Vunak's Top 50 Combat Secrets Ch. 45

Chapter 45 – Differentiating Emotions

Before we master the emotional dimension it is imperative that we understand the actual “end game”. First and foremost, no person on earth can control their feelings, that is one of man kinds biggest misnomers. Think about it… If you are walking your child across the street, and they get hit by a vehicle, is it possible to not be sad ? If you are walking down that same street, and that vehicle is chasing you and your child, is it possible not to feel fear ? So at the end of the day, none of us are in control of our feelings. What differentiates a warrior from the average person however, is how one reacts to their feelings. If the average person while walking their child is suddenly confronted with a violent speeding vehicle, there is a good chance their fear will debilitate them. Their reaction, instead of grabbing the child and evading the vehicle, would more resume a dear staring frozen in headlights. A warrior on the other hand, will feel the exact same fear as an average person. However, that “feeling”, not only will not debilitate them, that “feeling”, will actually improve their agility, and nimbleness. The so called, war hero, who does amazing things in battle, I can assure you feels the same fear, as his fellow soldiers. How they react to that fear, is what actually makes them a hero.

Now getting back to our original points, of differentiating, and processing emotions, and ascertaining an “end-game”. First and foremost, when we come to realize that everyone feels fear, everyone feels sadness, everyone feels anger, etc, etc… That actual knowledge becomes a tool for empowerment. While the average person, is bucking and fighting these emotions head on, the warrior, is excepting these feelings, allowing them to come in and be processed.

If you could indulge me for a moment, I would like to share with you another dangerous and common misnomer… Confusing, fear with panic. Panic is something we feel, when we are tired, angry and claustrophobic. A good example is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Imagine being exhausted, you are wrestling with somebody, that you really really want to beat, and you are in that moment struggling not to be on the bottom, typically what happens at this juncture, physiologically the heart rate sky rockets, we vascilate between hyper ventilating and holding our breath. And whatever drop of energy we had left in our body, we used up with “reckless disregard”. There is a very very simple answer to never panic again. We simply desensitize our selves(this is a Seal Team Six Technique I used to Call Stress Inoculation). Never ever again fear the bottom, simply embrace the bottom. Spend 50 hours on the bottom and your fear will be gone. As the biofeedback axiom goes, control follows awareness. Therefore the more we are aware of our feelings the more we can control our reaction to them. The more we are aware of panic, the more we can control our reaction to it. And I can tell you from 25 years of wrestling with the greatest Jiu-Jitsu proponents on planet earth, that all of these people have one thing in common, “the mastery of the reaction to their feelings”... The End Game !

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Vunak's Top 50 Combat Secrets Ch. 44

Chapter 44: The Emotional Dimension Part 1

Pardon the cliché, but I have saved the best for last. Before we can defeat somebody physically, we must defeat them emotionally. Before we defeat someone else’s emotions we must be in command of our own. Before we can be in command of our own emotions, we must be able to know, feel, differentiate and process them, period !

Now let us reverse engineer paragraph one. By starting to take the myriad of complicated emotions and reduce them to a simple 6. It is helpful before we do this to completely understand why. The six emotions that I am about to share with you absolutely, positively, must first and foremost be understood and differentiated. So here we go… Mad, Sad, Glad, Afraid, Ashamed, Hurt. (When one is in a street fight these 6 emotions are all thrown in one “soup”. The implications of this are, the anger you could have for somebody, could be amplifying your fear, and make you debilitated and you don’t even know why. Where the fear that you have in this fight, maybe due to simple adrenaline, and one is unable to process it properly due to physiology! Or it could mean that you have “Afraid”, enmeshed with “Mad”, and you are wondering why you are unable to turn on your killer Instinct !

I could go on, giving examples of what happens when people are out of touch with their feelings, 8 hours a day for a year and never repeat myself. That is how prevalent the problem is, both in a street fight and in life itself.)

Now getting back to our 6 emotions, lets take one at a time. Mad, we can pretty much relate too. Sad, most of us understand what Sad means. Glad, simply means happy. Afraid, is another word for Fear. Ashamed, is another word for Shame, Guilt, and perhaps Embarrassment. And Hurt, which tends to be a bit ambiguous for everybody. It has to do with loss. If you lose a loved one the pain you feel would actually lean more towards hurt than sad. Now that we know what the 6 simplified emotions are, and have done a differentiation. Let us now proceed to a rudimentary readers digest version of how to process these different emotions.

