Way Of Ninja

The ability to sense danger helps a ninja in stealth, fighting and escaping. This state of mind requires the ninja to be aware of his surroundings and be able react quickly to imminent threats.

Awareness of his surroundings, allows the ninja to anticipate dangerous situations and be mentally prepared to deal with it.

What Is Awareness?

Awareness is noticing, knowing and responding.

When you are aware, you know:

• what is happening around you; to guard against immediate threats
• what are your vulnerabilities; to guard against an enemy targeting your weak spots
• what is in your surroundings; to use as weapons, barriers or escape routes

The goal of being aware is to equip you with information to protect yourself and your mission. This information you gather, makes you more competent at responding to danger.

However, it seems impossible to be consciously aware of so many things at once. How are you supposed to notice things, assess your vulnerabilities and seek objects in your surroundings constantly?

The good news is, you are already aware to a certain extent. Everyone has a natural ability to sense danger. It’s just that some of us are more acute at this ability. The key is to enhance the natural ability you have.

Find out more about your natural danger-sensing ability in part 2. [ The Ninja's Sense of Danger Part 2 ]

Logen L.

The ninja must eliminate distractions and heighten his senses. He does this to enhance his awareness and sense of danger.

The below reveals the key to:

• reduce distraction
• heighten senses

Heighten Your Senses

To heighten your senses means to make them more sensitive.

The consequence of heighten senses is more information, which can make you distracted. Your goal is to notice whatever you sense, without assessing them. Trust your intuition to do it automatically for you.

Now, down to the specifics. Condition yourself to notice things (not assess) that are suspicious to the eyes and ears.

1. Be sensitive to sound

Spend 10 to 15 minutes daily to sit down and close your eyes. Notice the sounds in your surroundings, and mentally identify the source of the noise. This exercise is meant to make your ears sensitive to unusual sounds that you cannot identify the source of.

2. Use your peripheral vision often

Make it a habit to be aware of what is at the sides of your vision. While looking at the sides of your vision, maintain vision of what is in front of you. The sides of your vision is adept at catching sudden movements. This allows to detect immediate threats from your left or right.

Do not be so distracted with looking at the sides, without noticing what is happening in front of you!

Once this becomes a habit, you’ll use your peripheral vision without even thinking.

3. Use your ears to see behind

While moving about, keep your ears open to detect presence behind you. It is useful when you are walking alone at night.

4. The shadows and reflections tell secrets

Make it a habit to occasionally glance at the shadows or reflections of a mirror/glass door. They can expose someone’s presence.

5. Feel the wind

Someone’s presence can be revealed by the wind. If someone is stalking you silently, and there comes a breeze blowing behind you, it will be blocked by that person. That is how you can detect the person’s presence.

Remember again, if you make the above 4 into habits, you will be able to notice things subconsciously. That is the key. You want to notice things without thinking about noticing things.

Reduce Your Distraction

Let me clarify what I mean by distraction. Distraction comes in the form of thoughts and emotions. When you are bored, you have self-entertaining thoughts. When you are nervous, your thoughts seem to whirl by. And to be honest, it is impossible to eliminate this type of distraction completely.

I’m not telling you to be emotionless! Ninja are human beings too and have every right to having emotions.

Instead, I’m suggesting that a ninja should keep the mind calm and relaxed. Here’s an analogy.

Imagine two buckets of water. One bucket’s water is completely still. While the other is constantly shaken, so that the water keeps rippling. If I throw a rock into each bucket, which bucket of water will indicate that there was a disturbance of its water surface by the rock?

Of course the bucket of still water. You will be able to see the ripples caused by the rock easily than the bucket of moving water.

The mind is the same. To be aware of your surroundings, the mind must be like the calm waters so that you can easily see any ripples that occur. When the mind is calm, one is able to process information faster.

To become calmer and relaxed you should:

• Meditate daily for 5 minutes at least
• Observe your moods and what triggers your moods (gradually learn to catch any extreme emotions before they occur)
• Do not be frustrated at failure when you lose your cool
• Join Tai Chi, Tai Quan or Aikido classes (Aikido emphasises that one should be relaxed when neutralising an attack; this is because, when the mind is relaxed, techniques can be executed more fluidly and effectively)

General Advice

Let’s bring the how-to back to the concept of intuition. Intuition is subconscious; you don’t have to think about it, to detect suspicious things.

The aim of the above how-to is to make your awareness and sense of danger subconscious. You have to constantly do the above to make them into habits. And remember, habits are subconscious acts.

Good luck.

Logen L.