I like not to shy away from the darker aspects of life. I put a TW on a post recently dealing with death, baby death and sexual assault. My friend, the husband of my friend who died, could thus avoid the post about his wife’s death. He very much enjoyed my post about planting leeks, instead. I think that’s kind, and I appreciate being able to at least be pre-warned about certain posts, and not get ambushed. But common sense would suggest that a self-defence course featuring “simulated confrontation and language” already strongly and explicitly carries the trigger/content warning that that trainee seemed to want spelled out at the beginning of every class. Or pre-class, so she could avoid the unsavoury ones.
People are not always in the position to appreciate what you do. As you say, those that get it, get it, and those that don’t, don’t, at least not yet.
This is a tough community to operate in, that is for sure.
Thanks SG.
I'm not a messenger, I'm just the guy that provides clearly labelled potential solutions and training for a specific set of problems.
People seek me out as they have already flagged the problem and are wanting to do something about it.
I'm not persuading or trying to change minds.
"Bubble people" will avoid me like the plague as I'm a reminder of the sharp surfaces that even the most pretty of bubbles can encounter and go..."Pop!".
As far as trigger warnings go, I feel that in a clearly marked and separate environment there is little need for them among healthy adults.
If one constantly wants trigger warnings at every turn, this is an indicator of deeper psychological problems that one needs to seek help with.
Just as uncontrolled anger is directly flagged in the FN course at level 4 as a problem needing self reflection and possible medical help with, so is excessive, crippling anxiety and fear.
Sadly, trigger warning culture is also a form of creeping censorship and must be guarded against being used by those seeking to infect every group and organisation with this type of control.
You must look at cancer directly to perform surgery and cut it out - you can't do the same with personal safety if you are not even allowed to discuss it in a mature and respectful manner in an adult setting for fear of someone trying to score virtue points and projecting their own carefully hidden prejudices.
Communities that advocate this type of thought policing aren't tough, they're weak.