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MARTIAL ARTS FOR PEACE FOUNDER EARNS "DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD"

THE DAY OF THE BEE STING
By Dr. Terrence Webster-Doyle

I remember what happened like it was yesterday, the day that changed my life forever. I was running for my life. I knew he was right behind me and would catch me. It felt like an animal being hunted. I couldn't run faster; I was scared and out of breathe. He had only one thing in mind--to get me, again! I felt humiliated and ashamed of myself as I ran. Two kids beat me up almost every day after school. There was nothing I could do. No one would stop it. Most of the adults just thought, Boys will be boys.

I felt his heavy breath on my back. He caught me from behind, pulling me backward to the hard ground. My instincts were to try to protect myself from being hurt, and not to fight back. Fighting back would only make him angry and then he might really hurt me --as his brother did, when he knocked out my front teeth with a rock the year before, and before that when he himself purposely ran into me with his bike. I ended up in the hospital that time with a severe head injury that has caused me problems to this day.

He pinned me down with his knees on my chest. Sitting on top of me, he began punching my face. I attempted to cover up my face with my hands; that’s all I could do. I felt so helpless! All of a sudden, I felt a very sharp pain in my back as if I had fallen on a hot needle. I jumped up without thinking, yelling in agony. A bee had stung me! I stood there for a moment in shock, trying to reach the wounded area with my hand. Then I remembered what was happening just moments before the sting, and I felt an overwhelming sense of fear and dejection. But it suddenly ended when I realized that Vinnie, the bully who, along with his brother, had plagued me most of the way through elementary school, wasn't beating me up. In fact, he lay stunned on his back about ten feet away where I had thrown him when I got stung. I looked down at him and felt a sudden surge of power. I realized at that moment that I was strong and that I had let this smaller and less physically powerful person beat me up. It was an awe-inspiring feeling that changed my life from that time on. Vinne never bothered me again.

I still clearly remember that day. I wonder what I could have done to stop being bullied. I didn't want to fight and I wasn't a fast runner so I let myself be beat up. Perhaps, looking back on it now, I could have used my brain to prevent myself from being bullied. Perhaps I could have tried to make friends with Vinnie and his brother or tried to reason with them. Maybe I could have called a proper authority or tricked them saying that my uncle was a policeman or that I had an infectious disease and that they would get it if they came into contact with me. Or maybe I could have used humor and made them laugh or perhaps I really could have stood up to them. It's hard to know what would have worked. But anything my creative imagination could have thought up would have been better than all the beatings I took.

Maybe this all seems out-of-date today with the more serious conflict young people may have to face today but I still think that resolving conflict without fighting by using what I now call "Mental Self-Defense" is the best way because it is the most powerful tool we have. I realize that we can't stop conflict before it happens with physical abilities alone. We need another set of skills to do that. We need to learn the "Mental Martial Arts," the skills of resolving conflict peacefully before it gets to the physical level.

Dr. Webster-Doyle, the developer of the Bully Buster System™ and the upcoming Character for Kids Program™, is an educator, author and martial artist, who can be reached at (800) 848-6021 or emailed at mapp8@aol.com. Contact him for his Martial Arts Partners for Peace Certified Training Program™.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT?
The Foundation of Conflict
By “Dr.T” Webster-Doyle

Is the fight or flight mechanism is the human brain fundamentally responsible for human conflict? And if so, can the teaching of physical martial arts help to prevent this reaction that causes conflict?

The title of my first Martial Arts book for young people, Facing the Double-Edged Sword is a metaphor for the fight or flight survival mechanism in the deeper recesses of our brains. You may have experienced this fight or flight mechanism at one time or another in response to a threat to your survival. If you have a cat or dog, you have seen your pet react when confronted by a threat. The animal reacts according to this built-in survival mechanism by either attacking (fight) or running (flight), depending on the specific conditions.

The human fight or flight mechanism reacts in the same mode as that of the animal in certain circumstances. When, for instance, a bully on the playground confronts a young person, the victim usually has only this fight or flight option available to him or her. The brain relies on this more primitive mode of dealing with hostile aggression because it hasn't been shown anything else. Adults generally only reinforce this method of dealing with conflict by telling the young person to either fight or "turn the other cheek." But does teaching young people how to defend themselves somehow help deal with this situation?

I think it does and this is how it works: the skills of physical self-defense give the young person confidence. This confidence assures him or her that he or she can handle a potentially violent situation. The acquisition of these skills circumvents the primitive fight or flight mechanism. If in a potentially threatening situation, a person has been taught to defend him or herself, the message to the brain does not immediately stimulate this primitive, animalistic reaction. Instead of fighting or running away one can pause in readiness. In the "pause" there is a moment of calm, a suspension of the fear that stimulates fight or flight. Confidence lessens fear and de-activates this automatic survival mechanism.

