Complexities

 

“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein

With the internet it has become too easy to obtain information on any given subject and this is definitely true for Kyusho as well.

And so it was in Modern Kyusho's rise, instruction came from a single source and was worked on verbatim.  Then as the first echelon of students were allowed to go out and work with complete freedom, many took liberties to experiment and diverge from the original methods.

This in itself is not a bad way to proceed, however those who did this felt themselves the source now and worked to become different than the others with something more extravagant to attract more people to their ways.  With this mutation came an inevitable race to be more extravagant or popular than the others and so Kyusho has suffered as it diverged from it's simple truths and possibilities.

New and unnecessary practices that evolved were numerous; from multiple point attack, to specific patterns and sequential striking, to convoluted and intricate  descriptions taken from another paradigm, to the mistaken juxtaposition of erroneous paradigms to equate Kyusho to, then finally the absurd.  You can even see from even writing what happened that the words that describe what happened even become too complex to comprehend.

Let's take each level of complexity and look at it more carefully:

Multiple Point Attack:  Of course being able to hit several points in a conflict is a great skill to strive for, however it is not necessary as one well performed and correct attack is enough to incapacitate the opponent.  This single strike capability is real Kyusho, yet it takes far more skill, so the user would need to practice one thing repetitively and there fore to most undisciplined Martial Artists it became perhaps boring.  We can relate this to the ancient practice of weapon conditioning as well.  The ancients had simple and few targets, but what they did was spend greater time developing that accessibility as well as forging bodily weapons to more accurately and profoundly cause damage to those targets.  This was the hand, foot and other such anatomical hardening into fused weapons.  The hands as one example,working them via striking hard surfaces to calcify and fuse joints into a solid weapon instead of the more flexible and therefore weak tool to penetrate deeper into the opponents vital areas.  This focus to single point attack was the real Kyusho.

Specific Patterns of Attack:  The next complexity that arose was in that those seeking more extravagant (labeled advanced) instructional mode to induce awe was the integration of the requirement to attack "Points" in specific sequences, so that the student must now study more mentally to attain that special advantage the instructor supposedly possessed.  This was even demonstrated in static application t prove it worked, which in turn hid the real applicational skill of the instructor.  In so doing you could sell more products that explained this pattern in infinite application... this is a complexity that still plagues real Kyusho today.

Descriptors of Specific Patterns:  Next was the addition of more complexity was the need to use labels and ideas from an opposite science (acupuncture) and its many cycles that supposedly enabled the instructor to impress with knowledge as opposed to actual physical skill.  They stated you could use the elemental cycle, the diurnal cycle, the yin and yang cycle, the mother and son, the father and daughter, and so on... which they all worked, but you should know.  But that meant that every sequence of points could be explained in some cycle or another which in reality means that you do not need to use this erroneous information.  No wonder Kyusho is being watered down and why it is loosing credibility.

Erroneous Paradigms:  The escalation that most ruined the chance of the student to gain the real information was and still is the use of acupuncture points as they targets, this is false paradigm and until the students realize this they will never understand the real Kyusho.  Acupuncture points are so numerous that they overlay the entire body, so it is easy to say that a specific target is this or that point.  Now this is not disclaiming the reality of Acupuncture points, this is only saying they are not Kyusho points,this alone will keep people from true discovery.  It also makes targeting (as these points are far smaller and more precise than the actual anatomical targets of Kyusho).

The Absurd: The final escalation in the complexities was the introduction of pure fiction (BS).  They brought in tongue positions, toe positions, stances being a certain magical position, and the funniest among many others heard so far is the navigational direction.  This was explained as if an opponent was facing north (as example) you should attack in a specific direction like south to gain the best results.  For example excerpted from one reputed master... "True West is for Wood, but if he stands there and I can't reach his wood, I just jump in the air..." (using this absurd labeling on top of another complexity listed above and only a small bit of what is being perpetuated each day).  To explain the absurdity please understand if you are in a real fight, the dynamics of a standing fight will not allow you to know which way anyone is facing other than the opponents angst, but what happens if  you go to the ground... whats North then?  Is it up or lateral, does the positional aspects change the directional?  Whoin their right mind would propose this absurdity?  People we must gain or common sense here, when you hear absurd walk away!

"Kyusho is simple" and needed to be for it to have any potential or possibility of success in real combat.  This is why many street fighters have overcome Martial Artists as they use simple objective attack that is honed repetitively over time and actual experience.  In fact, of the hundreds of real life incidents "reported" using Kyusho, all have been successful and all included a simple one strike with full intent to incapacitate the opponent.  Perhaps this is why the ancient Masters only taught Kyusho to a single student or family member.

As a tribute to the great Einstein we say... "Hit them here like this, it hurts and they fall down".  Simplicity, not complexity... we will continue to explore and explain in subsequent articles... please feel free to add comment or question to fully explore this phenomenon and subscribe so you d not miss anything.

 

 

-ep