Mike Flanagan
MRSS is a Shiatsu therapist living and working in Leeds. He is a Member
of the Register of the UK Shiatsu Society. He has received formal
training in both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Five Elements, and
uses both of these models in his work as a therapist. He has appeared
on British television in connection with this work. He began training
in martial arts in 1977 and in that time his training has included
Wado Ryu Karate, Taekwondo, Tai Chi and Ju-jutsu. He holds the rank
of 1st dan in Shinseido Shorin Ryu and 1st dan in Ao Denkou Jitsu.
Mike can be contacted by telephone (07939 506340) or email (mike@shiatsu.8m.com).
Dr Zoltan Dienes is an
experimental psychologist at Sussex University, with over thirty published
scientific articles and co-author of a book reviewing research in
his area. He has appeared on British national television, radio, and
newspapers and German national television about his research. He has
also been a statistical consultant for several years to two drug companies.
He has been training in karate for 23 years, and teaches Kyusho as
part of regular training at his club, the University of Sussex Shotokan
karate club. He holds the rank of 3rd dan in Ao Denkou Jitsu and 2nd
dan in Shotokan Karate. Zoltan can be contacted by email (dienes@biols.susx.ac.uk).
May 2001
Introduction
In recent years the subject of 'pressure point fighting' or kyusho-jutsu
has caused a good degree of excitement, and also some controversy,
in the world of martial arts. There are practitioners who endeavour
to use pressure points in every technique they do, and there are others
who think that pressure points would not work in a real situation,
and avoid them altogether. The authors are both firm believers in
the use of pressure points to increase the effectiveness of already
good technique.
Having accepted the usefulness of pressure points one is then bound
to ask "What are they?", "How do they work?" and
"How best can I use them?". A popular way of explaining
how pressure points work is to describe them in terms of Chinese medicine.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a system of thought that is
at least 2,500 years old. Some aspects of medicine have been associated
with martial arts in the orient for hundreds of years. The reasons
for this are obvious - it is clearly useful for martial arts teachers
to have some experience of addressing the kind of training injuries
that martial arts students are likely to encounter. Such knowledge
is likely to have been passed down through the centuries along with
the martial arts being taught. It seems only natural then that the
principles and theories of Chinese medicine might be used to explain
the effectiveness of certain aspects of martial arts. This is nowhere
more evident than in the field of pressure-point fighting - in which
nowadays the names for the 'pressure-points' are often taken directly
from the tsubo's, or vital points, of Chinese medicine. In this manner,
a number of theories have been taken directly from Chinese medicine
and applied to martial arts. But is this an appropriate application
of those theories? The main focus of Chinese medicine is to address
imbalance in human beings, striving towards the creation of harmony
and therefore the absence of disease. For the TCM practitioner this
often involves an extensive examination of the person, and a holistic
and extended course of therapy. But it is far from obvious how these
theories should be applied to the problem of harming rather than healing,
using martial art techniques rather than needles or massage, finishing
a fight in seconds rather than a course of therapy over months. Many
people have attempted to apply the concepts of TCM to martial arts
without demonstrating that the principles themselves were adding anything
useful to the effective techniques they employed. We considered that
this was a subject worthy of more rigorous investigation and so, beginning
in 1998, set about designing a number of experiments to test the validity
of some of the ways in which concepts of Chinese medicine had been
applied to the martial arts.
The first two experiments were designed by Zoltan Dienes; the latter
two by Zoltan Dienes and Mike Flanagan.
Flowing colours
In traditional Chinese thought there are five phases or elements that
exist in nature, and each element has an associated colour. These
are blue (or black) for water, green for wood, red for fire, yellow
for earth and white for metal. Some martial artists believe that envisaging
a particular colour, or even imaging 'flowing' that colour into an
opponent, will enhance the effect of attacking particular pressure
points. The colour is chosen in accordance with the Five Elements
so as to provide maximum disruption to the energy of that point. Points
lie along channels called meridians; ten of the twelve meridians are
associated with a particular element. Thus, most points are associated
with one of the elements, and hence with a certain colour. In 1998
Zoltan attended a seminar in which the instructor demonstrated this
principle using the wrist lock known as nikkyo, or s-lock. Anyone
who has been on the receiving end of nikkyo can attest to how painful
the experience is! The seminar instructor demonstrated the lock and
showed how envisaging 'flowing yellow' into the opponent enhanced
the lock and made it more effective; he said that flowing the colour
would mean people could use half the amount of force to get the same
reaction. Indeed, many people attending the seminar were surprised
at how well this worked. Zoltan reproduced this session with 2 groups
of karate students. First he taught the whole group how to apply nikkyo.
Then he taught Group A that flowing red would increase the effectiveness
of the lock and that flowing blue would decrease its effectiveness.
Group B were taught the exact opposite: blue would increase the effectiveness
of the lock and red would decrease it. When questioned at the end
of the session each group found that what they had been told appeared
to be true. Those who were told that flowing red would enhance the
lock found that to be the case, the other group found that flowing
blue was more effective - in fact, they found the colour they THOUGHT
should work better to be about twice as effective as the other colour,
just as had been suggested to them by Zoltan. The only conclusion
that can be drawn from this is that it is not the colour that is important
but the students' belief in its effectiveness: positive thinking and
commitment to your technique will make it a more effective technique.
Vibration
Each of the Five Elements also has an associated musical note. Nikkyo
(s-lock) has again been used to demonstrate that vibration at certain
frequencies can enhance a technique's effectiveness. This is achieved
by vibrating the arm very slightly, at a particular speed, whilst
applying the lock. It should be noted that these movements are much
smaller than the random movement some practitioners employ to confuse
an individual who is succeeding in resisting the application of a
lock. As in the previous experiment 2 groups of karate students were
taught to apply the lock with and without vibration. Group A were
taught that vibration would enhance the lock. Group B were taught
that the lock was best performed as smoothly as possible and that
vibration would detract from its effectiveness. Both groups found
their experience matched their expectations. Group A did indeed find
that vibration was helpful in applying this lock, group B found that
vibration detracted from its effectiveness, roughly by the factor
of two that was suggested to them. Again it must be concluded that
each student's belief with regard to vibration was far more important
than the actual vibration itself.
Fire melts Metal
The central theme of the Five Elements consists of the relationships
between the elements themselves. These relationships are expressed
as 2 cycles. The creative cycle states that water creates wood, wood
creates fire, fire creates earth, earth creates metal and metal creates
water, thus completing the cycle. The control cycle states that water
controls fire, fire controls metal, metal controls wood, wood controls
earth and earth controls water, again completing the cycle. Amongst
those who use Five Elements in order to select relevant pressure points
to attack, the most widely used and commonly agreed principle is the
use of the control cycle, sometimes referred to as the destructive
cycle by martial artists. The basic idea is that if one attacks a
vital point on, say, a fire meridian then this will affect the flow
of qi, or energy, in the metal meridians, as fire controls metal.
Therefore an attack to a point on a metal meridian will have a much
greater effect on the energy in that meridian IF it has been preceded
by an attack to a fire meridian. To put this in plain English: grabbing
Heart 6 (fire) on the wrist and striking Large Intestine 18 (metal)
on the neck is more likely to knock the person out than simply striking
Large Intestine 18 on its own. As another example, consider the photos
below. In response to being grabbed, uke first strikes Large Intestine
10, a metal point. This cause tori to bend in such a way that Gall
Bladder 20 (a wood point) is exposed. Metal controls wood in the destructive
cycle, and by striking Gall Bladder 20, uke can easily knock tori
out.
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