In this "pause" there is room to deal with the potential threat in new ways. This is where teaching the young person nonviolent alternatives come into play. The brain that is not caught up in fear, and therefore not caught up in the primitive fight or flight reaction, can think more clearly and intelligently and will come up with other methods of dealing with the problem that will open the possibility of ending conflict before it starts. This is how teaching “mental martial arts” complements the physical so a person has the skills to avoid a physical confrontation before it gets to that level.

But there is another issue related to the "fight or flight" reaction that needs looking into in understanding how conflict is created. And this is the mind's inability to distinguish between a physical or psychological threat. Hollywood has exploited the Martial Arts by portraying them as lethal fighting. This notion makes for a sensational appeal to our more primitive human responses. All these violent images in Martial Arts and other “action" films psychologically stimulate a physiological fight or flight reaction even though the threat is not physically present. In other words, the media's exposure of violent images triggers the mind/body's response as if the image were real - as if the images were an actual physical threat to our well-being. With the constant stimulation of violent, "life threatening" images, the brain is constantly on alert, using up a tremendous amount of energy to defend against a ghost of a threat - one that simply isn't there. Watching constant violence puts our "fight or flight" mechanism in a constant "on" mode, causing our bodies to continually produce physiological chemical reactions to combat an invasion that in reality is not taking place.

What are the sociological implications of young people who have been raised on violent TV, video games and “action films?” Are we conditioning their minds for more violence, violence of a far greater threat than we are experiencing now? And what vitally important role does the martial arts play in helping young people to understand all this?

So what can we do about alleviating the potential for stimulating a physiological fight or flight reaction to psychological images and what role does the martial arts play in helping young people to understand all this?

This response to such violent visual presentations, as we talked about in Part One, creates tremendous fear, especially when it is compounded by the 24/7 news shows that are reinforcing this paranoia. We are always on guard. It is not unusual to see global paranoia of "The Enemy." This feeling that everyone is out to get us, that we need to be constantly on guard, reinforces the feeling of isolation and separatism and strengthens our image of ourselves as perpetual victims that are continually being threatened. "Help! I'm in danger!" is the psychological response we get when images of violence create the fear of a real imminent physical threat. When the brain receives a psychological image of violence and interprets it as an actual physical threat, it reacts in a personal, psychological, defensive manner. It has a psychological fight or flight reaction.

In an actual combat situation when confronting a real danger to one's physical well being, one would need to actually fight or flee from the potential harm. But when the threat via violent images is merely psychological, then a physical fight or flight response is not appropriate. When this occurs the brain goes through a mock fight or flight playing out the scenario psychologically, which has the effect of producing heightened fear because the tension created by the supposed threat cannot be alleviated. This interpretation by the brain of greater fear provides even more justification that "I am being threatened." In my view this is why we are seeing so many extremely violent video games, like Grand Theft Auto where we are able to act out, or simulate the need to protect ourselves from all the “bad guys” out there. This was the major theme in the book 1984 where Big Brother was portrayed as a constant threat to individual and social welfare. The current “news” programs play on this anxiety reinforcing the sensation of “internal terrorism,” of villains and criminals that we think are out to get us. All dictators in their quest for power have used this means of psychological manipulation by assigning certain people as the villains to be feared and distrusted so that they can create a fear-based dependency to keep them in power to protect their people from the “enemy.”

This stimulation of the fight or flight whether it be actual, as in a real life or death situation or a mock up of psychologically violent images provoking the need to protect oneself physically is of importance in understanding conflict, which is the original and fundamental intent of all martial arts. The word “Budo” in the Japanese martial arts means to “stop the halberd” or to “stop the sword,” which means to stop conflict. The martial arts have worked out sophisticated techniques to cope conflict in unarmed combat by developing parts of the body as weapons. It has also, in it’s original intent and in the 20th century reinforced by the founder of Shotokan Karate, Gichin Funakoshi, Sensei. become a means to “defeat the enemy without fighting” by developing ways of avoiding and resolving conflict without the use of physical self-defense skills. But I think if we are serious about understanding conflict at its root causes we need to look further.

In my view, Martial Arts training is a unique way to help us understand the conflict created by both a physical and psychological fight or flight. In order to do this we will need to widen our perspective of what the martial arts are. As the saying goes, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” It seems to me that is just what the martial arts are – a means for self-examination in order to carry our the basic intent of all martial arts, that is, to understand and resolve conflict peacefully, for in my view anything else is not a martial ART.

“Dr. T.” Webster-Doyle, the developer of the Bully Buster System™ and the Character for Kids Program™ can be reached at (800) 848-6021 or emailed at mapp8@aol.com. Contact him for his Martial Arts Partners for Peace Certified Training Program™.

