This is a longer one so here is the gist of it:
Take experienced LE professionals with several years’ experience working the streets. Many times, they can “feel” a suspect just by looking at him or her. They can feel when one is posing a threat. Experienced military personal can “feel” when a room they about to enter is dangers, and sometimes even from which direction the threat is. It is a combination of knowing how to look, what to look for and “sensing” the environment. The trick is – how do you get novices a head start on these skills so they won’t need 5 years on the street or numerous CQB entries.
My dear friend Marcus Wynne teaches these skills. In some countries and cultures, it seems like what he does is black magic. How can you “install” intuition? Is it new age/black magic? We are not sure about all the science behind it but there are some clues. A good starting point is the RAS (reticular activation system) in your brain. Part of what the RAS does is control what you pay attention to and your arousal level. Almost all information that enter the brain goes through the RAS (accept for smell which goes straight to the emotional/memory regions of the brain). The thing is, YOU teach the RAS what to bring to your attention and what not to.
The RAS is the system that makes you pay attention when your name is being called, even if you are in a different conversation. It allows you to find Waldo quickly in a crowded picture. It allows you to notice the anomaly in a group of people. If you train it, it will notice things we “forgot” such as people’s state and states changes, a person’s hostile intent and various dangers. When an SF enters a room and “feels” something is wrong he literally “feels” it. The heart and brain emit an EMP (just like your microwave or any other electrical operated tech). Changes in state and hostile intent change these EMPs. Remember seeing a national geographic film of the Zebras drinking from a water reservoir and the lionesses stalking them from a far and then a brief second before they attack suddenly a zebra raise its head and look toward the lionesses hiding. The lionesses are still in ambush mode and yet the zebra could tell there is a danger in that direction. Only then, the chase begins. Well, that EMP change is part of the “how that happens”. That change in EMP goes through to the zebra RAS and gets its attention. We have that same mechanism. When someone has “intent” towards you, you can sense that EMP. If you “teach”, your RAS this is important – it will bring it to your awareness (probably via “gut feeling”). How many times you “felt” someone is looking at you and raised your head to notice exactly that? It is just that unless we are exposed to danger on regular bases – like LE or military – we tend to let this skill atrophy. There is also political correctness to blame but that is another issue. So you need to teach your RAS what to bring to your attention.
During a female only situational awareness/safety class, we had the girls trained in basic enhanced visual skills (which also helps get the brain more alert) and recognizing “the feeling” of when someone has hostile intent towards them. At the end of the class, we had each lady (age ranged from late teens to early 50’s) walk by herself either through a hallway or up/down a stairwell. There was a “bad guy” that did not participate in the class, hidden from sight and at a certain point of their walk focused his malintent on the lady walking. Not only that all the ladies could tell the moment that happened, pretty much all of them could point to the direction the “bad guy” was hiding. It does sound like black magic…
One night I was having a drink in local bar. There were only two female bartenders working that night. Late in the evening, a man entered the bar and caught my attention. After observing him for a couple of minutes, I asked the bartender if the guy is a regular or does she know him. The answer was no. I proceeded to tell her he is going to stay last, that he is not going to want to leave and that they should not stay by themselves with him, and offered a couple of suggestion regarding what to do. As she knew me, she took notice. The bar closes in the early am and it got pretty late, and since that bartender is a very sharp girl and the man did not do anything wrong, I left. Around 4am I got a phone call from the bartender – the man stayed last, he did not want to leave and they managed to trick him out of the place and lock the door behind him. They then stayed for a very long “closing” time before leaving themselves.
Another way to hone intuition is by paying attention to smell. Before an attack, there is an “adrenalin dump”. Such secretion of hormones results in a distinct scent. It takes training to notice it. That is another part of “intuition”.
So how do you train your intuition skills? Most importantly, you should train with people like Marcus Wynne, Dennis Martin, Nick Hughes and people they coached to train these skills. It is a practiced based skill, not one to get picked up by reading theory. What you can do by yourself is hone your ability to read non-verbal communication. Especially kinesics (e.g., gestures), biometrics (e.g., muscle tension, blood pressure) and intent cues (transmitting what one is about to do before he does it, that we all subconsciously transmit). The more consciously you train to notice these things on a regular bases, the more your RAS will pay attention to them in the subconscious level and the sharper “intuition” you will have.
