Wheelchair Self-defense by John Perkins

I have worked with wheelchair bound men a few times in the past. I am presently working on a program for the son of a friend of mine who is wheelchair bound. For decades I taught people how to perform contact flow and combat flow from a seated position. This eliminated them from stepping away and forced them to use flexibility to a high degree to make them unavailable and later unavoidable....It is a great methodology and has a lot of merit for standing folk training. I remember some who did not like to do it but after experiencing their progress loved it.

Presently I am training Tina and Patrick to work with wheelchair bound people. I have done much seated work with myself seated to deal with their height and it works out well and keeps me on the ball when it comes to maintaining upper body looseness and I found that I can drop from a seated position just by internally relaxing and suddenly catching my upper bodies weight with my abdominals doing most of the work. I have a small round stool that I use for much of this training but I have done it from any type of chair.

When my brother was in the hospital for prolonged cancer treatments I used to sit in his wheelchair and work as if I had no lower control moving the chair with one hand while using the other to fend off an imaginary attacker.

I know a little of how loss of lower control feels because I had a number of operations where the doctor used a needle to cut off the nerve impulse and feeling to my lower body. The effect usually lasted up to 4 to 5 hours after the procedures/operations and while stuck in bed I would force myself to rise to a sitting position for half an hour or so and imagine how it would be to be in this condition indefinitely....Very sobering to say the least....I count my blessings often that I have the use of my legs...I have recurrent kidney stone problems and can't take the regular anesthesia for these procedures....

To train someone to perform contact flow and combat flow from a wheelchair is not so easy but very rewarding. It gives a true sense of accomplishment to both persons....This is not sportive training but realistic self defense training....I have also worked with blind persons as well....I am developing a workable training regimen for a couple of our student/instructors in this....Hope this helps.....Anyone who wishes to train with me in this methodology is welcome...No charge for these classes....JP