Freedom

Rejoice in the freedom that you possess because liberty is an extremely valuable treasure. Many times throughout history countries and their citizens have been captured and enslaved by foreign invaders. Over time, people in those enslaved lands devised plans to gain their independence in order to regain their freedom. We are often the beneficiaries of the precious freedom they obtained when they escaped from tyranny.

The idea of escaping from enslavement to gain freedom is similar to escaping an attack on a personal level. When someone grabs you, he is literally denying you your freedom to move. Self-defense techniques help you regain your freedom from people who take it away by violating your rights.

The basic principle in escaping tyranny is to use your strong points against the attacker’s weak points. We can simply and easily understand this principle when escaping a wrist grab. If you take a brief moment to examine the grasp of a human hand, you can see that there are four fingers on one side of the hand, and one thumb on the other side. Pulling to escape through the middle allows your attacker to utilize the strength of all five fingers to keep you a captive. If you were to try to escape by moving toward the four fingers, you are playing right into your attacker’s strength. However, if you were to try to escape by moving toward the attacker’s thumb, that is the weakest point of his grasp. The strength of your entire arm should be greater than the strength of his thumb, and you should be able to escape successfully.

You can use the same principle when escaping from any grab by a human hand. If your attacker grabs your arm instead of your wrist, simply move your arm toward the thumb to escape. If your attacker doubles his efforts by grabbing you with both hands, simply escape toward both thumbs, which is usually the middle area between the hands. Even a choke can be escaped by moving toward the thumb (or thumbs for a two hand choke).

Throughout history oppressed people have used their strong points against their oppressor’s weak points to escape slavery. In the American Revolutionary War, the American soldiers used their knowledge of the forests against the powerful British army, whose battle plans were extremely effective in open fields. Had they met the British army in an open battlefield, the Americans would surely have been defeated. By fighting in the woods, the Americans used their strong point against their oppressor’s weak point to win.