A.R.M. YOUR STUDENTS WITH KNOWLEDGE
by Dr. Terrence Webster-Doyle

“He saw the bully coming, fists clenched by his side, a look on his face that meant only one thing! His fists instinct when seeing the bully was to freeze out of fear. Then he felt his heart beating fast, his breath shallow and rapid, his mouth dry and his body go tense. He wanted to run, to escape the beating he knew was going to happen. As the bully reached him he instinctively covered his face to protect himself. He felt a painful blow to his stomach that knocked the wind out of him. He collapsed gasping to the ground. The bully was atop of him hitting him in the face and head. There was nothing he could do but be beaten up. Inside he felt a powerful mixture of fear and rage. All of a sudden the rage exploded and he grabbed the bullies hands and with a terrific surge of energy rolled the bully over sop now he was on top! Exploding with the pent up rage he began screaming and hitting the bully with the strength of a crazed animal. He was completely out of control! He wanted to kill him, beat him senseless! The bully was crying and yelling. A teacher pulled them apart. Both were bloody and shaking.”

This is a scene that happens all too often but usually with the bully prevailing. Rarely does the victim fight back as in the above case. But it does occasionally happen because it happened to me. I was a victim of bullying and suffered for it, physically and emotionally. And I was full of rage which came out later in fights.

When I was growing up outside New York City in the ‘40s and ‘50s there were no martial arts schools. (I officially started martial arts in 1961 when I was 21) But what if there had been? What if I had been taught physical self-defense, which is what the martial arts teach? What would the above scene be like if I were the victim? Let’s go over it again. “I see the bully coming, looking to beat me up. So I freeze, do I feel trapped and react out of the fight or flight instinct?” Probably I would be affected by it but the confidence gained through learning physical self-defense would allow me to keep my cool and not be overwhelmed by this natural survival instinct. I probably would have stood my ground, gone into a martial fighting stance in preparation for combat and defended myself in need be. But what would this accomplish? It would obviously protect myself from getting beaten up, or I would hope it would depending how tough and skilled a fighter the bully was. Growing up in New York I knew that some street fighters were very good at what they did. But knowing martial arts physical defense skills might also really hurt the bully. A well placed kick to the groin, a palm heel to the chin, or a strike to the temple area might be potentially very damaging or even lethal! But the bully asked for it, didn’t he? And that was all I could do because that was all I was taught to do.

Now you you could say that knowing physical self-defense I could have had the confidence to walk away from a fight. Well, in the above case there wasn’t a chance to do this, there was no other alternative but to fight. But could this scene have been avoided? What about being able to do something before it got to this level? Could I have avoided it in the first place? Could I have resolved it using verbal skills in the “second” place if I couldn’t avoid it? Was my only alternative to fight?

There are people who believe that if a child is taught only physical self-defense he or she has the skills to avoid and resolve conflict before it becomes a physical confrontation. In other words, they think that somehow a young person has the sophisticated skills and presence of mind to understand and avoid conflict and the ability to use clever verbal skills as a means of self protection (what I would call “Martial Art Mental Self-Defense”) to resolve conflict peacefully if they only practice defending themselves physically. I think that they are assuming too much to make a case for physical self-defense to do all that. Physical self-defense is just that— and can be employed only when it becomes a physical confrontation. That is not to say that physical skills are not important. On the contrary, they are very important because they give the student the foundation of confidence not to react unnecessarily to a fight or flight situation, to then have the presence of mind to use their first two “lines of defense” — to avoid and resolve conflict by nonphysical means. But physical self-defense is by itself only one small part of a martial art. The first two “lines of defense” need to be learned and practiced equally along with the physical. This is what it means to A.R.M your students, that is, to learn how to:

Avoid conflict through understanding and being aware of it
Resolve conflict through nonviolent verbal skills
Manage conflict through humane application of physical skills

Now, let’s for a moment go back to the original scene with the bully and victim. We are now in the 1990s and entering a new millennium. Times have changed since when I was a kid. Let’s place a gun in one of their hands, a not so uncommon thing today. Perhaps we put in the hands of the bully. Say that the victim has been trained in physical martial arts. What is he or she to do in the face of a lethal weapon? Do we as martial arts instructors expect our young students to disarm this person? Now what if we put the gun in the victim’s hands, a person who has been picked on for years, harassed and humiliated by bullies, full of rage at being beat up. We know that there have been many documented cases of victims killing either themselves,, turning their rage inwardly or killing others when the rage explodes outwardly. In either case, no one wins. But in both cases, if each person was trained in the martial arts as a complete way to cope with conflict then the potential would exist for each to have a greater opportunity to be successful in handling their problems more peacefully.

Isn’t it time that we A.R.M. our students so they can have the full set of self-defense skills, mentally and physically, to help them cope with conflict intelligently, effectively? I know that as a parent this is what I would want for my children as all parents naturally want for their children. We want them to be safe and the intelligently way to insure that safety is to teach them to protect themselves in ways that are non threatening and nonphysical, leaving as the last resort physical means.

