Training the Spirit
Knowing when to use techniques is as important as knowing which techniques to use. In these studies, students learn how to identify threats, pay attention to small cues, and understand which threats pose the greatest dangers. Additionally, the student learns to understand what happens during an attack: how fear can be an asset, how skills and senses break down in a crisis, and how to deal with the after-effects of violence.
| Training Modules | Description |
| Breathing | Popularly believed to be a cultural artifact of Buddhism-influenced martial arts, the reality is that basic breath control increases endurance, reduces the heart rate, and improves efficiency. Rather than use exotic and unproven forms of breathing, Chongdo students will learn basic diaphragmatic breathing, methods to regain control over painful breathing after hard exercise, and breath control for endurance activities such as running. |
| Sense Enhancement | The human body is capable of detecting minute changes in the environment; one popular notion that proves true is that the senses can be enhanced by paying closer attention to them. Chongdo uses a proven method to increase students’ ability to enhance the basic senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, proprioception, balance, and temperature change. |
| Situational Awareness | The student learns what basic observations to make in a given situation: for example, you walk into a convenience store. How many people are there? How many exits? Where are potential threats? Where are blind spots? Chongdo provides its students a fast and thorough framework for assessing situations, identifying potential risks, knowing some basic survival strategies, and (as importantly) knowing when transitions from one situation to another lead to greater danger. |
| Threat Awareness | Are you more likely to be mugged by a stranger, or attacked by a co-worker? If a mugger displays a gun, is he likely to use it? What about a knife? What are the four types of robbery? Why are some attackers likely to strike suddenly, but some provide minutes of warning? Chongdo students learn to assess the realities of attacks based on actual statistics, the categories of attackers with their unique alarm signals, and will also learn to identify the common strategies used by a wide range of attackers. |
| Personal Awareness | The human body goes through distinct changes before, during, and after a fight. The student learns what happens in a typical fight, the stages of physiological response, how the brain responds (or fails to respond) to threats, the effects of heart rate on the body, and what happens to a person after a fight (psychologically and physiologically). For example: why do trained fighters sometimes freeze? Why is a crime victim’s reluctance to leave her apartment more of a physiological response, rather than a psychological one? Why do some people recover faster than others? |