- Intuition is a skill you can (and should) train
- It is based on subconscious brain mechanisms
- Train with people that can enhance this skill
- Train your brain to pay attention to kinesics, biometrics and intent cues to enhance your ability to recognize danger to a subconscious level and hone your intuition skills.
Take experienced LE professionals with several years’ experience working the streets. Many times, they can “feel” a suspect just by looking at him or her. They can feel when one is posing a threat. Experienced military personal can “feel” when a room they about to enter is dangers, and sometimes even from which direction the threat is. It is a combination of knowing how to look, what to look for and “sensing” the environment. The trick is – how do you get novices a head start on these skills so they won’t need 5 years on the street or numerous CQB entries.
My dear friend Marcus Wynne teaches these skills. In some countries and cultures, it seems like what he does is black magic. How can you “install” intuition? Is it new age/black magic? We are not sure about all the science behind it but there are some clues. A good starting point is the RAS (reticular activation system) in your brain. Part of what the RAS does is control what you pay attention to and your arousal level. Almost all information that enter the brain goes through the RAS (accept for smell which goes straight to the emotional/memory regions of the brain). The thing is, YOU teach the RAS what to bring to your attention and what not to.
The RAS is the system that makes you pay attention when your name is being called, even if you are in a different conversation. It allows you to find Waldo quickly in a crowded picture. It allows you to notice the anomaly in a group of people. If you train it, it will notice things we “forgot” such as people’s state and states changes, a person’s hostile intent and various dangers. When an SF enters a room and “feels” something is wrong he literally “feels” it. The heart and brain emit an EMP (just like your microwave or any other electrical operated tech). Changes in state and hostile intent change these EMPs. Remember seeing a national geographic film of the Zebras drinking from a water reservoir and the lionesses stalking them from a far and then a brief second before they attack suddenly a zebra raise its head and look toward the lionesses hiding. The lionesses are still in ambush mode and yet the zebra could tell there is a danger in that direction. Only then, the chase begins. Well, that EMP change is part of the “how that happens”. That change in EMP goes through to the zebra RAS and gets its attention. We have that same mechanism. When someone has “intent” towards you, you can sense that EMP. If you “teach”, your RAS this is important – it will bring it to your awareness (probably via “gut feeling”). How many times you “felt” someone is looking at you and raised your head to notice exactly that? It is just that unless we are exposed to danger on regular bases – like LE or military – we tend to let this skill atrophy. There is also political correctness to blame but that is another issue. So you need to teach your RAS what to bring to your attention.
During a female only situational awareness/safety class, we had the girls trained in basic enhanced visual skills (which also helps get the brain more alert) and recognizing “the feeling” of when someone has hostile intent towards them. At the end of the class, we had each lady (age ranged from late teens to early 50’s) walk by herself either through a hallway or up/down a stairwell. There was a “bad guy” that did not participate in the class, hidden from sight and at a certain point of their walk focused his malintent on the lady walking. Not only that all the ladies could tell the moment that happened, pretty much all of them could point to the direction the “bad guy” was hiding. It does sound like black magic…
One night I was having a drink in local bar. There were only two female bartenders working that night. Late in the evening, a man entered the bar and caught my attention. After observing him for a couple of minutes, I asked the bartender if the guy is a regular or does she know him. The answer was no. I proceeded to tell her he is going to stay last, that he is not going to want to leave and that they should not stay by themselves with him, and offered a couple of suggestion regarding what to do. As she knew me, she took notice. The bar closes in the early am and it got pretty late, and since that bartender is a very sharp girl and the man did not do anything wrong, I left. Around 4am I got a phone call from the bartender – the man stayed last, he did not want to leave and they managed to trick him out of the place and lock the door behind him. They then stayed for a very long “closing” time before leaving themselves.
Another way to hone intuition is by paying attention to smell. Before an attack, there is an “adrenalin dump”. Such secretion of hormones results in a distinct scent. It takes training to notice it. That is another part of “intuition”.
So how do you train your intuition skills? Most importantly, you should train with people like Marcus Wynne, Dennis Martin, Nick Hughes and people they coached to train these skills. It is a practiced based skill, not one to get picked up by reading theory. What you can do by yourself is hone your ability to read non-verbal communication. Especially kinesics (e.g., gestures), biometrics (e.g., muscle tension, blood pressure) and intent cues (transmitting what one is about to do before he does it, that we all subconsciously transmit). The more consciously you train to notice these things on a regular bases, the more your RAS will pay attention to them in the subconscious level and the sharper “intuition” you will have.