Surviving a hostile world | ASHWIN MOHAN | TEDxChristUniversity
[Music] very good afternoon to everybody um I have been uh training in martial arts for a long time and there's not a bone in my body that I haven't broken in the process but it gave me a lot of learning and um finally martial art is at some level the of of power it's power okay thank you phis oops have I just knocked over Christ University so power is something that is fundamental to our well-being right when we feel powerless we want to snatch power from people in some way now this has created an imbalance because hierarchy is a structure in which power is right on top and little bits of it trickle down to people downstairs are waiting for the Masters to drop it into their hands I don't like the system I was born in the system brought up in the system like Bane but I worked my way out of it forged my way out of it anyway forget it no one's getting the Batman reference so when we are all burn into this hierarchy it becomes very hard for us to know what our own power is we start to develop a dependence on other people to make us feel powerful we we want validation from other people otherwise you don't feel power right and then some people try to renounce power and become yogis but yoga is not about renouncing power yoga is the celebration of power there are two kinds of Power the small power and the big Power and the small power is when I go and criticize someone for no reason and they get upset maybe what I'm saying is accurate but when I do that to them and they get upset I feel oh my God I have this impact on them right and I could um I can through that build the belief that I have a little bit of power all right so let me give you the story of how this started very briefly I don't like long stories so what happened is uh I was called I think in the year 2002 no 200 yeah 2002 is when I started working in the field of gender violence there was a lot of gender violence happening domestic violence was on the rise or at least reports of it were on the rise and there were communities rif with domestic violence how does this happen first of all men have something called alitheia okay Alexia is the inability to uh articulate your emotions and there's an Alexia test online for the men here if if you want to go and try it uh women also most welcome to go try it now it's spreading this disease and it's an act it's actually a recognized disease in the DSM uh so many people in fact 90% of the population has some extent of this where they cannot articulate their emotions they have inhibitions to articulate their emotions and if they they don't know how to do it without getting censure criticism ET ET so when the Sri Lankan refugees came on these little boats from uh across the park streets they lost a few family members in the journey and there was a lot of post-traumatic stress and uh the men could not express their emotions and therefore took to alcohol to in order to regain a sense of or rather to forget their powerlessness right now addiction is because of a lack of connection when you cannot connect with any other human being on a meaningful level then you start to connect with a substance in order to uh take your mind off thinking about your own powerlessness in fact the biggest powerlessness is is if you can't connect with somebody if you can't communicate your feelings with somebody then you start to feel extremely powerless okay so then these guys started beating up their wives and children very badly many of the children left school it was at this point that I was called in as a self-defense and Martial Art Expert to teach self-defense to the women it's ridiculous because these people were living happily in Sri Lanka before they got dislodged they were leading middle class lives but now they had to come and live in Huts in India and they just could couldn't deal with that much of change so fast and what is self-defense going to do over there I had no idea so I went there hoping to let my audience teach me what to teach them and that's exactly what happened when I went there uh there was a group of 100 ladies and they said I can't we're not going to beat up our husbands this is what they told me first we know you're a martial artist we're not going to be beat up a husband I said I don't expect you to I really don't even know what to do just tell me what happens right so they kept explaining that the husband comes in and then it gets annoyed with something small and then it turns into a verbal argument which turns into slabs or kicks and things like that and then he go he feels a sense of power and he goes back to sleep this is how his his mechanism of dealing with it so I said okay here's what you can do take your hands and smash them together like this okay for a minute make sure that you get every bit of the bone to smash every bit of this bone on top you have two bones radius and the alna you make sure you smash both of them so this causes very small micro fractures in your hand in a minute it's not a bad thing and uh and they kind of rebuild really strong okay so Gotham has been practicing it for one year now and I have been practicing it for 20 years now so when Gotham gives me a slap I just had to block it and he doesn't want to slap me again right yeah goam gives me a kick and I block it with my shin why because I'm chopping my shin like this also for a minute and also here for a minute this simple technique thank you Gotham this simple technique changed the fortunes of a community of 2 lakh people just this one technique why because the woman would be cooking or doing work around the house and in addition earning money and taking care of the children while all these guys do is sit and feel sorry for themselves and do a little bit of work enough to get alcohol get drunk and come back right so when they come back she's already tired and then she began to take this less seriously earlier his criticism she thought she had to react to it and she would react and there would be a conflict and there would be a fight and now she's like I am powerful she started to feel powerful because whenever when this gets strong you feel like you have an armor if something attacks you you can do this right and you can uh you can take uh blows right um uh Arjun and uh Gam can we just show them so even if you get thrown on the ground and you get rolled around and kicked around yeah I'm fallen down on this place and he's hitting me all I have to do is just hit hit hit and kick also go for it kick right I don't get damaged on my head I don't get damaged on my spine and there's a lot of pain right when in your hands okay so this it never got to this extreme stuff it came up to stuff like slapping and then she'd block it and then she'd they kick him and then block it and just like my ly fell off one husband's ly fell off and uh she the wife got so disgusted she took the ly put it on his head and started hammering him with uh one of those uh you know rolling pins and then the guy started crying and then he said I'm sorry and then he said all the alcohol comes down when you get a few slaps then she said