Nine Facets of Self Defense Support

Amid real criminal attacks, in their minds, our students have “heard their instructors telling them what to do and have also heard their classmates cheering them on”.

Supportiveness of each student may come in many facets that touch the emotional, physical, and cognitive parts of our beings during the Model Mugging Course. The thought of being attacked is an unpleasant topic for men, women, survivors of crime, and those fortunate not to have experienced a criminal assault. The dynamics applied in the Model Mugging program are helpful for most students but may not be the right match for everyone. Accepting that everyone is on their journey is the first avenue of support.

Support stems from the synergy between the instructors and classmates, who form a new social group. Nine areas of support psycho-dynamically occur within the Model Mugging System. The psycho-dynamics of support will be described through the following nine facets:

1. Positive Reinforcement

2. Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison Theory

3. “The Hero’s Journey”

4. Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance

5. Instructor Team

6. Verbal, Emotional, and Physically Supportive Permission

7. Applying Role Model Mastery

8. Biofeedback

9. Ancient Village Concept

When developing the curriculum, Model Mugging founder Matt Thomas, at age 21, looked to the teachings of his psychology professors for answers. He synthesized various theories into practical applications, designing the first Role Model Mastery program for self-defense and a unique supportive program based on martial science. Support occurs as factors within each of the Five Principles of Self Defense ©.

Positive Reinforcement: Matt began with positive reinforcement, utilizing the power of social approval from both the role model teacher (in the women’s class, a female role model, and in the men’s class, a male role model) and the rest of the class. His Stanford beginning gymnastics coach was Dan Millman, who later wrote the “Way of the Peaceful Warrior” series. Dan taught everyone, from beginners to the gymnastics team members, with joy and laughter, whereas Matt’s martial arts instructors would often beat him up because he earned black belts from other instructors and styles to show off their egos. Matt adapted Dan’s enlightened coaching methods to Model Mugging. Applying the social aspects of group dynamics, students became “sisters and brothers of battle,” and in the final battles, the students’ village was also involved.

A psycho-physiological obstacle in most cultures is for women not to become violent in inter-gender relations. This survival attribute aligns with evolutionary psychology in that women avoid the risk of injurious physical violence through the meta-communication of submissiveness and de-escalating behaviors to avoid male threat displays and violence. This evolutionary “selective fitness” trait can be used aggressively and effectively for women in conflict resolution and when physically protecting themselves. Even more primitive is the mammalian nature of a mother defending her young, who is considered the fiercest fighter in the animal kingdom. In males, a father protecting his young can also tap into this mammalian energy. Similarly, but differently, men can apply meta-communication strategies to de-escalate situations, as opposed to aggressive male posturing, and instead improve conflict resolution.

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison Theory: The idea for overcoming these social inhibitions through group dynamics originated from Matt Thomas’ first-year Resident Advisor and Stanford psychology professor, Phillip Zimbardo. Zimbardo, in addition to Leon Festinger’s (1952, 1962) Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison Theory, explains how we can hold two opposing ideas in our minds simultaneously and still function effectively. For example, in Model Mugging, we are loving, caring mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, etc., but we will become the fiercest fighters to protect ourselves and others from significant bodily harm, rape, torture or death.

The Hero’s Journey: To bridge the duality of cognitive dissonance in a single weekend of Model Mugging training, we follow the comparative mythology archetype revealed by Joseph Campbell in his work, “The Hero’s Journey,” from “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” Each of our students is a hero or heroine who has chosen not to succumb to the oppression of fear. For many students, the journey is obstructed by many years of “refusing the call” of the hero. Finally deciding to leave the current interpersonal situation, the hero answers the call and shows up at class to learn self-defense. We welcome our students as the courageous, rare heroes they are!

Following the path of Campbell’s archetype, the hero finds a mentor to assist them in their journey’s quest for fulfillment, balance, and harmony. Campbell identified that most heroes do not overcome adversity and challenges on their own. They have assistance, a teacher, a mentor, or divine inspiration to slay the dragon of oppression and fear.

Instructor Team: In Model Mugging classes, students are paired with a male and female instructor team. Our female and male instructors strive to recreate the ideal, wise, loving, and supportive mother-father family unit. From Zimbardo’s methods of overcoming cognitive dissonance, we sit in a circle and share our stories, often in the women’s course, with a third to half and sometimes even entire classes being survivors of sexual assault and other forms of violence. Men, too, have been bullied, assaulted, and victimized, which can often be a very emotional time for the male students, who have suppressed their fear, pain, and anger. There is an ancient proverb, “The tears that the eyes don’t cry, the organs will.” The same principle applies to the anger that is not released, often turned inwards or released inappropriately.

