The Complete Guide to Self-Defence: Awareness, Avoidance, and Action

The Complete Guide to Self-Defence: Awareness, Avoidance, and Action is a practical, integrated system for preventing, managing, and, only when necessary, surviving real-world violence. Drawing on more than thirty years of Kyokushin Karate, emergency services work, fire investigation, and psychotherapeutic counselling, Rafal Burchard unites martial arts, threat assessment, and trauma-informed recovery in one evidence-based volume.

Instead of starting at the first punch, this book begins where self-defence really starts: understanding how violence develops, how violent people think, and how coercive control, domestic abuse, and predatory behaviour unfold over time. You will learn to use situational awareness, JACA and MOSAIC threat assessment, pre-incident indicators, and intuition to recognise danger early and act before it becomes a physical assault.

At the core is a five-stage sequential self-defence system: awareness, avoidance, de-escalation, escape, and physical self-defence as a last resort. You will discover how to de-escalate social violence verbally, distinguish social from predatory aggression, and create and exploit escape opportunities without escalating risk. When force is unavoidable, clear technical chapters on conditioning, movement, stances, striking, blocking, power generation, targeting, tactics, and scenario-based training show you how to apply simple, robust techniques under adrenaline with the sole aim of creating a window to escape.

You will also gain a working understanding of the legal framework of self-defence in England, Wales, and Scotland, including reasonable force, proportionality, necessity, imminence, and what to do immediately after an incident, so your decisions are defensible both tactically and in court. Crucially, the book goes beyond the incident itself, with dedicated material on healing, recovery, and rebuilding after violence, informed by contemporary trauma research and frontline counselling practice.

Written in clear language for martial artists, security professionals, emergency responders, counsellors, teachers, parents, and anyone who wants to move through the world with informed confidence, this is not just a collection of techniques. It is a complete, reality-tested system that treats self-defence as a spectrum of skills and decisions, designed to help you avoid needing to fight in the first place-and to act lawfully and effectively when you have no other choice.