When I speak to children in martial arts schools around the world I don’t tell them to A.R.M. themselves. They might take it literally. What I tell them to learn is what I call the “3Ps” which means:

Prevent — a fight from happening by avoiding it
Prepare — to use your brain instead of your fists to resolve it
Protect — yourself by learning how to fight so you don’t have to

But this means that as martial arts instructors we take a more comprehensive view of the martial arts as an education in conflict for our students, specially our young students, so they can understand and resolve conflict nonviolently. which is what the martial arts is really all about. This is our ultimate goal and why the martial arts can play a tremendous role in society in addressing the #1 social issue facing us and our children. Putting aside the tournaments and the sport aspect of the martial arts, which has a place, can we see that these arts were primarily developed to educate and protect ourselves and our children from harm, to find peaceful ways to relate to each other? And can we see that learning these arts in this manner can help us cope not only with the school yard bully but also with the bullying that occurs domestically, socially and internationally?

Everyday I get up I am thankful that I, as a martial arts “educator,” can help young people understand and resolve conflict peacefully. I was not taught the full range of skills when I was young, not taught to A.R.M. myself to cope more effectively with the bullies that haunted me throughout my youth. What I was taught, and is still being taught, is an “eye for an eye,” to learn how to fight so I could beat up the bully. Perhaps when I was young that might have worked to stop the bully, since fighting then was not a serious affair. But today bullying and fighting are much more serious. Can we then prepare our students to cope with today’s challenges, to A.R.M. themselves with knowledge so they can, through the martial arts, peacefully reduce the violence that is so predominate today? The good news is that we can help them. We have created conflict by the wrong education. With the right education we can empower our students to end it.

CHILDREN AND THE MARTIAL ARTS
By Dr. T. Webster-Doyle

I receive many emails, letters and phone calls from martial artists, parents, schoolteachers, administrators, counselors, social service workers and law enforcement officers. I would like to share some of them with you in the next few columns.

“Dear Dr.T. I am a mother of two children (a boy 10 and a girl 8) and have run a martial arts school for the past seven years. I have read your column each month and I greatly appreciate your ideas especially concerning children and the martial arts.

I am concerned that many parents and schoolteachers don’t want to send their children to martial arts school for the fear of having them get hurt or hurting others. I think that this is because parents and teachers see martial arts action films and are horrified at the terrible violence in them. I think that the martial arts portrayed like this is keeping a great many people away.

I have heard that watching violent (martial arts) films and playing violent (martial arts) video games affect children’s behavior. Why do these martial arts action film “stars” say that the martial arts teach respect and peace when they are showing them as so violent? Isn’t this hypocritical?

I know that you are an expert in martial arts for children and that you write martial arts books and programs that teach kids to prevent conflict from happening by using their brains instead of their fists. I also know that you think that physical martial arts are important to give kids confidence to use their brains first. But I don’t see this happening in these films and especially the martial arts video games. They just promote more violence.

I hope that you don’t mind me complaining like this. It’s just that I am very concerned about children taking the martial arts under the pretense of being taught peaceful martial arts and maybe just ending up being bullies themselves! Is this the future of the martial arts? Please, tell me what you think. Thank you.” L. Jenkins, Colorado

“Dear Ms. Jenkins, I thank you for writing me. As a parent I can well understand your concerns. You are correct in your concern about children watching violent (martial arts) films and playing violent (martial arts) video games. Over 1,500 studies have been done since 1956 on these effects and the outcome has been unanimously in that violence on TV, in the movies and on video games has a dramatic effect on children’s behavior leading to more aggressiveness. There also has been a study done showing how these effects can be genetically conditioned into the brains of young people by these violent films and videos so that the next generation of children may have a greater tendency for violence.

I am obviously greatly concerned about all this violence. You ask what the future of the martial arts is. The future is what we make it. We are the world and the world is us. We make the world by the way we think. Conditioned, fearful thinking has created the world in which we now live. It is not independent of us. It is us! We can change it anytime we want by understanding conditioned thinking (not by “positive thinking”). We think that we cannot change the world, that what is happening is beyond us and that we are just victims of the violence. That is apart of conditioned thinking. The kind of violent martial arts films and videos that are being created is based on this kind of reactive, fearful thinking. But this is false thinking. This is not what intelligent martial arts is all about. Intelligent martial arts is about understanding and resolving conflict peacefully, which has its roots in conditioned thinking. In order to have intelligent martial arts for our children we must help them to understand themselves, how conflict is created by the way we think. Then and only then will the martial arts help our children to truly be peaceful because we have understood what has prevented it.” With care, Dr.T.

