Agression

Just had the great pleasure to participate in one of Europa’s best Martial arts seminar, with really inspirering Martial art masters. One of these, Sensei Steve Barnett, work our group with aggression growth. Not working on becoming aggressive, but to use your built in aggression. Letting it become a tool and motivation for handling violent situations. But also a tool for learning that side of yourself and learning how to use it, and not let I be something that just pops up and you have no knowledge and control over.

Aggression is an emotion, just like many other emotions like joy, sadness and so on. Learning how to handle emotions are a natural part of life. Like it is unnatural to suppress any feel, and might lead to emotional problems in the future.

There are people that believe that aggression is wrong, and must be suppressed. A thought that aggression destroys, and is not something that builds and helps create relationships. But violence already has defined that building and creating something good, isn’t a part of what’s going on. Some people think that meeting violence by non aggression, will negate violence or at least minimize it. And in some cases it just might, but really depending on the scenario. Working with aggression isn’t about the situations that can be handled by non-agresssion, but being able to use aggression in situations were that is the solution. The person who decides which reaction will stop the violence is the attacker; his mind set, his goal and expectations. This is a blog entry worthy by itself.

Knowing your aggression is balancing your self between your different emotions. It also make you more aware of what you are feeling, and can take action on it. A good read about listening to you emotions is “Gift of fear “ by Gavin DeBecker. The faster you can catch up on your emotions the faster you can react on them, and that is the key. You can react on them. You don’t have to be a slave of emotions, but learn to listen and then do as you want.

So as you can let joy overwhelm you at a birthday party or a weeding party, you can let aggression help you out of a situation with a knife wielding mugger.

While thinking about it, take a look at a friends blog about aggression and “no-mind”. It’s worth a read: http://kojutsukan.blogspot.dk/2012/10/mushin-no-shin.html