Defensive Grooming Gestures

Let's say you're walking down the street and you see someone coming towards you that you're just not quite sure about. Maybe it's a couple of kids gesturing towards each other and they're sort of looking at you nervously and looking at each other and you don't know what they're doing. Maybe they're making fun of your shoes or maybe they're targeting you for one of these knockout game punches. These thrill punches, these thrill attacks or maybe it's a serious personal crime about to happen. You're not quite ready to stop and put your hands up in a defensive posture.

You're not ready to yell at them. You're not even ready to cross the street. You're just a little suspicious maybe a little worried that's okay. That healthy awareness of what's going on around you and maybe seeing something that could be a pre-contact cue, is supposed to prime your defensive system and put your defensive measures into play. But maybe you're not ready to go all out and you want to do something more subtle.

And that's where a defensive grooming gesture can really come in handy. If I'm walking down the street and I see someone that might pose a threat but I'm not ready to take over an action. As I get close to them maybe I get to within an arm's reach. I may just reach up and scratch my head. I may reach up.

And if I had hair run my hands through my hair. I might come up and just kind of scratch my goatee, maybe my beard. Maybe I'm just going to scratch my nose or scratch my forehead. When I'm doing this, this is called a grooming gesture. But what I'm also doing is preparing my hand and my forearm to be in a position to defend my head.

If someone were to throw a strike. Maybe I'm also deterring that strike, because if someone's down here, loading up getting ready to just throw that big haymaker punch in the side of my head. And they noticed that my hand is here. Maybe they're going to realize, you know what? I can't just knock this guy out with one punch.

He's got his hand up. I guess I'll have to attack someone else. That's the kind of thing you want to do. It's very subtle and it's very easy. Maybe you're talking to someone, maybe someone's agitated with you.

Maybe someone's encroaching you. They're asking you for money. They're asking you what time it is. They're asking you for directions and you're not ready to say, stay back. And get into your posture of defense and put up a fence.

But you're absolutely ready for the fact that they may throw a strike at you. So you may be, you're talking with your hands and they're getting a little too close and you're just going to come up here and just rub your eye. Well, again, this hand is in a perfect position to be a defensive tool or to strike. If you need it to be. When a hand is in motion it's also very easy to move that elbow as an elbow strike it's easy to push that hand out and push someone away to create space.

You can do a lot of things with your hands when they're already up here in motion. But if you do this, you may actually escalate the situation. Obviously, if you ball up fist, this is a pre-flight cue. This tells somebody you are ready to fight, but this this just tells somebody that maybe you've had a long day. Maybe you're fighting off a headache.

Maybe you're just wanting to fix your hair. Maybe you're wiping some sweat from your brow. Maybe you've got an itchy nose. Any of these grooming gestures can be great defensive techniques when you aren't quite sure what's going on or when you absolutely are sure what's going on but you don't want to escalate the situation by doing something more overt. Consider a defensive grooming gesture.