Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
"The action or process of observing [employing our sensory system] something or someone carefully or in order to gain information. To take in a remark, statement, or comment based on something one has seen, heard, or noticed. AND Observation is the active acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses."
To observe, one must be aware. To be aware, one must have attained knowledge through experience both academic and reality-based. To have knowledge also requires one understand the knowledge. To understand knowledge one must be aware and observe that which goes on around them through their sensory system.
The art of observation to become a belief that is our reality requires us to assimilate as much as our sensory systems can see, hear, touch, taste and smell while creatively encoding through experiencing the observed stimuli.
To observe is to have referential knowledge or memories stored in the mind.
- Preparation: to expose ourselves to the greatest amount of knowledge available on any given subject, i.e., an academic experience.
- Experience: to use our skills to assimilate experiences tactically and psychological in the real-world. To practice what we have learned using all our senses.
- Reflection: to take experiences and share them with other like minds in an exchange of knowledge and experiences to cause a creative process to achieve synthesis of both current and possible new theories and idea's.
- Demonstration: to take our results and test them with participation of other like minds to vet out the new experiences.
Observation skills are truly an art for one who is skilled in observation doe not merely "see" but takes an active role in "looking," to observe that which is unfamiliar, to the changes in situations and environments and self and to note details to understand and explain that which is observed. To train observation skills:
- place various objects on a table, or on the ground and note what they are. Have students view the objects for two minutes, then cover them and ask each to list the objects. Increase the number of objects and/or reduce the time for observation and observation skills will be improved.
- in subsequent sessions using twenty items, remove or move their positions for subsequent viewing and then ask the students to note the changes that have taken place. Introduce greater difficulty by moving or removing a greater number of articles.
- next, pull up video’s of certain situations involving conflict and violence for the students to observe and when the video ends discuss what was observed and how one would use that information to avoid, deescalate or apply methods of self-protection for self-defense. (fieldcraft)
- when a certain efficiency and accuracy are developed then take the group into a public area, have them note objects in the area, and then convene outside the sight of the area and have each present what they observed.
- as a more advanced observational skill, when students have come to understand certain traits, concepts and aspects of the martial art and self-protection to use that knowledge to observe a public area and present the observations in this light to evaluate with other like minded students and teachers.
“What is fieldcraft in karate’s self-protection for self-defense? The skills involved in living, traveling, moving, or making observations in the field, especially while remaining undetected. Karate’s fieldcraft is the skills involved in the observation and detection of traits or tells of the people and environment that trigger our self-protection skills for self-defense in order to avoid, deescalate or act in a timely, appropriate and most efficient and advantageous way. “ - cejames
NOTE: Observation Principles
Kinesics: involves people's conscious and subconscious body language. Humans give off signals through their postures, gestures, and expressions that communicate their current emotions and possible future intentions. The ability to pick up those signals is critical to PROACTIVELY identify threats.
Biometric Cues: the uncontrollable and automatic biological responses of the human body to stress. The physiological responses are key to understanding a person's emotional state and changes.
Proxemics: allows us to understand groups of people, group dynamics, by observing interpersonal distance and identify an individual's relationships and intentions based on how they use the space around them. It allows us to understand an individual's behavior as it relates to the surrounding people. It helps us understand group dynamics.
Geographic’s: involves reading the4 relationship between people and their environment. It helps us to understand and identify who is familiar or unfamiliar with the area they are in and how people move around their surroundings. Human behavior is predictable, threat profiles help us to anticipate where people will go and what they will do in certain areas.
Iconography: allows us to understand the SYMBOLS people use to communicate their beliefs and affiliations. Gangs, groups and individuals use iconography as a symbol of group unity, for rapid recognition of other members, and to communicate their beliefs to the larger social community. Observing these symbols, particularly the increased presence or even sudden absence of them, can be key to a threat profiler's situational awareness.
Atmospherics: focuses on the collective attitudes, moods, and behaviors in a given situation or place. Threat profiling can read the social and emotional atmosphere of an environment and pick up on the changes or shifts in that atmosphere that often signal that something significant has changes or that something is about to occur. Understanding that collective atmosphere can key threat profiles onto those individuals whose attitude, emotions, and behavior DO NOT FIT the given situation - those individuals are anomalies.
These six observation tells or skills capture the most significant aspects of human behavior in simple terms that aid practitioners in establishing baselines and identify anomalies.
OODA: OBSERVATION
The standard retort to that is to look and see through awareness and then the individual is pretty much left to figure out on their own what that awareness is and how it must be used. To see you have to have concepts to translate stimuli into something usable in this sense, self-protection of aggression and violence. Concepts are those encoded, trained, things in our mind gathered by a variety of means such as, "words both spoken and written and recorded; thoughts, idea's, theories, etc., from academics coupled with training and experiences that come from the intent and concepts that are aggressions and violence. In short, a whole lot of things that are often left to 'assumptions and assumed understanding' because most teachers don't really know how to articulate and teach such things so the sound bites are left to suggest and influence.
If you DO NOT HAVE a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding that are the very concepts of your efforts to handle self-protection then you are NOT seeing and therefore not OBSERVING and then UNABLE to trigger that concept so that you actually can ORIENT on the situation(s).
This is just example and very, very basic with the hopes one understands a lot of research, study and applicable practice in training are required to achieve successes in self-protection... in short, learn the 'rest of the story!'
Observation done properly, completely and comprehensively means you now have the awareness to trigger orientation on stimuli at a distance and with enough time to take actions toward avoidance, etc.
For reference and sources and professionals go here: Bibliography (Click the link)
Van Horne, Patrick. "Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program." Black Irish Entertainment LLC. June 13, 2014.
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