ABCs of Surviving Violent Encounters - Learn Personal Protection From a Navy SEAL

Hey guys, what is going on? Chris Sajnog here, retired Navy SEAL and founder of the SEAL Training System, and in this video, I'm going to teach you the ABCs of surviving a violent encounter. Now let's go ahead and get started.
Alright, so let's talk about the ABCs of surviving a violent encounter. And I'll tell you first off; it involves much more than just protecting yourself from that violent encounter because the best thing you can possibly do is prevent that violent encounter from ever even happening. And that's what I want to talk about right here.

Alright, so what are the ABCs? Well, the ABCs stand for Awareness, Building your defenses, and Calming the threat.

So first up, let's talk about Awareness. Awareness, I'm sure you know, being aware, situational awareness is one of the best things that you can do, one of the best skills you can have to be able to prevent a violent encounter from happening. So how do you build awareness? Well, the number one way that I know how to build your situational awareness and being more aware is to meditate, and what meditation does is it teaches your brain to clear out all the clutter and it's not clearing your brain like you have no thoughts, but what it teaches you to do is clear out the clutter. So thoughts that aren't really important at that moment in time and teaches you to think about what you need to think about or what you need to focus on during a violent encounter. So when you're meditating, say you're thinking about your breath and you're just focusing on your breath.

You're going to have thoughts that come into your mind like, oh, what do I need to do right now? Or, I'm wasting my time and my meditating, right? Those are all fine. Everybody has thoughts when they meditate, but what meditation does is it teaches you to acknowledge those thoughts and go, yeah, I noticed that thought and but I'm going to choose to focus on my breath. So then when it comes to a violent encounter, awareness, your ability to be aware is so much more enhanced. Now obviously there's going to be lots of other things going on around you, but because you've trained your mind so well through meditation, you are aware of that one thing, that one specific element that is most important for you to focus on right then and there to protect yourself and your family, so that is the best way to train your awareness.

Another great way that I started doing recently is trail running, so just getting out on a trail, getting off the treadmill, getting out where there are trees and there are other people, and things are going by you, and just by looking straight ahead, you don't even have to try. Your mind is going to start picking up on things that you don't see. When you're on a treadmill, and you're watching the little screen, you're watching reruns of whatever your favorite show is on there, and you're, you're so un-situationally-aware, it's crazy. So just get outside and move. Go for a run, and you will improve your situational awareness just by that alone.

All right, next up, the B is to Build your defenses. So these could be physical defenses. So putting an alarm on your house, putting lights up around your house, maybe digging a moat and putting that around your house, whatever it is, building up your physical defense, building up yourself, right?

You are the weapon.