Holistic Self-Protection: The Mindful Warrior’s Guide to Staying Safe in the Human Jungle is not another catalogue of eye-gouges and wrist-locks. It’s a practical, honest look at what it really means to stay safe in a messy, unpredictable world.
 
Drawing on a life that spans government housing in Johannesburg, nightclub doors, work with Special Forces, and a PhD in mindful embodied leadership, Dr Rodney King reframes self-protection from the ground up. Instead of starting with “how to win a fight,” he starts with how you live: how you handle fear, stress, ego, relationships, burnout, and the quiet ways you abandon your own safety long before anyone throws a punch.
 
You’ll explore inner defence (nervous system, emotions, stories), outer defence (awareness, boundaries, de-escalation), simple physical principles for when there is no choice but to act, and the often-ignored aftermath of violence and stress. The through-line is the Mindful Warrior Way: learning to move through the “human jungle” with clarity, calm, and integrity, without becoming hardened or cruel.
 
This book is for people who want to feel safer without becoming obsessed, who care as much about staying human as staying unharmed, and who suspect that real self-protection begins long before any fight, and continues long after it ends.