Steve Kardian on Teaching The New Superpower for Women (Trusting Their Intuition, Predicting Dangerous Situations and Defending Themselves from the Unthinkable)

Steve Kardian talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about his book, The New Superpower for Women: Trust Your Intuition, Predict Dangerous Situations and Defend Yourself from the Unthinkable.



“Educate yourself, empower yourself.” ~Steve Kardian

Steve has had a career in law enforcement for thirty years, covering such beats as homicide, investigation, bribery, fraud and organized crime and has been teaching safety and personal defense as well. Steve’s main emphasis with self-defense and safety is to create instructors, traveling around the world and to various organizations, both civilian and military, to do so, and the book is based on his teachings on personal defense to women. Steve points out that self-defense is the last resort, and he works to empower women with the knowledge necessary to empower themselves, with such knowledge including social situations and creating a blueprint to react to crises.

Steve notes that, in the United States, one in five women will be violated during her lifetime, and while this statistic holds in colleges, he notes that less than five percent of the women who are so violated in college will ever report the incident to the police, because the college they attend prefer to protect their brand rather than their students.

Steve refers to the Grayston-Stein study of 1981, when cameras took footage of people on a New York city street over a period of time, and when the footage was shown to incarcerated criminals the latter consistently picked the same people as soft targets by taking note of such things as the latter’s gait, stride and posture, amongst others. He remarks that situational awareness is necessary to helping avert an attack, with intuition playing a big part. He also notes that walking properly is a deterrent, and that putting the potential attacker on notice, sometimes by simply almost looking right at him, reduces the chances of being attacked by around 70%. And if a criminal accosts a woman, her best option is to hold her hands up while stepping back and shout “Back off!” to attract the attention of everyone else around, thus raising the concern, in the criminal’s mind, of either getting hurt or getting caught, both of which are things he wants to avoid. He also notes that one should scan, giving the example of looking left and right when entering and leaving a building, as well as immediately ascertaining where the exits of a particular place are. He also recommends that people believe their eyes and ears to help them stay out of trouble, and avoid being in large crowds.

Stalking is a major concern, and Steve notes that, ten years ago, there were around a million incidents of stalking, whereas today there are seven to eight million stalking incidents, with the increase being due to the availability of the Internet. He notes that a lot of popular apps reveal the location of the owner of the smartphone, which enables such stalking, and to counter this Steve recommends turning off the location services in apps as well as the location services in photos, as these can be geo-tagged.

Steve remarks that a “blitz” is an attack that comes out of nowhere, and that it takes a half second to four seconds to figure out what is going on. Steve remarks that, when one’s heartbeat reaches 115 beats a minute, the fine motor skills diminish, and that a lot of techniques taught in martial arts break down at a range between 115 to 145 beats per minute. Above 145 beats per minute, only gross motor skills are left functioning, and it would be best to employ these during the time of actual conflict. Taking control of one’s responses relies upon creating and following a blueprint, which is a plan of action that can be put immediately in effect, as Steve notes that the adrenaline rush lasts only ten seconds, and after this an adrenal dump takes place and the person is then exhausted.

Steve remarks that there is only one chapter on self-defense in The New Superpower for Women, as he focuses on enabling women to deal with the predator and the survivor, which is something a lot of self-defense instructors have little practical knowledge of - practical knowledge which Steve, after thirty years of experience, has a lot of.

Steve remarks that creating a blueprint is key to surviving a crisis situation. The blueprint is essentially thinking through the steps one would need to take if one encountered a crisis situation, and the example Steve gave was that of someone alone in their apartment or dormitory, with someone trying to break in. He remarks that that person needs to take the time to visualize oneself taking the actions necessary, such as grabbing a cell phone, calling the police, getting to a safe place and physically securing it and giving out all of the detailed and specific instructions necessary for the police to get to one’s place.

Where weapons are concerned, Steve remarks that, if these are carried, one must become familiar with handling and using it.

Purchase from Amazon: The New Superpower for Women: Trust Your Intuition, Predict Dangerous Situations and Defend Yourself from the Unthinkable by Steve Kardian