So, what does this have to do with martial arts? We have all been taught things in martial arts that are wrong. The explanation of how and what happens is wrong. Remember the threads we have here about choking.... if I choke you out, I am doing a blood choke and preventing the blood from going to your brain... except that the arteries are high pressure and the veins are low pressure, so really I am stopping the blood from leaving your brain, which prevents fresh blood from reaching the brain... except that there are a lot of veins and you physically cannot close them all.... However, if I think of the choke as cutting off blood to the brain, then it helps me to understand how to correct my grip on your lapel to actually choke you out, even though my understanding of what is happening is wrong. There are lots of things like this in martial arts.
That's interesting. I had no idea what the principle was behind a so-called 'blood choke'. I've certainly applied a few of them, and I've been choked out for real in training. My instructor told me to hold my hands shoulder-width apart and clap my hands when I felt myself going out. I woke up and he was asking me why I didn't clap my hands. Uh, I don't know, I just went to sleep. It was that fast.
I never thought about the vagus nerve then. People said it was a carotid vessel compression and I believed them. However, I can believe you. As an older male, I have experienced micturition syncope, which my doctor told me involves stimulating the vagus nerve while standing up and urinating (cut to the chase - you pass out while peeing, usually at night).
I have also been recently trained by my cardiologist's PA to 'self convert' my Atrial Fibrillation, which involves several techniques that also stimulate the vagus nerve, which can (I guess) cause my heart to go back into normal rhythm. The last time I applied it, I went back into normal rhythm and have stayed there for nearly two months now. Why they didn't teach me that two years ago is beyond me...grrr.
Anyway, blah blah blah, I'm no real fighter, never pretended to be one, but I've damned sure been in a few fights. Marine MPs pretty much fight all day every day. Drunken Marines like to fight, it seems. I've been punched in the face so many times, sick-bay threatened to stop issuing me new glasses when my BCGs kept getting broken. I've got a deviated septum from busted noses and I've given out a couple.
I'm no good at fighting, but I *like* to fight. I no longer try to fight, but you know, I'll throw hands any time. That's not why I train, though. I train because I train. It's who I am now.
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