When thinking of self defense, many people limit this
concept to physically combating an attacker. The Jeet Kune Do philosophy
developed by Bruce Lee has a much broader interpretation of this term. Lee felt
life was combative and you were always facing new challenges, financially,
health, emotionally. You might get cancer, your boss or fellow co-worker can
assault you verbally, lose your job, an entire litany of events can occur in a
single day ranging from minor to major assaults to ones self worth. True self
defense needs to encompass more than just dealing with someone trying to punch
you in the nose! To be successful in dealing with these issues, Lee felt you
needed to develop the warrior spirit and that was the deeper aspect of his Jeet
Kune Do.
A well developed warrior spirit gives you strength to deal with life's ups and downs. There is an interesting dichotomy in the development of fighting skills, the greater we develop them, the less we feel the need to use them. Despite how cerebral or intellectual we humans pride ourselves, we all function unconsciously on a primitive physical level. An untrained fighter always carries a fear of larger and more aggressive people they come into contact. Part of this is from childhood when adults were so much bigger and more powerful and unfortunately this disabling feeling is carried into adult life. When an adult becomes secure in their ability to protect themselves, amazing feelings of confidence and empowerment develop. These feelings of confidence, regardless of how simplistic and "cave man mentality" they may seem, translate into much higher things in our life. Confidence gives us the ability to ask for a raise from our boss, not shake from fear when someone yells or tries to physically or even mentally intimidate us. After all, we know we can strike out fiercely at a given moment and this physical confidence is more empowering than when simply carrying a gun or knife. Knowing we can defend ourselves physically appeals to primitive instincts deep within each one of us. It also gives us the ability to walk away from violence if we have that option, because we don't have to prove anything to our self or others. I remember Jeet Kune Do practitioner Paul Vunak telling me how martial arts helped him control his anger when people would cut him off in traffic or yell from their car window, something that happens in Los Angeles rush hour a lot. He would just laugh to himself, "of all the people this person chose to pick a fight with,a guy that has been practicing plucking eyeballs out of human heads for the last 30 years!" This realization gave him the ability to not escalate the situation to something worse and yet keep his dignity. This empowerment is what Bruce Lee discovered and his writings are filled with the higher meaning of martial arts. Bruce Lee, subject to discrimination for being Asian during the 1960's and standing 5'7", weighing 128 lbs was a great example of how one can conquer intimidation and develop empowering confidence through the practice of martial arts.
