Mike Brewer

That's truly the million dollar question. My current answer is that I don't train civilians to do it anymore. They most often just don't want to understand it the way I need them to, and showing them the grisly reality of it all would turn them off of training. If someone comes to me and asks to learn edged weapons or firearms, I almost always direct them to someone else. I send a lot of people to the Sayocs, Atienzas, and to the Warrior's Way group(s), but it's just something I don't do anymore.

As for soldiers (which really is the only group I've worked with since coming to the decision not to teach publicly), I can show them footage, pictures, etc. We run cutting drills that kind of bring it home. I once had a group set up to go see a hog butchering, but it fell through. A good old-fashioned country hog butchering is a painful thing to watch, because pigs just don't like the idea of letting go. They scream and yell and bleed something fierce. Watching it is a good way of getting the "squeamish" to come to the top, and when it does, talking about things like "Imagine your child making those noises because you didn't have what it takes to protect them," or "Imagine you're the one holding the knife and it's a living breathing father of two under it" have a more pronounced impact. But again, that's just not cricket in terms of the American gym-going public.

As for ego, the only way I have ever found to get rid of it is to confront it over and over again. Most of the time, this can be done on the floor, but in extreme cases, it's a good idea to take someone out of their element. I've done everything from weekend survival camps to teamwork drills ot get there, and I've had some pretty good successes. I've also failed utterly in other instances. If you want to talk offline about it, I'll get more specific, but like I said, almost all of this kind of stuff has been done for soldiers and I don't want to take away from the main idea of the thread by diverting.