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EXPERT WARRIOR AWARENESS: “Tuhoit’u” [The Hunted One] by Mark Hatmaker

 


THE Primary Factor in self-protection/self-defense is situational awareness. Keeping in mind that crime is, more often than not, a product of opportunity, if we take steps to reduce opportunity to as close to nil as we can manage we have gone a long way to rendering our physical tactical training needless [that’s a good thing.]

Yes, having defensive tactical skills in the back-pocket is a great ace to carry day-to-day but all the more useful to saving your life or the lives of loved ones is a honed awareness, a ready alertness to what is occurring around you every single day.

Here’s the problem, maintaining such awareness is a Tough job with a capital T as most of our daily lives are safe and mundane [also a good thing] and this very safety allows us to backslide in good awareness practices. Without daily danger-stressors we easily fall into default comfort mode.

A useful practice to return awareness/alertness to the fore is to gamify your awareness, use a series of specific awareness/alertness drills on a revolving basis that allow you to keep your mind in the day-to-day routine while also making a bit of a game out of what may save your life.

In aid of that I use an extensive series of gamified awareness drills culled from historical warrior traditions across the globe. Where appropriate I have updated the drills to fit the 21st century environment.

Below you will find just one of these many drills that you can take into your day to day life starting NOW.

The 1st Awareness Exercise for Warriors is from “Puewatsi Nemito” (The Wild Walker or Walk of the Wild) a Comanche warrior tradition.

“Tuhoit’u” [The Hunted One]

Today: You are on the Menu.

  • Whether in an urban or a natural setting live as if you are a hunted man, a targeted woman, a person on someone’s Kill List.
  • Know who or what is behind you.
  • Look into the faces of the people around you, are they the one who hunts you?
  • Look at the hands of all around you—is the method of your demise in any hand?
  • Keep to the edges of trails or sidewalks-only confident or foolhardy animals cross open ground.
  • Treat all security cameras as tools to locate you. Avert your face when passing by or beneath them.
  • Treat all birds as possible drones.
  • In short, live with eyes wide open, mind alert. Live as if you are being stalked.
  • At the end of the exercise day ask yourself what you learned from this bit of role play.

Warriors must be aware. Aware of what? Everything. A Warrior must be Awake. All detail is interesting, all detail may be important. We do not know what detail will change our lives. We do not know what detail will save our lives.

See our book No Second Chance for the psychology of this mindset.

See our book The No Second Chance: Book of Homework Assignments for a complete panoply of such drills. [Available ONLY to RAW/Black Box Subscription Members.]

Resources for Livin’ the Warrior Life

The Black Box Store

https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/

The Indigenous Ability Blog

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fTpfVp2wi232k4y5EakVv...

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