the science of dim mak?

[DragonzRage]

I just read this article. Now obviously this tragic death was caused by a freak accident, but as I read about the injury I found myself wondering if perhaps this type of reaction is the theory behind dim mak. Maybe not, i really don't know what CMA guys regard as dim mak. here's the article:Hockey Player Devastated By Fan's Death

By Jon Krawczynski, Associated Press Writer
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - The hockey player whose deflected shot led to the death of a 13-year-old girl was distraught as his team returned to action. "I think about it all the time," Espen Knutsen told the St. Paul Pioneer Press after a morning workout before the Columbus Blue Jackets' game against Minnesota. "I think about her family because I have family myself. It was just a horrible accident."

Columbus coach Dave King said all of the Blue Jackets are struggling with Brittanie Cecil's death, but Knutsen was taking it especially hard. "He's really upset about the whole thing," King said. "He was in the act of shooting the puck and it got deflected over the glass. That kind of thing happens. But, he's really distressed by it." Brittanie was hit in the head by the deflected shot early in the second period of Columbus's home game against Calgary last Saturday. "We all saw the incident on the ice," King said. "Most of the time you assume they'll be OK." Brittanie was taken to Children's Hospital, where she died Monday from a rare injury to an artery that was damaged when her head snapped back, a coroner said Wednesday. The damage to the artery, which runs from the spine to the back of the brain, led to a "vicious cycle" of clotting in the artery and swelling of the brain, said Franklin County Coroner Brad Lewis, who performed the autopsy. He said the artery also might have been slightly torn. "It's a tragedy and it's too early to think about anything but Brittanie, her family and her town," Blue Jackets forward Ray Whitney said. "As an organization, we're deeply saddened and right now we're just sending our thoughts and prayers out to all involved." (Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Comments?

[David Jamieson]

Discussing it in context to the death of the girl to me feels a bit morbid.

This was a most unfortunate accident.

The force involved with the speed of the projectile was at play.
this is what caused the head to snap back and cause damage to the artery. In other words the force was not coming from the reaction of the girl trying to avoid the puck but rather it was the unstopped, undeflected force of the puck which drove the head back upon impact.

TCM regards the human body as a bio-electro-mechanical engine.

This is inline with many (if not all) of the principles, techniques and ideas behind the use of Dim Mak.

Dim Mak not only targets meridians at certain times of the day as is often spoken of, but it also targets directly on nerves, blood flow and breath flow.

stop the blood, so too does the attacker, stop the breath, same result, impede a limb with a nerve strike and you can deal with the rest and so on.

The very highest levels would deal with the meridian strikes and acupoints where the targets are as well as the cosmological aspects dealing with the earth energies that affect the human body during the course of a day.

Basic levels deal with strikes to the larynyx, esophagus, eyes, bridge of the nose, armpits, joints and so on. These are shocking and some are breath stopping.

Further on it deals with strikes that restrict or stop blood flow to the brain and limbs and so on.

It is difficult to practice Dim Mak, but it has been proven that point striking in all its methods is effective in ending altercations quickly.

peace

peace

[fiercest tiger]

Dim Ma, Dim Yuet is very real!

Im never going to watch a hockey game ever...:(

[dedalus]

I like the gist of what Kung Leuk had to say.

Some accupoints correspond to structures well known to western physiology. ST9 lies below the carotid sinus, which is responsible for adjusting heart-rate to blood pressure. If you massage the carotid sinus in theatre, or strike it in a fight, you can slow the heart to the extent of stopping it altogether... just as the TCM and dim mak texts advise. Many painful dim mak points also lie on nerve routes, so I often think to myself that that's where the pain comes from. As to the effect of such points on the chi, there's a lot that western physiology does not know - even about the interactions of the systems it *does* know. I've occasionally wondered about the psychological effect of set-up points, but I'm pretty much agnositc on the issue.

To my mind Chinese medicine represents an essentially functional (or perhaps clinical) approach to physiology, whereas western medicine has evolved with a strong structural legacy. As an example, I understand that "mo" in TCM, which roughly translates as "pulse", refers more to the flow of energy than the pulsation of blood in the artery, even though I can't imagine what else it "actually" is. There's an excellent book on this subject called "The Expressiveness fo the Body, and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine" - look it up on Amazon.

One final comment - anyone with atherosclerosis is at some risk of stroke following trauma. If you massage a carotid sinus with an atheroma you risk dislodging it, and from there it shoots straight to the brain. I wouldn't be surprised if some delayed deaths in the MA legends result from something like this. There's also a well-known risk of fat embolism following a badly broken bone or orthopaedic surgery... and you can bet there have been a few of those in the history of martial blues.

Just a few thoughts :-)