Dr. Webster-Doyle, the developer of the Bully Buster System™ and the upcoming Character for Kids Program™, is an educator, author, martial artist and Executive Director of the Martial Arts for Peace Institute, who can be reached at (800) 848-6021 or emailed at mapp8@aol.com. Contact him for his Martial Arts Partners for Peace Certified Training Program™.

COLUMN: ARE WE CREATING JR. RAMBOS?
Part 1
By Dr.T. Webster-Doyle

Dear Dr. Webster-Doyle,
I am a parent of three children and an elementary school counselor in the public system. I have reservations, as do many other parents and schoolteachers I know, about the martial arts. After seeing what the media portrays as martial arts I was afraid that my children would learn how to hurt people or that they would be hurt. But I decided to take our youngest son to a martial arts school that was advertising a bully program because he was being bullied at school. When I went to the school and asked about the bully program the head teacher (maybe only in his twenties) told me that they taught kids confidence. When I continued to ask him about the bully program he kept on giving me general answers but never did he actually answer my question directly.

When I asked to see the program he said that he couldn’t do that because it was only for his instructors to see. He did tell me that they had a special program for little kids called “Tiny Ninjas,” or something like that. He also said that they had a special self-defense course for kids based on a foreign military fighting system. I asked him what he could do for my son to help him mentally and emotionally to stop bullying before it got to the physical level, because most of the bullying I’ve encountered as a counselor in school has been of this type, not the serious physical type.

The teachers, counselors and administrators I talked to in my area and at professional conferences I attend all see that what is missing is early intervention at the elementary level and a course that teaches young people how to handle their emotional reactions to being harassed and humiliated which they say is the biggest problem at all grade levels. (As a side note: I read your martial art parenting book and from all the information I read my research agrees with your findings that the teens that did all those terrible killings at schools in the recent past were not physically attacked but mentally and emotionally attacked).

I went home to talk over what I had encountered at this martial arts school with my husband, who is a middle school vice-principal, someone who has to deal with all sorts of behavioral problems like being bullied. He was concerned about teaching young children a course on “Ninjas” since Ninjas historically have been assassins, hired killers. He felt that to label little children little assassins was ridiculous and bizarre for the image of Ninjas in other countries has a very violent image even if people in the U.S. don’t comprehend the seriousness of equating children with being “hired killers.”

He also felt that teaching young people potentially lethal military fighting techniques was quite extreme. He felt that this would be like training Jr. Rambos. He questioned just how much self-defense children needed to learn to be able to defend themselves against other children on the playground especially when the problem was more mental and emotional. I think that he speaks for many educators when the topic of martial arts comes up. With his many years as a school administrator I trust his expertise as to whether the martial art school I went to was a properly qualified place to teach our son. But when he also read your parenting book and your children’s book Why Is Everybody Always Picking On Me? he felt encouraged to pursue enrolling our son in martial arts. That is why I went to the school that advertised teaching kids about being bullied. But I now think, after talking it over with my husband, that this school was just using the bully issue to get people into the school under false pretenses because he really didn’t have any bully program.

What can I do if there is no school offering a martial arts bully program like yours? I want to enroll him in the type of school you speak about in your book. I still feel that the martial arts have a potential to help young people deal with bullying. I would appreciate anything you could to do to help.
Sarah Milhouse (town withheld), Connecticut
Continued.....

COLUMN: ARE WE CREATING JR. RAMBOS?
Part 2
By Dr.T. Webster-Doyle

In last month’s column I receive an e-mail from a school counselor and parent, wife of a school vice principal. Here are the main points from it and my response below.

Her concerns were:

She was not getting what was advertised at a martial arts school that publicized that they had a bully program when if fact they did not. She felt tricked into going there.
The martial arts are still seen as just more violence by herself and other teachers, counselors and principals because of the presentation of them in the mainstream media and therefore they don’t advocate that their students take up the practice of martial arts.
Preschool and elementary aged children were being taught potentially lethal self-defense techniques that were dangerous and unnecessary. They were also being taught a program that meant “little assassins” which her husband, a vice principal, labeled “bizarre” and liken to teaching “Junior Rambos.”
The real causes of bullying (mental and emotional) were not being addressed in martial arts schools even though they were the primary factors that caused the terrible shootings in the schools by kids who were harassed by bullies and are the main reasons why kids suffer from long term psychological and emotional damage from being bullied.
How much physical self-defense does a child need to defend him or herself against another child on the playground when the little time a child spends at a martial arts school could be better spent teaching them to avoid and resolve conflict using their minds instead of their fists?

Dear Sarah Milhouse,
It is unfortunate that the media still keeps on promoting the worst of the martial arts emphasizing extreme acts of lethal violence as a form conflict resolution. These “martial arts skills” to adults are obviously not real and are created by special effects and computer generated images which can be seen in movies like Matrix (a movie that was tragically lived out in real life by two teenagers imitating what they saw in the film while planning and then carrying out the terrible school shootings at Columbine High school in Colorado). But to young children they are real and the proof of this is that over 1500 studies have been done since 1956 to ascertain whether violence in films and in video games affects children’s behavior and every one has concluded that it does. So one wonders why we still produce so much terrible violence for them to see!

