Joanna has had real life male opponents on the ground gurgling pleas for mercy within 3 seconds, having turned thoroughly purple! Why go for hidden targets when there are so many effective targets that you can easily see? Such as the eyes? Windpipe / Sternal notch? Is it because one can get away with targets such as the solar plexus or the above mentioned neck strike in competition? Because in a real self defence situation the eyes are a far easier target to strike reliably than the solar plexus. If the opponent wants to see you, there is only so much they can shield their eyes. The eye has the advantage of potentially being a very serious or very trivial target. A short, sharp surface impact strike to the eye will quickly cause swelling, impeded vision and all the disadvantages that brings. A penetrating strike can be considerably more serious. Similarly, a sudden, shallow strike to the windpipe might stop an opponent in their tracks due to a coughing fit. Whereas squeezing the area could result in unconsciousness or worse. Noses and ears can be damaged easily causing alot of pain, but no serious injury. Needless to say, there are other easily accessible targets elsewhere on the body, such as gonads, kidneys, glands, muscles and fingers. Fingers can be easily broken – it doesn’t need to get any more subtle than that.

I imagine your son would have far less trouble with hitting these targets than the solar plexus. And on that subject, I still don’t see what Chi has to do with finding the right spot. I can always get the sternal notch, but that is due to practice not Chi. Trial and error leading to trial and success, not Chi or intuition. Skill developed through practice. “Repetition makes familiar” as the Chinese say. Or “practice makes perfect”.

Perhaps I should elaborate a little with an example that is close to home. I have a fairly complex autoimmune disorder that makes my lymphatics go haywire sometimes and this can manifest in so many ways, but the underlying cause is genetic and hinges largely around protein intolerance – specifically an inability to process amino acids. The upshot is that my body is frequently starving and craves foods it can’t digest properly which triggers a hypersensitive immune response to the protein molecules as they pass through my stomach lining and go out into my blood stream. Part of the chain reaction causes excess stomach mucus which then interferes with digestion and compounds the problem. I’m sure you won’t be shocked to discover that the approach my Western doctors have taken has focussed on the sticking plaster approach – control of various symptoms in the chain, but invariably a price is paid for interfering with the process as the body learns to adapt. One ends up taking a heap of toxic medicines, none of which work any more and the problem only worsens. Far better to take a more TCM approach, start with the stomach and try to get to the root of the problem, but taking an entirely TCM approach doesn’t work either. One needs to understand the problem in terms of amino acids, not qi. For me there is probably more hope in the labs investigating zonulin production and lysinuric protein intolerance than anywhere else.

Anyway, so the upshot is that looking below the surface may be required in more ways than one. Pressure points may on the face of it seem to offer something profound and exciting, just as the approach of TCM to my malady seems refreshingly sensible, but ultimately one has to ask whether or not the methodology can actually deliver the goods and if the technology is not yet sufficient to guarantee results, we may need to spend our time more usefully rather than shooting for the golden goose. “All that glitters” and all that…

I too have had “a statistically-improbable number of fights”, especially for a woman – I think that over 200, some of which involved weapons and full blown attempts at murder is plenty enough. I think I can empathise with your desire to learn how not to fight. When I took up martial arts, I already knew that I knew how to up the stakes beyond a level that most people were prepared to go. My ferocity had stood me in good stead – it was a hard loss to be prepared to try to curb it. I knew ferocity worked, but I wanted to become an expert at fine tuning reasonable force. I wanted to know how to deal more subtly with someone who I didn’t need or want to completely destroy. I think Bob Orlando, also an ex- US marine makes an excellent point when he states that a warrior may choose pacifism whilst others are condemned to it. And in reality it is a spectrum – the more of an expert one becomes at all things combative, the more one can tailor one’s violence as appropriate to the situation.

I wish you well.

My historiography instructor (how to read and write history) told me that I did not really understand an idea until I could put it in simple terms that another human being could understand.

I don’t understand Qi well enough to speak of it in simple terms, and so I express my incomplete understanding as well as I can, in complex terms.

