Dealing with Pain – A Martial Artist’s Frequent Companion – Part VI

Many years ago, scientists raised a group of Scottish terriers in isolation in order to determine how a lack of interaction with other dogs would affect them as adults. They found several major differences between normal dogs and those raised in isolation. One was their pain tolerance.

Some of the isolation-reared dogs, when grown, would repeatedly poke their noses into the flame of a burning match, seemingly oblivious to pain. They would keep sniffing at the flame as long as it continued to burn. They also showed little or no painful reaction to being stuck with a pin. The scientists checked and found nothing wrong with the dogs’ sensory systems.

Famous Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov performed many experiments on dogs. In one, he would only feed a group of them after they had received an electric shock. After enough repetition, the dogs, when shocked, would salivate, wag their tails, and look towards their food dishes. They continued to react in the same manner even when the intensity of the shock was increased. They also showed no painful reaction when the experimenter intentionally cut or burned their skin.

An American scientist, after reading of Pavlov's results, decided to carry the Russian's investigations one step further. In this experiment, cats were first trained to respond to a shock as had Pavlov's dogs. Once this response was developed, the animals were further trained to administer shocks to themselves in order to indicate that they wanted to be fed. Once trained, they seemed almost eager to receive a shock, as that meant that they would receive food.

How does all this apply to us? Well, there is evidence that man is really not that much different in this regard. We, too, can become able to respond differently to pain. There are a few different methods for bringing this about.

The following is a drill I teach my students, and one I’ve used myself on occasion over the years: (The same approach can be applied to any number of drills. But I like to introduce it during normal stretching exercises, when many in need of greater mental control and pain tolerance encounter problems.)

Students sit on the floor and put their legs straight out in front of them. Then, they grab their ankles and pull their heads down towards their knees until they feel a fair amount of pain in the backs of their legs. Next, they count as fast as they can from one to ten but in the following manner: one – one, two – one, two, three – one, two, three, four – one; two, three, four, five – one, two, three, four, five, six – and so on until they reach ten. Those who do the drill correctly find they don’t feel the pain in their legs as they are counting.

The reason this works is it overloads your brain. So much is being processed that it leaves no room for an awareness of the pain signals coming in from the backs of their legs. This is not something you would want to do during a fight or match. You need to focus totally on the fight at hand. But in a street fight or tough sparring match, we generally experience the same type of sensory overload and resulting pain blockage.

But try this drill yourself and see if it works for you. It is a good initial option that drives home the point that we do have power over pain. (And it can be useful during dental or medical procedures, painful runs or hikes, and so on.) There are other methods which have more direct application during confrontations. I’ll get into these in the future.

I’ve had to put the blog a bit on a back burner. I’m trying to finish my novel. And, because of the reorganization of how groups are structured on Facebook, I can’t directly message friends. So readership has dropped drastically since the change. It is becoming hard to justify spending as much time writing for the blog as I have when I have so many other things needing my attention. But, we’ll see how it goes.