Archive for September, 2009

Instinctive reactions to muggings

Posted in personal safety on September 29th, 2009 by Chris – 1 Comment

Mock muggings’ to tackle crime

A mock mugging

Mock muggings: What would you do?

Mock muggings should be staged across the UK to test the public’s willingness to aid victims and report crimes, a charity has said.

The group Witness Confident says it wants to challenge a “walk-on-by” culture to street crime.

It says the disengagement of the criminal justice systems makes it harder for communities to fight crime.

The group also wants to run an online social network so people can map crimes to help witnesses come forward.

Last year, a major government review warned that public confidence in the criminal justice system had fallen, partly because they felt “cut off” from its workings.

Witness Confident, says it wants to challenge some of these problems.

Read full article at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8244997.stm

Comment:

No doubt the research will show the vast majority of individuals are reluctant to get involved in any sort of violent incident.

So why are individuals reluctant to get involved ?

Having been involved in numerous violent incidents myself I can identify some of the issues which may make people reluctant to get involved.

The most obvious is the fear of getting injured or even killed.

How many times do we read about people intervening in a dispute and then becoming the victim themselves ?.

How many times do we hear about individuals going to the aid of a victim and getting charged with assault ?

What if you do come across a violent incident and end up in court ?, How safe are you now?

You could still face intimidation by friends/family of the accused during the court proceedings.

What about when you finally get to give your evidence and come up against a clever defence barrister who attempts to make you look like the guilty party ?.

These are just a few of the issues that people may reflect upon when coming across a violent or potentially violent situation.

Instinct/Intuition Part 2

Posted in conflict resolution, managing violence & aggression, personal safety, street survival tips on September 9th, 2009 by Chris – Be the first to comment

Having run thousands of personal safety courses throughout the UK I have met many individuals who have experienced extreme fear and yet others who claim they have never actually had a Fight or Flight reaction.

Fear is normal it can significantly enhance your chances of survival in a potentially dangerous situation.

The amigdala has developed over millions of years to aid our survival and once triggered it produces powerful performance enhancing chemicals to flood the bloodstream enabling us to become , Faster, Stronger, and in many cases we can become totally desensitised to pain.

The amigdala can be triggered by any of our senses e.g, smell, sound, vison, touch, etc. but for us humans most of the information we receive is through our eye sight.

Think about the example I gave in the previous issue about walking into a public house and just getting an uncomfortable feeling.

Through your eyes alone the brain is feed a vast amount of information most of which is filtered out but even the smallest micro pieces  of information that threatens your personal safety are high jacked by amigular before the logical brain gets an opportunity to analyse the situation.

So we walk into a bar, we scan our environment, read body bold language both verbally &  non verbally we are all experts at this, but some people excel at this by training in NLP for instance and we will look at this in later articles.

You may also notice there seems to be an  unpleasant atmosphere which you would have difficulty explaining to some-one but you just know something is not right.

Scientists have now established that this is why most of us do not become victims of violence we trust our instinct and remove ourselves from potential threats and that the small number of  individuals who become victims are just not tuned into their instincts or go into denial.

Two things to remember about instinct:

Firstly it is always a response to something.

Secondly: It only has your best interest at heart.

In the next issue we will be looking at awareness and the research that has been carried out into this.

You will learn how to increase your awareness significantly so that you can become your own personal bodyguard.