I think that the martial arts industry must monitor itself and evaluate what we are teaching to children, especially young children. Many of the physical self-defense skills taught to children are potentially lethal and could maim or even kill a child as happen in one of the Scandinavian countries when two children imitating the Power Rangers killed another child. The Power Rangers have now been banned from that country and well as other countries In Europe.

I personally think that way too much emphasis is put on teaching physical self-defense skills. I agree with your husband’s comment about how much physical self-defense is needed for a child to defend him or herself against another child on the playground. Really very little, which could be taught in a brief amount of time. When the average child spends only approximately two hours at the martial arts school per week why do we fill that brief time up with physical self-defense training that is unnecessary, potentially lethal, questionably legal and developmentally inappropriate?

I personally think that if the martial arts are to survive we will have to re-evaluate what kind of self-defense is fitting for children that is developmentally sound, physically safe, age appropriate and suitably efficient for defending themselves against other children who are not trained fighters. I would use the following ratio for a successful martial arts school in teaching children the whole of the martial arts: 1/3 Character Development Skills, 1/3 Conflict Education Skills and 1/3 physical self-defense that was safe, non-lethal and age appropriate. In other words, we need to eliminate the negative and emphasize the positive to create a martial art that is specially designed for young people that will help them resolve conflict, build character and create peace.

IT'S AS EASY AS ABC
By “Dr.T.” Webster-Doyle

Let me tell you a story about Smithtown, USA. In this town there are only two martial arts schools, School ABC and School XYZ. School ABC is based on two essential features. The first feature School ABC promotes is its ABC Conflict Education Program™ for kids because it helps them stop being bullied by Avoiding it through understanding what causes it, by helping them Resolve it by using their brains and verbal skills and by helping them to Control it by not letting their feelings get hurt, and reacting out of them in overly aggressive ways, if a bully is harassing them. It also helps them to Control a potential situation by having the confidence gained through learning self-defense skills so they don’t react unnecessarily in a fight or flight manner. This basic program for young people is very successful because it works. The children like it; the parents like it; the town’s school- teachers, principals and counselors like it too. It has been well received in Smithtown.

This school has another ABC program that helps them be successful. It is their ABC Business System™. This ABC program stands for Alliance, Basic Needs and Conservation. Alliance stands for working together with others to form an amenable collaboration. In other words, it means sharing. This is based on a characteristic feminine principle that women generally consider relationship extremely valuable and therefore they construct a network of friends to share with. Unlike many of their male counterparts who are conditioned to protect their “territory,” women seem to have few barriers in putting into operation a Conflict Education Program that was created by someone else, be male or female. This point of view also saved ABC School a great deal of time by not having to “reinvent the wheel,” that is, of having to create such a program from the start by themselves. The staff realized that the ABC Conflict Education Program™ was an excellent, well worked out system that did not need to be copied by them just to have their own version of it.

The second part, Basic Needs, means that the school’s marketing approach targets what the public really needs instead of further exploiting what people are conditioned to think they need. The most important need they feel people want to get in touch with is understanding themselves, understanding how conflict is created. This insight is what led them to find the ABC Conflict Education Program™.

The third part, Conservation, means that in today’s restrained economy the primary customers of the school – parents – have to think more carefully where and on what to spend their money because there is less of it. The staff realizes that parents want more for their dollar and that they would spend money for the basic needs they knew had the most value for their children growing up in this challenging and changing world. Whereas before when parents had more access to money they would more likely indulge their children’s extra curricula activities without too much thought to the expense. But now that parents are making more financially conservative decisions about their children’s activities outside of their regular academic school program, School ABC decided to offer a program they felt parents would deem an indispensable and integral counterpart to academics. Since parents first concern is the safety of their children, School ABC implemented their ABC Conflict Education Program™ because it gives children more than just a set of physical self-defense skills to protect themselves. The staff realized that conventional martial arts self-defense skills could not really be used on the playground in coping with bullies because these self-defense skills were too dangerous and therefore someone might get seriously hurt. There was also the uneasy question of the legal implications of teaching potentially lethal martial art self-defense skills to children to use against other children.

School ABC expanded their perspective of the martial arts to allow themselves to go beyond their former limitations as a typical martial arts business. They also addressed the current needs of families in the 21st century, basic needs that are now essential for all children’s well-being beyond the need for academic excellence. And because they did, their school is very successful. As far as School XYZ is concerned, it is still doing what it always did.

