Warriors aren\u2019t born.\u00a0 They are made.<\/p>\n
This is the philosophy behind Warrior Flow Combatives, or Warrior Flow.<\/p>\n
And a Warrior without Ruthless Intent<\/em> is like a library without books or, more accurate yet, a square without four sides.<\/p>\n Ruthless Intent is nothing more or less than the will <\/em>to crush the Enemy<\/em>, those who would prey upon the innocent, into nonexistence.<\/p>\n To the end of cultivating this virtue\u2014and, yes, it most certainly is a martial and moral <\/em>virtue\u2014physical training is necessary, yes.\u00a0 But even more importantly, mental training is required.<\/p>\n To cultivate Ruthless Intent, the aspiring Warrior must routinely engage in three mutually supportive and equally essential activities: Self-Talk,<\/em><\/strong> Visualization, <\/em><\/strong>and what Warrior Flow refers to as \u201cVisceralization<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n Self-talk requires one to pay meticulous attention to the inner commentary that the mind ceaselessly cranks out, for even when it is commentary upon happenings in the external world, it is, ultimately, autobiographical<\/em>, it is self<\/em>-commentary, for our thoughts on the world, our relationships with others, are inescapably colored and shaped by our experiences and memories.<\/p>\n We need to manage that \u201cinner voice.\u201d<\/p>\n Self-talk is inescapable.\u00a0 We are all incessantly speaking to ourselves, whether we realize it or not. There is scarcely a moment when, either through word or image, we aren\u2019t communicating to ourselves.\u00a0 Past experiences, or our interpretations of those experiences, we have, in large measure subconsciously, weaved into an autobiographical narrative.\u00a0 As is the case with any other work, our self-story is necessarily selectively edited.\u00a0 Yet we confuse this highly redacted version of ourselves with our whole selves.<\/p>\n And we allow this abridged reading of ourselves to color our sense of reality.<\/p>\n Warrior Flow implores students to attend carefully to their Self-Talk.\u00a0 Moreover, they are to assume conscious control of it, to habituate their minds to thinking self-affirming thoughts. In the case of this combat art specifically, the Warrior-in-the-Making must begin thinking and living as if the future self that he wants to become is already a present reality.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t demand much reflection to realize that this is indeed how we became whatever it is that we\u2019ve ever become.\u00a0 If one wants to become a cook, one must first cook.\u00a0 If one want to become a dancer, one must dance.\u00a0 If one wants to become a football player, one must play football.<\/p>\n Aristotle, the most prominent of all virtue theorists, wrote famously on this subject.\u00a0 Brave men become brave by acting like brave men.\u00a0 <\/em>Just men become just by acting like just men<\/em>.<\/p>\n Comprehensively, virtuous people become virtuous by acting virtuously. <\/em><\/p>\n Similarly, one becomes a warrior by acting like one.\u00a0 And acting like a warrior means as well thinking like one.<\/p>\n Yet Aristotle knew that being virtuous was a matter not just of thinking<\/em> a certain way, but of feeling<\/em> the appropriate way.\u00a0 For instance, a courageous person is someone who knows what to fear and the extent to which he should fear it<\/em>.\u00a0 The object of fear elicits the emotion or passion of fear within the body.\u00a0 The courageous person, though, experiences fear in the appropriate proportion.<\/p>\n The aspiring warrior must feel <\/em>as the Warrior that he will become feels.\u00a0 As he regularly affirms his own physical abilities, his resolute acceptance of injury, and even death, in battle, and his equal resolve to incapacitate the Enemy by whichever means, with ruthless efficiency, his Self-Talk will necessarily be accompanied by visuals.<\/p>\n As with his Self-Talk, though, the Warrior Within must make sure that the activity of Visualization in which he engages is consciously directed.\u00a0 He needs to open up the reservoir of his imagination and unleash his creative powers as he envisions himself crucifying, without mercy, the monsters of his choosing.\u00a0 They could be real people or imaginary.\u00a0 They can be people who one has personally known or only those of whom one has heard.\u00a0 In any event, to cultivate Ruthless Intent\u2014the conviction that predators must <\/em>be reduced to prey, the raw, undifferentiated determination to instill within violent attackers the same unbridled terror that they sought to inspire in their victims\u2014one must not only visualize, <\/em>but visceralize.<\/em><\/p>\n Visceralization is a species of visualization.\u00a0 When a person engages in Visceralization, he doesn\u2019t just see<\/em> the object of his imagination; he hears, smells, and touches it, and he perceives it with all of his senses in painstaking detail. He visualizes it in what students of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) refer to as an \u201cassociated\u201d way.<\/p>\n In other words, when associated <\/em>visualization (visceralization) occurs, the visualizer doesn\u2019t just form a mental picture of himself within the framework of the visual, as is the case when it is \u201cdissociated<\/em> visualization\u201d that occurs.\u00a0 Associated visualization, in contrast, immerses the visualizer within the scene that he envisages, allowing him to enact it.<\/p>\n When a person visceralizes he experiences those emotions that he either once experienced, if he is in effect reliving a past event, or those that he would experience if the event that he visceralizes actually occurred.\u00a0 Physiologically speaking, the emotion felt in the body while visceralizing and that felt in response to a real world happening are one and the same.\u00a0 The brain doesn\u2019t know the difference.<\/p>\n Specifically, when developing Ruthless Intent, an aspiring warrior must not only perceive in his mind his attacker or attackers; he must as well feel<\/em> in the very marrow of his bones all of the contempt, the righteous indignation and fury with which he visualizes himself destroying the Enemy.\u00a0 Physiologically speaking, the feelings that he conjures while training are one and the same as those that he would have in a real confrontation.\u00a0 The brain doesn\u2019t know the difference between the fantasy and the reality.<\/p>\n While immersed in visceralization, the aspiring Warrior can, for example, feel the flesh of the Enemy\u2019s neck spontaneously with the sound of it snapping as he drives an axe-handed chop to it with all of the power that he believes is necessary for the purpose of cleaving the Enemy\u2019s skull from the rest of his body. \u00a0Beholding the (admittedly anatomically impossible) spectacle of decapitating the Enemy\u2019s head with the side of his hand promises to go no small distance toward marshalling and channeling from within one\u2019s pain, rage, fear, and disdain for the wicked.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a practically limitless number of ways by which the Warrior-in-Waiting can visceralize visiting destruction upon the Enemy.\u00a0 He can, in reality, press his own thumbs against his own eyes and then take that vivid impression and imagine gouging out with those same thumbs the eyeballs of the Enemy.\u00a0 Imagining the soft lumpiness of the Enemy\u2019s eyeballs, the aspiring Warrior can visceralize ripping them out of his skull as he tears with his teeth, and with all of the tenacity of a pit bull, substantial chunks of the Enemy\u2019s neck where the jugular vein is located.<\/p>\n Creativity in combat is a virtue of the Warrior.\u00a0 Yet it presupposes Ruthless Intent.<\/p>\n And to the end of cultivating Ruthless Intent, Self-Talk, Visualization, and Visceralization are imperative.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warriors aren\u2019t born.\u00a0 They are made. This is the philosophy behind Warrior Flow Combatives, or Warrior Flow. And a Warrior without Ruthless Intent is like a library without books or, more accurate yet, a square without four sides. Ruthless Intent is nothing more or less than the will to crush the Enemy, those who would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n