First and foremost, understand this… 99 out of 100 people do not know how to feel, differentiate, or process, all they do is stuff. Once we stuff one emotion on top of another, we create this “emotional toxic Lasagna”, which resembles a Volcano that could literally blow up at any time for any reason. Now let us get back to the proper way to deal with emotions, in lue of stuffing we process ! There is a formula that we use, just like Martial Arts, just like the R.A.T.

Here goes… When you_________________________I feel________________________________________.

This formula guarantees that you are not degrading, humiliating, or exacerbating the situation, it simply guarantees that you inform someone, that when they behave a certain way, this is how you feel. Eg, “Sam, when you raise your voice at me, I feel sad.” Or, “Judy, when you laugh at me, I feel hurt”, etc, etc… The next emotion to process is sad. When something typically makes us sad, we try to take our mind off of it with distractions. May, I humbly suggest, that you meditate on what is making you sad. Sit down, breath deeply, cry if you have too, and as you breath into the sadness, this “non resisting” energy will process the sadness away.

The next emotion, is glad. Which means happy, enjoy your sh!t eating grin. The next emotion Afraid, which means fear. Shine the light on your fear and it will disappear as quickly as darkness disappears when you shine the light on it. What ever your fear, face it, confront it, and embrace it. When I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Rickson used to give me panic attacks, we would wrestle for a couple of hours straight, he would mount me in the 102 degree heat of California, and I used to panic. All I ever did was fight to get the hell off the bottom. Fight, fight, fight ! And then, eventually when he got me on the bottom, my resistance would turn to panic.

Answer… for the next 6 months, after bowing to Rickson and starting my wrestling, I simply started off by laying on my back. I embraced the position, that used to demoralize me. Indeed to this day, I prefer starting from my back. Fear is gone. The next emotion, ashamed. This is the same as shame, guilt and embarrassment. This means that you have judged your behavior, the behavior is in the past, and you have been unable to forgive yourself. Answer, just like fear, shame can not exist in the light. Whatever is in the deepest darkest bowels of your closet, bring them out, talk about them, and the light will disintegrate them. Our final emotion is Hurt. Hurt is a sadness caused from a loss. First and foremost we have to properly greave from this loss, and the second half of healthy grieving is to replace what was lost. This could include a puppy, a car, or a husband. In conclusion I realize by so rapidly changing course on the “combat “ index, and going from headbutts and elbows, to feeling feelings, might be a bit much for some of you. Indeed, I can picture a few of my New York buddies, with disgruntled looks, grabbing their crotch, simultaneously proclaiming, “Yo Vu, If I wanted Dr Phil I wooda, put on Oprah”… Forget about Oprah boys, she don’t got no ground game.

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Vunak's Top 50 Combat Secrets Ch. 15

Chapter 15 – The "U-Drill" our most empowering drill.


90% of the battle of teaching someone how to defend themselves lies within the emotional dimension. Once someone has the self confidence that what they do will work the odds of that happening are increased exponentially. Any coach in any sport can affirm this belief. So now the all important question becomes, how do you instill self-confidence in students in a quick and efficient manner?


Since self confidence is an attribute, and attributes are developed by drills then the question becomes, what is the best drill? After 30 years and 30,000 drills later my humble answer to you is the “U-Drill”. For those of you who don’t know, the “U-Drill” comes from our knife training. One side has a knife, one side does not. The person without a knife, gently place or rest one hand on your partners forearm(the forearm holding the knife). The person holding the knife is the teacher executing the drill. The mission of the teacher with the knife is to slowly take, slices at your partners stomach. Think of these slices resembling a tennis forehand and backhand stroke(the mechanics of this action resemble a U). The recipient doing the drill, should switch from right hand back to left hand, occasionally both hands can be checking the knife. As the knife feeder, as you notice your student effortlessly deflecting the blade, you eventually start to speed up. Soon you will find, that your students body is moving nimbly, moving with agility, nimbleness and cat like movement. Once the teacher as ascertained the students maximum speed, it is now time to put on a pair of goggles on your student and grab a live blade. Start out slow again feeding, and work your way up in speed. I will give you my personal guarantee, that as a teacher, when you feed this drill properly to a student in front of a class, going full speed, using a live blade for about 2 minutes, and then stop and the whole class screams out with applause, your students eyes, are as round as quarters. Their heart is pounding, and they themselves are amazed at what they just accomplished. Again in my most humble opinion, I believe this to be the most profoundly and powerful drill, that one can do for self-confidence. And all of this can be accomplished in one hour. -- Love Vu !

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Please check out:

• Paul Vunak - Jeet Kune Do Concepts & Filipino Martial Arts Vol 5 Knife Fighting (Full video)

to see the U-Drill demonstrated.

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