MARTIAL ARTS – JUST MORE VIOLENCE OR A WAY FOR PEACE?
By Dr. Terrence Webster-Doyle

As I have said before, the martial arts, taught as an integrated mental and physical discipline, has the potential to be a context within which we can come to understand and resolve human conflict peacefully -- individually and globally.

This statement may seem too some to be a gross exaggeration; perhaps even a self-serving, egotistical declaration on my part since I seem to claim that my books and programs address this issue. Many people are convinced that violence in society is inevitable, that it will never go away. Some may think that only an act of God can save us. There are many people that think that the martial arts is just a sport or a street self-defense and nothing more. And there are many others that think, because of the portrayal of the martial arts in the media, that they just create more violence.

Maybe all these people are right? Maybe we are inherently violent and there is no changing us? Maybe only God can save us from “evil?” Maybe the martial arts are only a sport and street self-defense? Maybe they are just adding to the violence? Maybe. But how are we really going to know? How can we really be sure what is true? Can we suspend any authority on the subject, including what you may also think of the author, and look at this problem of violence directly? Can we suspend any opinions we may have about what the martial arts can or cannot do and look freshly at these arts to see if they have any potential to help humanity understand and resolve conflict peacefully?

I have looked at these questions for over 40 years and I think that they do have the capacity to creatively address human conflict. This is not a dogmatic assertion but an insight that I have come to after all these years in the martial arts. But in order for the martial arts to accomplish the peaceful resolution of conflict they need to be taught in a way that promotes self-understanding, beyond being a sport or a street self-defense. Let me share with you what I think the martial arts should and should not be in order to address human conflict, especially in teaching our kids how to handle the violence they live with daily, so that they don’t carry it over into adulthood.

A Martial Arts Program (that is) for Peace

WHAT IT SHOULD NOT BE:	WHAT IT SHOULD BE:
Promoting violence and aggressive behavior	Promoting peaceful resolution of conflict
Learning to control others through intimidation and fear	Learning about one's self through understanding fear
Teaching how to maim or kill	Teaching nonviolent alternatives
Resolving Conflict by fighting	Resolving conflict by using our brains
Valuing might is right	Valuing cooperation is right
Encouraging young people to emulate violent martial arts "action heroes"	Encouraging young people to respect people of peace
Encouraging young people to play with warlike toys or real martial arts weapons	Encouraging young people to question whether war is a way to bring about peace
Prmoting martial arts tournaments that promote displays of warlike behavior	Promoting healthy competition to challenge young people to win or lose with respect
Using superficial gimmicks and rewards to manipulate young people into taking martial arts	Encouraging young people to intelligently choose a martial arts school through inquiring into its program
Using psychological behavioral techniques to condition young people to want to stay in classes (example: constant rank advancement)	Rewarding young people for patience in learning a discipline that takes time and effort
Teaching children to go beyond their normal limits of aggression in a quasi-military environment through full contact fighting	Teaching children to develop healthy limits of aggression within a safe and trusting environment by focusing their martial arts techniques just short of full contact.
Teaching young people that what "pays off" is being tough, in control, aggressive; that respect comes through power and ambition.	Teaching young people healthy values of humility and integrity; that respect comes from kindness and consideration.

MARTIAL ARTS THAT ARE FOR PEACE – SOLUTIONS THAT WORK!
by Dr. T. Webster-Doyle

The idea of teaching conflict resolution skills to young people is vitally important. Yet it is almost totally overlooked. There is a tremendous amount of violence in our world, as anyone can see - on television, in films, video games, newspapers and magazines – where violence is all too often portrayed as a heroic cultural ideal, depicting fighting as the honorable solution to conflict. Violence is epidemic. It touches every life. Our children live in a world of constant violence, perhaps the most violent time in the history of humankind. According to recent statistics, a violent crime occurs every 25 seconds. But there are solutions that work to reduce violence!

If we are truly concerned about our children's welfare as they grow up, we must take the issue of understanding conflict seriously. If we want to bring about a safe and peaceful world, we must help them develop alternative methods to our instinctual primal reactions to fear. The terrible violence that is going on in the world today, the thousands of years of wars we've suffered, I believe, is stimulated at least in part by our primitive fight or flight animalistic behavior. This can be addressed in the martial arts by teaching young people how to defend themselves so that they don’t have to because they have also learned to avoid and resolve conflict by nonviolent, alternative means as their first two lines of defense.

We must help young people understand and creatively, non-destructively deal with conflict. We educate young people in math, science, language, history, sports, and a multitude of other subjects. Why not in understanding conflict? A few concerned adults who have addressed this issue of teaching young people how to cope with conflict have made good beginnings. Some have tried to show young people intellectually how to get out of conflict. For example, some teachers have demonstrated ways of talking one's way out. Others have taught children to defend themselves physically in the hope that this would deter a bully's attempt to hurt them. What we rarely have done is to combine the two - the intellectual with the physical. Together they provide a complete approach to resolving conflict. Many people resist teaching young children to physically defend themselves since they think that violence only breeds more violence. If self-defense is all that is taught, then the outcome may well be only violence. But if the young person is also taught nonviolent alternatives to conflict (through role-playing), then the child is capable of coming up with more creative ways of dealing with a potentially hostile situation.

