"What is important to learn in the Art of Karate is the Art of stopping conflict before it hurts you or another."
Sen-No-Sen = Awareness of an attack before it happens.
You know how it takes time to learn a new sport or how to play a musical instrument. Achieving Sen-No-Sen takes practice too, in order to be good at it, but it takes no time at all to do if you are really aware.
Listening to Feelings
Have you ever "felt" that something bad or dangerous was going to happen? Even though everything around you seemed calm? Sometimes, if we are really aware, we can sense when there is something wrong. Most of the time we don't listen to these "feelings" and just go on our way. But these feelings can be signals that something is not right.
There is nothing mysterious about having feelings that tell us that something isn't right. If you look closely at these feelings you will most likely see where they come from. What is probably happening is that you are sensing what is called "vibrations." These vibrations are disturbances in another person that haven't yet come out as physical action.
Here is an example that may have happened to you. You 49
are talking to someone and although you see that he or she is smiling, underneath the surface of the smile there is a feeling or vibration of anger, or hurt, or sadness. This is because the person is distracted - in two places at once. That person is
. talking to you, but is thinking of something else. That person's attention is divided between you and the troublesome thoughts he or she is experiencing.
Perhaps you have never thought about this before, but these troubled thoughts usually come from the past, from something else that happened to that person before - something that he or she did not fully understand. When we don't understand something that happens to us, we keep thinking about it
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even though it happened in the past. When we do this we are in conflict. It hurts to be in conflict, because we want to be finished with what happened in the past and be able to be in the present.
Watching Feelings
Sometimes our bodies show the conflict we are in. You may notice people wiggling their feet, rubbing their hands, tapping their fingers, squirming nervously in their chairs, or pacing.
When you see this, you are aware of the other person's inner feelings, which are being expressed by body movement. This is called "body language." It is a language without words that tells you something about the person.
The kind of hidden conflict we have just mentioned will most likely not cause you any problems if you happen to see it in another person. But sometimes hidden conflict can affect you, even if you have nothing to do with it being there.
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Sometimes you will sense that another person may feel hurt or angry and want to take it out on you. With Sen-No-Sen, you can stop this before it happens.
Creating Distractions
There are several different ways to stop someone from wanting to attack you. Whether physically or verbally, the idea is to distract the person - to take his or her mind off what he or she is thinking. Can you think of ways to do this?
1. Change the subject of the conversation, if you feel whatever you are talking about is making the person angry.
2. Make a joke. Humor is a great way to distract a person.
Make sure it is not an insulting joke. Laughter is very powerful. Sometimes it will cure the problem and sometimes not.
3. Get up and leave.
4. Try to be friends with the person and to help him or her find out why he or she is angry or hurt. This takes some practice. If you cannot come up with a good way to do this, you might want to ask an adult for help.
The important point here is that the Art of Karate is the art of stopping conflict before it hurts you or another. If you see conflict about to happen, just know that you can use your brain to stop it. Remember, the real test of a Martial Arts master is to end fighting before it starts.
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Fight, Flight or Freeze
Has anyone ever come up to you wanting to fight? What did you do? If it has never happened to you, what do you think you would do? Fight? Run away? Freeze?
Write down on a piece of paper what you did, or what you think you would do if this happened to you. If you fight, you go against the real test of a Martial Artist since you have not been able to end the fighting before it starts. If you run away, although you are happy to get away, you don't feel good about yourself for running. Furthermore, you haven't solved the problem. That person will probably confront you again. If you freeze, you are probably very afraid, which is natural, but freezing doesn't help your situation either.
Is there another way to deal with a person who wants to harm you? Write down, on your piece of paper, other ways you can think of to defend yourself.
We teach our students self-defense skills in Karate to help them feel confident in fighting. But we don't want them to fight! We teach them to fight so they have the confidence not to fight. Does this make sense? If not, talk it over with someone you trust, for it is an important point to learn.
When we teach you to defend yourself, we are actually teaching you how to stop a fight. The reason you become able to stop a fight without fighting is that you are not afraid - or, at least less afraid - of the other person. Can you see that if you have confidence because you know how to defend yourself, you don't have to fight? You don't have to prove anything to anyone, because you know you are strong.
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Let's look more closely at the ways to stop a fight through nonviolent means. Remember that a true student of Karate is a gentle person - one who always intends to end a fight by nonviolent ways. This is the way to real power and real strength. If, however, you have no choice, and you must fight, hopefully you can do it in a way that is not harmful.