The more complex the terms, the less the speaker understands the subject.

I confess.

As for fighting, that has come to me since early childhood as naturally as breathing.

Up until my mid-twenties, in the Marine Corps, I had a statistically-improbable number of fights.

I thought these fights “happened” to me.

Despite my father’s counseling on the subject, I didn’t realize I precipitated these fights myself.

At my father’s funeral, several of my father’s friends told me that my father had the same issue during the same period in his life.

Fish swim, birds fly, and, at that time in my life, I fought.

I began studying various marital arts NOT to learn to learn how to fight, but, rather, to learn why I fought.

I have to say, though, that even as late as my mid-thirties, my natural ability and inclination to fighting save my bacon on at least one occasion.

Even today, at age 64, I comfortably know I have little concern about physical attack by other men, as long as I can avoid falling into the trap of male contest.

Ah, male contest: therein lies the rub.

VERY few men can distinguish between self-defense, combat and male contest.

When one succumbs to male contest, he throws the dice.

Thanks.

Up until about a year ago I did not believe in Chi as something that existed outside of the human mind.

I used Chi as an organizational device, and it worked for me.

However, with exposure to Chinese Medicine, a new perception and understanding blossomed (and quite unexpectedly).

For me, I had to come to this new understanding experientially and not rationally.

We all learn in different ways.

As for my Judo teacher’s “pressure point magic,” I think can communicate it to Joanna, to the degree that she might realize she already knows about it.

Please make reference to the left side of your own body, and not the right.

This only works, or works best on the left side.

Find your larynx, or voice box.

Find the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle that runs from behind your left ear to the front center of your neck and looks like it attaches to the center end of your collar bone (it doesn’t attach there).

Probe with the middle and index fingers of your left hand, between your larynx and your SCM.

You will find a spot (a vertical band of bundled tissue) more sensitive than the surrounding tissues.

This spot, just below the first major branching of the carotid artery, represents a bundled passage of the carotid artery, the jugular vein, the vagus nerve, and a crossing of various other nerves.

Stimulation of this point, meaning, a poke with about 16 pounds of force, will hyper-stimulate portions of the sympathetic nervous system that control blood pressure, pulse rate, and strength of heart contraction.

Please allow me to just cut and paste here.

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“A vasovagal episode or vasovagal response or vasovagal attack[1] (also called neurocardiogenic syncope) is a malaise mediated by the vagus nerve. When it leads to syncope or “fainting”, it is called a vasovagal syncope, which is the most common type of fainting.

There are a number of different syncope syndromes which all fall under the umbrella of vasovagal syncope. The common element among these conditions is the central mechanism leading to loss of consciousness. The differences among them are in the factors that trigger this mechanism.

When sufferers pass out, they fall down (unless this is impeded); and when in this position, effective blood flow to the brain is immediately restored, allowing the person to wake up. Short of fainting a person may experience an almost undescribable weak and tired feeling resulting from a lack of oxygen to the brain due to a sudden drop in blood pressure. Tabor’s describes this as the “feeling of impending death” caused by expansion of the aorta, drawing blood from the head and upper body.

Typical triggers for vasovagal episodes include:[2]

…Pressing upon certain places on the throat, sinuses, and eyes, also known as vagal reflex stimulation”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasovagal_syncope

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“Parasympathetic innervation of the heart is controlled by the vagus nerve. Specifically, the vagus nerve acts to lower the heart rate. The right vagus innervates the sinoatrial node. Parasympathetic hyperstimulation predisposes those affected to bradyarrhythmias. The left vagus when hyperstimulated predisposes the heart to atrioventricular (AV) blocks.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve#Physical_and_emotional_effects

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It gets more complicated than this, though, because stimulation of this same area of the throat and neck also excites the adrenal medulla, co-located with the adrenal glands on the kidneys.