I'm really he said I'm sorry and then he didn't do it again he actually found a job a better job that he can keep and like this the whole Community when when news of the spread because they're living in small Hearts the news spreads you know everyone can hear what's going on in your house so um it as a culture the women will get up even now and practice these things and it's not just this there are a few more exercises which I teach them one of the exercises is to keep blowing out a candle right keep blowing out a candle you keep it here and then you go back and you blow it out until you get AIM with your your mouth right Ashwini I need your help for this gatam and Arjun come here so Gotham is going to try Gotham and Arjun might try a few typical things on her like pulling her hair look at her in her s she's not does she look like a martial artist right she's not actually she's she's my adopted and uh she uh she's a dancer of course so she has some um uh awareness of her body so I had to teach her this like 5 minutes in the morning she have you learned this before never okay so try let's see what happens uh he starts all right she isn't hitting him in places where she can hurt him because he's a friend if she had done the same thing here that would be really bad or if she had gone into the cardiac plexus here it would directly affect his heart or if you go to the the abdominal plexus here it's even more painful right so I've asked her not not to break her training Partners uh okay what else do you want to try try grabbing her from behind and see what happens now she can't spit at him oh oh once again saved let us protect education come this head okay so thank you guys so here is the sneezing thing really works okay so I'm a girl and I'm traveling in a bus and here's this guy falling on me no that's not what they do in the bus what kind of a you're a you're a useless creep let me show you okay here's what the creeps do yeah first they come and stand next to you and then and slowly like this every time every time the bus applies a break it'll be like that right things like that that's what happens right girls yeah okay so let's say I'm I'm something like this is happening if I say you know it's going to he's going to deny that he did anything he's going to say I didn't do anything right so let you know he did it he knows he did it let why should the world know that he did it he should get punished for it so you sneeze do the be a creep and you say oh [Applause] sorry and then you you can do this even on a bus and someone creep come sits next to you and does all these things in the night you know he's fallen asleep and he's trangle right so you could also like three four times you can sneeze because the thing with a sneeze is you don't know how many times it comes right and you're like oh oh are you okay what are you doing so close to me is it a little far you know I sneeze very violently I think your perfume is a something you know your smell is making me sneeze can you change your seat you know and like that you can use your brains and get out of many situations now A friend of mine was uh picked up you know I mean she's been raped many times then she came to me and saying I don't want this to happen anymore so because she works in social work and everyone attacks her for so many things sometimes she's been raped as a as a to scare her but that this never scared her she just kept going now she's in the US so this student of mine she was coming home near uh what is that place kuranga and uh uh you know that kangla first block where it gets all dark and dingy and rooms are cheap so she could only afford a room there so she was going back to her room after the office bus has uh dropped her somewhere and a guy has been watching this and he's a laborer he's been watching this for four or 5 days and he decides he's going to rape her like how on Earth do you decide this then I realized our culture is giving this um this thing to them license license to police women what are you doing alone okay thanks goam what are you doing alone uh in the middle of the night and who is your keeper and who's where is your keeper because women are property right according to the social narrative right right from you know the religious text all the way down to our current social structure and marriage rituals have you seen them how much you get objectified in that so anyway so as she was walking down this guy comes and picks her up closes her mouth and she's like oh no not another rap and she kind of twists his little finger and says are you trying to rape me yeah and then he says you can't say yes I'm trying to rape you like he's a little bit shocked that he's not he's not getting the reaction that he usually gets which is what Panic freeze uh you know something like that or maybe some hitting but I don't know we we carefully keep our women away from martial arts and when I nowadays my uh my students class classes I don't teach martial arts anymore but I have some students who do they getting more and more women in their classes but when I used to teach it was um okay I would don't want to say the word but it was full of men uh so then uh she as she did this then she said you know I've been raped many times before and I've got AIDS like you you want AIDS he knows what AIDS is and he's like uh uh he didn't say a word he just pushed off he ran away right and her legs are shaking and then she somehow found her cell phone and she called me and said this happened I said don't stand in the street go home and call me uh and then yeah so I think at some point when do we make a change when we've had enough that's when we make a change right don't bother trying to change people who have not had enough if they not had enough just protect yourself and stay away from them and then when they had enough they'll come and then you can all your milk of human compassion can come out and and uh you can help them right 30% of people are saying I've had enough 50% of people are saying who me change 30% are saying yeah I've had enough I mean I'm I'm not a statistician and but I think all statistics is just made up right and I'm just saying this from my own experience uh and uh maybe 10% of how many per is left now there's 30 50 there's 20 left right 15% of people are saying somebody teach me I want to learn how can I have my power back how can I not be uh needy needy needy in uh relationship needy with my parents needy with my uh spouse needy with my my mentors needy needy needy needy needy emotionally needy they they said we have had enough of that and I really want some real power I want to give instead of take a really powerful person gives right go first you want to be powerful give first give whatever it is give that first word of kindness give that first smile give that First Act of generosity you do that first and see 50% of people may not respond as as you expected but 50% of people would appreciate it and so that's a good figure just be kind to everybody it's that simple but yeah so uh thank you very much for listening and uh I hope um you you are inspired to practice this thank you