The male and female instructor team works to role-model cooperative, mutual respect, and productive inter-gender relationships. Students witness men and women working together in a non-combative and productive way, which is something many women (and men) have never experienced or seen before. Women who have a history of abuse and victimization by males can witness that “all” men are not “bad” and also witness positive male and female compatibility. Similarly, a female instructor is present in the men’s program, demonstrating that “all” women are not bad and showing sincere reciprocity. Model Mugging works to break the cycle of violence by fostering self-respect through the preservation and protection of life.

The instructor team teaches the class of heroines the necessary skills to face the dark side of nature and overcome their fears. Crossing the threshold from known to unknown, the hero’s journey confronts those things that most people find too hard to face, too fearful to address, too disgusting and horrifying. However, it is through this confrontation that they come to understand the ramifications of full exposure to the ugly issues that challenge their life and existence as they know it. This involves encountering outward threats (criminal assault against the model mugger) and inward challenges of emotional growth with each progressing scenario.

Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance: Can peaceful people become violent? Many people do not want to confront their capacity for violence or the capacity of others to inflict violence. The course involves working through trials and success and gaining a greater understanding of the threatening context the heroes have courageously decided to face. Understanding the context of violence extends to the spirit and then to fighting capabilities. Students, especially survivors, gain a better understanding of criminal behavior while improving the bonding between students and building more genuine group support.

Additionally, a fear of failure can become restrictive, preventing one from embarking on the hero’s journey and finding freedom. Other capacity thresholds relate to betrayal, crime, sexual assault, and fear of death. Each hero or heroine finds a deeper understanding of their limitations and potential, adapting to a more realistic interpretation of life. As students learn about the dynamics of sex crimes and the criminal mindset, the gap in cognitive dissonance about committing self-preserving violence is methodically bridged.

Model Mugging facilitates every student’s unique journey by having the benefit of both male and female instructors to teach the necessary skills that defeat the “dragon” of fear and oppression. Students learn and develop combative strategies and a winning mindset. Students physically and emotionally test their skills during simulated combat against a Model Mugging padded assailant (the “dragon”) in a safe and controlled environment. Students learn to transform immobilizing fear into energetic victory and then support their classmates, “sisters of combat”, on their journeys.

Survivors change experiences of prior victimizing endings by slaying the fears of past dragons and learning the physical skills to prevent future victimization. They become the victors in class, which empowers them to find their courage beyond the classroom. Instructors enable each student on their special journey. Still, the strength of discovery and joyful empowerment lies within each student’s unique emotional and physical transformation – a journey towards freedom from fear, which then allows them to enjoy life.

Verbal, Emotional, and Physically Supportive Permission: The instructor team gives the students verbal and emotional permission to explore their past, face their fears, release their tears, and prepare for battle by transforming fears of past or future pain into a harnessed and channeled anger. We have personally heard thousands of rape accounts, and we maintain emotional openness for each student wishing to share her experience, support her courage, to cry with her, to remind her that it was NOT her fault that she was attacked. We reassure her that we will help her along her upcoming heroine’s journey. The group bond begins to form immediately after our opening circle.

Instructors demonstrate, explain, role model, and then give physical permission for students to perform defensively violent behaviors, like heel palming to the nose and kneeing the male attacker in the groin, to prevent victimization from happening. Students gain permission to find cognitive, physical, and emotional victory.

As a role model mugger, during preparation times in class, male instructors permit students for students to perform violent movements upon them. Overcoming past inhibitions can be a challenging aspect of training, particularly for survivors. Then, male instructors will role model the dragon of oppression, or what Campbell also refers to as the abyss, whereby students discover they can transcend both a death (old mindset-being) and then find a rebirth (new mindset-being). When donning the mugger’s helmet, the male instructor becomes the dragon that each student takes her turn to slay concurrently. At the same time, every one of her sisters and brothers supports her in successfully overcoming her challenge.

For example, an older woman with a French accent did not fight back until the last hour of the course when the mind-body-spirit transformation clicked inside of her, and she fought like a banshee. With tears streaming from her eyes, she pulled down her sleeve and held her clenched fist up in triumph, roaring, “Never again!” We all saw her crudely tattooed numbers from a Nazi death camp. Everyone burst into tears, first empathizing with her pain and then with her triumph.

