I will mention some basic concepts of Pressure Points.

If you look at any diagram of Acupuncture points, hundreds of points exist. There are healing and destruction points, but we are interested in the destruction points. Of these, a handful are prime candidates for martial applications.

There are many lists on the Internet—the 108 Bubushi points, the 36 death points, etc. However, only ten or so are worth remembering, as they are practical and easy to access.

I never refer to points in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) terms during instruction, such as a number on an Acupuncture Meridian [e.g. the famous point number 9 on the Stomach meridian is labelled ST-9 and pronounced “Stomach 9”]. This usually requires some prior knowledge of TCM from students, even though it is simpler to remember, as you do not have to understand Western anatomical descriptions, which can be pretty wordy. However, I will refer to TCM for this blog because it is easy to look them up online for exact locations, as I am not showing you hands-on.

I am not convinced of the TCM explanation of why these work as a disruption of Chi; instead, I regard them as a purely physiological reaction involving the body’s nervous and cardio-respiratory systems.

I don’t like ‘just pressing’ these points or using strange hand formations to apply them.

However, there is a ‘trick’ to demonstrating presses: to ‘vibrate’ around the area. You actively move the pressure site in small increments (a slow vibration) until it has an effect. This is why it sometimes takes so long to get an effect, as everyone is different in their point locations and response. Some people are pretty immune to the pain of having points pressed. That is why you hit hard and don’t rely on pressing for actual attacks. Some people can resist the pain from impacting these points but are much less likely to counter the affect of having their motor-functions disrupted by the strike.

The other aspect is mental.

If you are pressing, you must want the technique to hurt, so you must develop a firm intention to harm. This is difficult in training, as you must actively want to hurt a training partner—a morally questionable attitude.

You do not have to be pinpoint accurate, as you would for Acupuncture; you have to hit hard in the region to get depth into the strike, as the points are not on the surface. This is why you should also momentarily leave the strike in place rather than immediately withdrawing it as you would in a classical back fist technique.

This mental aspect is known as having a heavy hand, which is enhanced by thinking that your hand weighs ‘a thousand pounds’.

These mental enhancements are minor features in the overall application.

Most of the effective martial points are on the head and neck—no surprise there. Let me start the investigation from the top.

Until next time…