There is no doubt that the effects of these skills taught in youth will naturally have an effect on adult life. Understanding the fundamental causes of conflict, as well as learning to avoid, resolve and manage conflict at an early age, will also increase the chance of young people entering adulthood with a more intelligent and nonviolent understanding of relationships. A young person taught to understand and deal with conflict knows that violence is not an acceptable way to solve the problems of relationships.

In my view, Martial Arts training can be a unique and successful way to deal intelligently with conflict provided that both physical and mental skills are taught together. The need to help our children learn peaceful solutions instead of conditioned violent reactions is of paramount importance. As a parent, I want my children to learn these skills to intelligently and humanely protect themselves from harm. As a martial arts teacher, I know that these skills can be incorporated within the daily operation of a martial arts school. I have taught this approach for over 40 years and have seen it work. Having been a school administrator, I know that programs combining a healthy discipline in Martial Arts training, accompanied by developing nonviolent alternatives, can be incorporated into the overall school structure. Parents know that children can be taught to successfully cope with violence in nonviolent, creative ways, because they have seen it happen in the many martial arts schools that are using anti-bullying programs along with physical self-defense training. And that is why these schools are successful because they are meeting the real needs of society, to help young people understand and resolve conflict peacefully—the ART of the martial arts.

Dr. Webster-Doyle, can be reached at (800) 848-6021 or emailed at mapp8@aol.com.

MAYBE I’M OLD FASHION?
By Dr. Terrence Webster-Doyle

I grew up as a teenager in 1950’s. It was a special time, a time when I felt safe. It was a time that friendships were considered to be the most important thing. And with this came a sense of fair play and responsibility toward others. It was also a time that good values were the norm. This more caring way of life has created in me a strong foundation for the years that have followed.

I also remember the martial arts when they first started here in the U.S. My first two martial arts teachers had just come from the Orient – one from Korea and the other from Japan. They spoke very little English but their enthusiasm made up for what they couldn’t put in plain words. But it was what they taught and how they taught it that was valuable. It’s hard to explain what it was like to live in the 50’s and then on into the experimental 60’s and it is also difficult to explain what the martial arts were then too. All I can do is to say that these two Asian men were “gentleman,” and they taught a gentleman’s art. We practiced an art that represented fair play, friendship and self-understanding.

We practiced at the local YMCA. Nobody got paid. It was a club where our instructor volunteered his time three nights a week to teach a bunch of “guys” (the correct use of the word) that sweated in white uniforms and loved every minute of the grueling pace set by him.

I want to be very clear here that I am not a “purist” and that I am against professionalism, of getting paid for teaching the martial arts. It ‘s great that a person can make a living from the martial arts. But perhaps it has gone too far. People are expecting too much. Just like a lot of professional sports today. Money, and I mean HUGE amounts of money, dominant what in my day were sports played mainly for the love of it.

I am concerned that we are moving away from the “gentleman’s art” to an overly commercial, “Hollywoodized” version of martial arts that is to me very sad because we are losing the original intent of martial arts – that of understanding oneself and living a life of harmony and peace. I think that you who have been taught the ART of the martial arts know what I mean. Maybe I’m old fashion but I would rather be old fashion than see these fine arts of self-understanding be lost to greed and exploitation.

What is generally called martial arts today seems to me to lack the “gentlepersons” art. I see a growing trend of violent “Martialists” exhibitions that are getting more and more popular. It’s amazingly to me that many people seem to find this somehow “entertaining.” What example are we setting for our children with this trend?

I thought myself a liberal person, open to new ideas. But I personally find this movement in the martial arts for extreme excesses of money and violent “entertainment” repugnant. I find it against everything fine and good in the martial arts and life. I thought we martial artists were concerned with “raising the standard of the martial arts,” as one of the pioneers in martial arts industry has been saying for years. I think this growing trend of “Martialists,” under the guise of being a martial ART rather frightening.

And yet there are many dedicated individual martial artists who are carrying on the “gentleman’s (and “gentlewoman’s”) art. I applaud these fine people and their courage not to fall into the trap of exploiting the martial arts, yet being able to make “right livelihood” from a profession as well as an art. These people are the real role models for our children because they have truly learned and live what the martial arts is really all about – creating an atmosphere of trust and friendship, where living the “middle way” creates a balance between the extremes of denial and excess. This is the “old fashioned” martial arts that I still love after all these years, an art that has lasted for thousands of years of exploitation and misuse yet has withstood this abuse and has continued to represent in its essence the finest art of human understanding and peace.