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“In mammals, the adrenal glands … are chiefly responsible for releasing hormones in conjunction with stress …”

“The adrenal medulla consists of irregularly shaped cells grouped around blood vessels. These cells are intimately connected with the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS)”

“Because the ANS exerts direct control over the chromaffin cells the hormone release can occur rather quickly. In response to stressors such as exercise or imminent danger, medullary cells release catecholamines into the blood in a 17:3 ratio of adrenaline to noradrenaline.[1]

“Notable effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline include increased heart rate and blood pressure, blood vessel constriction in the skin and gastrointestinal tract, blood vessel dilation in skeletal muscles, bronchiole dilation, and decreased metabolism, all of which are characteristic of the fight-or-flight response. Release of catecholamines is stimulated by nerve impulses, and receptors for catecholamines are widely distributed throughout the body.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_medulla

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This brings us to the lymph system:

“Lymph from the entire body except for the right upper quadrant drains into the thoracic duct which drains into the left internal jugular vein.”

I can’t find a reference in a reasonable amount of time, but, part of the body’s regulation of blood pressure comes from the interface of the lymph system and the blood system at the juncture of the lymph system and the blood system.

A disturbance in the flow of the jugular vein will confuse the body’s comparison of lymph pressure to blood pressure.

In fact, the disturbance to blood flow at the confluence of the jugular vein and the carotid artery, whether interpreted as a spike or a dip, has significant impact on upflow and downflow measurements of blood pressure.

Further, the hyper-stimulation of the vagus nerve at this point decreases the force of heart contractions and reduces heart rhythm.

This same hyper-stimulation of the vagus nerve causes the adrenal medulla to release agents that instantly dilate the blood vessels of the muscles and additionally cause blood to flow from all other systems into the muscle system.

Add to this the confusion caused at the measured comparison point between the jugular vein and the lymph system, and the body experiences a dramatic drop in blood pressure known to cause instant feinting.

The literature says a proper poke at the subject point in the neck will cause unconsciousness, or functional unconsciousness, in two to three seconds.

In my experience, this functional unconsciousness takes no more than two seconds to occur, and lasts from two to five seconds.

How would Chi play a role in this?

My youngest son, like my father, has an extraordinary talent for combatives.

If he doesn’t go to jail, first, he’ll probably win a State wrestling championship next year on raw talent alone.

He also excels in the various schools of ju jitsu.

When he doesn’t think about it, he can easily find the various so-called pressure points on the body.

If he thinks about it at all, he can’t find them for love or money.

My instruction to him in this regard has focused on the “not-thinking” aspect of it.

A difficult concept to teach verbally, since verbalization requires rationalization, and rationalization obscures “seeing” the points.

The solar plexus provides an excellent example of a”point” one can tap without thinking about it, but which one can can NOT reliably tap if he or she thinks about it.

My son regularly practices finding the solar plexus on friends (requires good friends).

A casual light touch in the right spot, with the right intent, will have a noticeable effect, which confirms that one has in fact touched the solar plexus with proper intent and vector.

My son practices [i]NOT[/i] locating the point, but, rather, [i]NOT-THINKING[/i] about the point.

Qi, or Chi, as it relates to intuition, guides the hand to the proper point.

Thinking about the location only obscures the intuition of Qi.

From my early thirties to my late forties I managed to cultivate uncommon physical strength.

I could not help but use my strength to overcome the inadequacies of my technique or understanding.

My oldest son has similar strength.

He has a black belt in judo and has fought and won in MMA cage-type fights.

That said, those who know him well describe him as having no talent.

My youngest son, the talented one, came into this world with several birth defects that restricted his strength for many years.

People who spar with him say he should come with a warning sign.

His teacher uses him, a skinny 16 year-old, to “adjust” the attitudes of new adult students from other schools.

My own real growth in understanding did not begin until age and injury started taking my strength away from me.

Target, vector and intent matter far more than strength.

Strength only compensates for a lack of understanding, and, ironically, interferes with the awakening of understanding.

Think Rapier vs Sledge Hammer.

And please consider thinking of Qi as a field in which an organizational structure exists (as a standing wave exists in water; Qi corresponds to the water and the standing wave corresponds to the meridian map and the so-called “energy” that “flows” according to the map), rather than as something that flows within that structure.

