Although discussion of this subject could go on for a long time, I’ll likely wrap-up my thoughts on it with this one.
We have looked at incidents in which pressure point attacks have worked effectively. And we have looked at medical evidence that tends to support the vulnerability of these points. So we can rely on them to work in a self-defense situation, right?
Well, there’s an old saying in philosophy that you can’t get an “is” from an “ought”. You can’t assume that something is the case based solely on the belief or someone’s claim that it ought to be the case.
Many years ago, philosopher Karl Popper created what he called “The Falsifiability Criterion”. Briefly, he claimed that it’s often extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible, to prove something like this to be true. To do so, we would have to look at the outcome of every incident of a pressure point attack being applied in the past, present, and even the future to be positive they would always work. But it would be very easy to prove they couldn’t always be relied on by showing just a single instance in which they were applied and didn’t work. Popper held that we should rely on almost nothing. But we should perhaps prefer those things or courses of action that have withstood the greatest attempts over time to prove them false.
In the case of pressure points, there are plenty of cases where they have failed to work. A police training officer once told me his department had experimented with them and opted not to teach them to their officers because he had found them to be unreliable.
So does all this prove they don’t work?
No. Their failure could have been due to other things – for example, the uke (person hit) may have been a so-called “non-responder”. We’re all built a bit differently. Most of us are pretty close to each other in construction relative to the location and sensitivity of pressure points. But a significant percentage of people out there are not. How do you know you have a non-responder in front of you? Well when you poke them and they punch you in the face, you got one.
The other reason they may have failed is a lack of sufficient skill and knowledge on the part of the tori (person attempting to apply the attacks). I have no doubt there were (or are) masters who were far more skilled and knowledgeable of pressure point attacks than I am. Because they were so knowledgeable, well trained by true masters of such things, and experienced in their use, they could likely have defended themselves solely via the use of pressure point attacks. Would they always work even for these people? I don’t know. But if my only experience was using them against my own students, or believers who attended a workshop I conducted, I wouldn’t automatically assume they would work as effectively on the street in all or even most cases.
I think all this indicates, at least for me, not to rely solely on them in serious fights. If I’m close to an attacker in a life-or-death battle and have the option of poking him in a supposedly lethal pressure point or hitting him with a punch I know from experience will be bone-crushing, I’ll use the latter as I have a pretty good idea I can rely on it. I wouldn’t know until after I’d poked him if he was going to go down or just smile at me and try to drop me.
These are just my own personal beliefs relative to my own defense at this point in time. I’m not advocating others follow anything I’ve said. And my beliefs may change tomorrow. I’m always open to being convinced otherwise as I know far from everything there is to know about this subject, or any other. I certainly wouldn’t find fault with anyone who has a different opinion as their experience, skill level, and knowledge may be vastly different than mine. Plus, when it comes to our own lives, we all have to make that call for ourselves.
Thanks again for bearing with me throughout my ramblings on this. And please share your thoughts.
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