Applying Role Model Mastery: Matt Thomas synthesized another Stanford psychology professor, Albert Bandura’s techniques of role model mastery to overcome fears of flying and snakes. The female instructor demonstrates the technique in three different planes, incorporating concepts from Karl Pribram’s Neurophysiology of Learning and the Holographic Brain. Our students then perform the simple motions in unison with the instructor, starting in slow motion, then medium motion, and finally fast motion, without the mugger.

Then the female instructor, slowly but with full contact and follow through, would demonstrate heel palms and knees to the groin and then the face of the male instructor, who now becomes the mugger (padded assailant) only wearing light armor, in slow motion. The women usually like the male instructor, so they are initially nervous about engaging in this behavior, but they imitate their role model, the female instructor, and each other. Students are permitted to copy movements and strikes that were previously considered taboo, which is encouraged by all their classmates and the male instructor who sacrifices a portion of his well-being in class for their future, total well-being in the real world.

Dan Millman taught Matt that mistakes are simply part of the learning curve and that if Matt didn’t fall during practice, then he wasn’t pushing his learning limits. However, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.” Unfortunately, when students are berated or laughed at by less enlightened instructors for making mistakes, they often mentally and emotionally berate themselves even more for making mistakes. Model Mugging is taught with joy and laughter; perfect practice makes perfect, and role model mastery is achieved through both pleasure and stress-conditioned learning.

For example, Matt drew on his personal experiences as a college student, as described by Dan Millman, in the development of Model Mugging. Matt fell on a back flip dismount from the parallel bars. Dan asked if Matt was okay and then empathized with him by giving him a hug. Dan then demonstrated the mechanics of Matt’s mistake and laughed after his crash, which helped Matt laugh, releasing his own fear and emotional tension about his “failure”. Then, Dan, as poetry in motion, demonstrated the correct form for the dismount three times successfully, with Matt and other classmates watching from different angles. Human communication is 55% body language, 38% meta-communication (tone, pitch, cadence, etc.) and only 7% of what is actually said. Matt could accept that his “failure” was simply part of his learning curve and then was inspired by Dan’s acceptance, empathy, and laughter as a release of the tension brought about by a mistake that was just part of the learning curve. Finally, Matt could imitate Dan’s perfect physical example. Matt and Dan are still friends 46 years later.

Following the Hero’s Journey archetype, the students meet their first dragon of fear in tests and trials. The male instructor wearing partial armor will let them practice and then “mug” them in slow motion. The coach will first demonstrate the technique, and then each student performs what they need to do under increasingly realistic attacks. The whole class learns by actively watching and responsively engages by saying the techniques as a group. Olympic trainer Bud Winter’s wartime studies on training fighter pilots proved that his students, when empathetically watching behaviors, could learn almost as much, with some students achieving as high as 90% improvement in skill tests compared to doing the behaviors actively and emotionally engaged. In Model Mugging, students form a line of support to encourage each student to take her turn against the padded assailant.

By simply performing the actions, the inhibitions start to be removed. Suppose they can do this action to an instructor or model mugger whom they like and who supports them before and after the mugging scenarios. In that case, it will become even easier to perform violent behavior against a real assailant who is threatening them with harm. Similarly, most women face a betraying assailant whom they know, like, and may even love. Their female instructor models how to overcome cognitive dissonance and each student progressively re-performs her fights but on their own under increasing levels of challenges and stress.

Later, Albert Bandura was amazed at how Matt applied his principles. A graduate student, Elizabeth Ozer, conducted a self-efficacy paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which he co-authored. They stated that students from Model Mugging were also empowered in other aspects of their lives in addition to self-defense.

Our students always win but we make each successive battle more difficult. This progressive training escalation of intensity is part of the natural hero’s journey of the course. Each woman is challenged to her individual capabilities to maintain safety.

For example, a 50-year-old woman, a survivor, had difficulty processing simple movements and was only able to perform the fights in a physically limited capacity. Some martial artists might scoff that her scenarios were unrealistic (or too easy). This might be an accurate observation, but for this woman, the fights were challenging and at her level of performance, and they were safe. Over the following year, this courageous heroine continued to work on her healing and coordination. She retook the course a second time. This time, her understanding of the techniques became more comprehensive. When it was time to fight the mugger, she went after him with an energy force that seemed half her age and with astonishing self-preservation. She said afterward, “I’m alive, in a new way.”

When each student is successful, her female instructor and fellow students cheer and congratulate her. When each student returns to the battle line held by other students, she is hugged and otherwise supported. During the combat scenarios, the female instructor calls out directions, and the classmates support the student fighting the padded assistant, which maintains psychological involvement while also supporting each student group. When the male instructors take off their padded helmets, they become caring teachers again.