I’ve spent too much time on this.

Thank you for your courtesy and respect.

I hope this conversation continues so that I can continue to learn.

I’m sorry but while the situation remains whereby there are “several understandings of Chi in this thread, almost none of them in agreement, and all of them (including my own), to varying degrees, wide of the mark.” I shall have to remain very sceptical about the existing methodology. I have to invite you to question whether another model might be more useful than the vague, imprecise and evidently controversial model currently in use.

As for your Judo teacher’s pressure point magic, I will again have to remain sceptical as I haven’t yet seen any work of that sort that works reliably on all opponents and as such it is useless in self defence situations, where I would need techniques that are as close to 100% reliable as possible. I can’t afford to prioritise some idealised identity investment as “a practitioner of more subtle and advanced methods” when others lives are at stake. Hitting hard works. By all means evade and neutralise – certainly don’t employ hard blocking or brute force – but then it is usually appropriate to strike to incapacitate your foe. We do locks and stuff too, but we know 80% of fights consist of strikes (and, increasingly, armed equivalents such as knife thrusts) and we’re fine with that.

As for your statement “As my teacher has said to me, “as long as you have strength you will use strength, and you will not grow in understanding. We discuss subtle and complex concepts here. To speak of them in simple language requires more advanced understanding than I possess.”

I urge you to liberate yourself from all that hype – I was subjected to the crap too, remember, I just didn’t buy it and found myself doing just as well and even better than my classmates, to the extent that on several occasions I was asked by students to teach them because they understood it when I explained it and showed it to them in a way they couldn’t when our mutual teachers tried. When I defeated a room full of instructors including the one holding the seminar my time with that lineage came to an end.

The statement “as long as you have strength you will use strength” is evidently untrue otherwise no one strong would ever get good at yielding arts and they do get good at them. You just need to be discerning. One of my teachers was against our using heavy bags because he thought we would invariably use brute strength and he was simply wrong. I knew what was required and how to discern it from what was not. Long hours of bag training paid off greatly.

Statements such as “To speak of them in simple language requires more advanced understanding than I possess.” are just hyperbole. Do yourself a favour and start trying to understand things in simple, mundane terms so that you might be able to explain things in simple, mundane terms too. Sure it would be easier to cling to your identity as a lowly student of esoteric arts: no one will expect much from you but mystical psychobabble, especially if you perpetuate the myth that an art that takes a lifetime to master is somehow better than something you can defend your family within a few months. But if you want to learn how to fight, get tough with these ideas.

We have several understandings of Chi in this thread, almost none of them in agreement, and all of them (including my own), to varying degrees, wide of the mark.

The phrase “Western Mind” refers to a cultural paradigm, a world view, a “Weltanschauung.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view

Joanna makes an inference to Eastern Minds (a scarecrow) and attributes it to me as an implication made by me.

Chi corresponds, for the most part, and according to my incomplete understanding, to a field, such as an electro-magnetic field (an analogy), and not to a flow.

What we call “flow” really refers to patterns and structures within the field: the eye or the mind follows the pattern and infers flow or movement.

I made the connection between Chi and Chinese Medicine and Chi and Martial Arts because Joanna and I can easily, and with practicality, experience positive effects from Chinese Medicine.

I invite Joanna to vacation here in Bend, Oregon (a destination resort) and I will connect her with practitioners here in the area.

She can experience Chi as demonstrated by a person who can use the principles inherent in an understanding of Chi either for healing or as a martial tool (same thing).

As for hitting hard, hardness has nothing to do with it.

My Judo instructor of 12 years can render an opposing player temporarily functionally unconscious with a modest pressure to the neck.

Some of the response to the touch involves the disturbance of a nerve ganglion; some of it involves a blood flow disturbance; and, some of it involves Chi (these systems “layer” on each other and interact with each other).

As my teacher has said to me, “as long as you have strength you will use strength, and you will not grow in understanding.”

We discuss subtle and complex concepts here.

To speak of them in simple language requires more advanced understanding than I possess.