Biofeedback: Supportiveness is also an element of martial science constructed into the development of Model Mugging. Successive victories are efficiently achieved because the students’ bodies learn through immediate biofeedback (David Shapiro of Harvard Medical School and later UCLA) what works and doesn’t work under high-stress conditions. If the student doesn’t hit the mugger hard enough in the correct target, the mugger will continue. If they hit the mugger hard enough in the right target, the mugger either moves his body realistically into the reactive manner (if kneed in the groin, the average male bends over to clutch his groin, which brings his face into range for a second knee to his face) or falls. This is instant biofeedback of what the student needs to do under increasingly higher levels of stress.

We have had students report back to us after a real attack and describe how they could “hear their instructors telling them what to do and their classmates cheering them on”. Their real instructor was far away, yet she and her classmates remained with the fighter in spirit since the student’s brain is like a hologram. When the attack stimulates one part, it simultaneously stimulates the entire mind-body-spirit into a coordinated response. This is an example of Pribram’s holographic brain explanation where, in essence, the female instructor had visually disappeared, but now her “inner voice” remains as the student’s coach and supporter.

Ancient Village Concept: In the Hero’s Journey, the monster-dragon rises from the dead and, with the cumulative risk of having the entire village (family and friends at a graduation) witness the final battle. Even against a more ferocious monster, the student emerges exhausted but triumphant. The whole class (village) celebrates. By utilizing the power of the hero’s archetypes presented historically in myth, Model Mugging students are transformed into their heroes or heroines. They have faced the dragon of fear and transcended its fearful energy into positive, empowered experiences that they take with them wherever they go.

The whole “new and old village” claps and cheers in support of their hero’s accomplishments, making the formerly taboo and violent behavior an acceptable and even desirable “protective” norm in this newly joined village. This accomplishes Festinger’s and Zimbardo’s methods of creating cognitive consonance where two opposite extremes occur in the same brain yet remain functional in each set of “norms” – to be peaceful but violent when necessary. This separation of skill sets is critical in other types of human behavior, such as acting, singing, law enforcement, and the military.

When students fight during their “graduation” in front of supportive family, friends, relatives, etc., this further adds to the adrenaline stress of performing in front of their “village”. Participating in a public fight may help them to decrease the inhibitions they might have about defending themselves in front of others on the street or in other public environments. We cannot depend upon bystanders or witnesses to assist others being attacked. However, the addition of the “old village” with its “new village” allows students to transfer the social approval of their class (from their old village) when they leave the new village of the dojo (martial arts class location).

This intense battle occurs after they are exhausted from a whole weekend of mental, physical, and emotional struggle. In front of their village, the muggers confront them, but these heroes find even more energy within themselves than they ever thought they had. Then, they get hugged by their female instructor, classmates, and their “village” supporters.

Matt shares one of his most socially rewarding classes. “For me was when ‘P’, who had been the head of the Executive Protection Unit of a major metropolitan city, a Secret Service agent on presidential detail before that and had escaped from Eastern Europe before that, came up to me with tears streaming down his face in gratitude. His daughter had been afraid to leave their home for 8 years because when she was 13, she was gang raped, stabbed multiple times, and left in the desert for dead, but she survived. After she took our Basic Defense course against a single unarmed assailant class, she was finally psychologically able to leave her home with her sister, who had also taken the class with her. In the Advanced Course, when P saw her fiercely defend herself against a simulated armed assailant, he knew that she would have even more courage to move past the trauma and on with her life. We hugged as tears streamed down both of our faces, two warriors knowing that as a father, he could release his sorrows because he knew that his daughter was courageously charging forward on her own heroine’s journey, and now she could protect herself!”

The Hero’s Journey involves the “return” from the transformation. Concluding class, we have a closing circle, joined and supported by their classmates and their supportive guests representing the celebration of the village.

Support does not end with class. The hero ultimately enjoys the brilliant light of harmony as a loving, caring person who can defend herself or himself, in the company of both new and old villages. After the Basic self-defense course, students may return to Model Mugging for more advanced training and even more empowering experiences.

Social support develops a “You can do it” attitude for success and personal empowerment.

Let your unique hero or heroine’s journey begin and start on the path of personal safety and freedom by registering for a Model Mugging course or hosting one in your area.

Additional links that describe what makes the Model Mugging Self Defense program different:

Padded Assailant

Female Co-Instructors

Muscle Memory / Operant Conditioning

Emotions and Self-Confidence

PTSD and Self Defense

Progressive Training & Controlled Stress

Gentle Art of Conflict De-Escalation

Personal Defense & Crime Prevention