dim mak

[SevenStar]

"To effectively use Bil Jee one must have constant practice of the Bil Jee form for five years. This consists of four hours training a day along with study of the 30 pressure points, that includes: 10 on the front of the body, 12 on the back, and 8 on the arms (4 inside the arms and 4 outside of the arm). The practitioners must know the organs and bowels meridians and how the blood affects the body according to the seasons, days and time. In this modem time, it's good to have the knowledge of Wing Chun's Deadly Art of Thrusting Fingers, however, you cannot kill your opponent"


I pulled this off of some website I came across. Can anyone hears who trains dim mak techniques confirm that this is how it's trained? If so, have you gone through it?

[blooming lotus]

when I'm training dim mak, I normally first study 2 or 3 or 4 meridians..by that I mean read the chart, corresponding effects and whter it's effect is on air, blood or muscle,bone, direct organ etc...this could take anything up to a couple of hours....after that ..or sometime in the nxt several hours I drill different combos from different styles to activate different points in different situations....then as I pick up new forms andstyles, I apply it to that....

with alot of points, time isn't so crucial, ( and your charts will tell you which these are) but with some time of day can mean the difference between draining or incapacitating an opponent completely and restoring his health to full..........

where possible, I also like to demo on myself for validation, angle (which totally changes the strike and corresponding effect ) and for the sake of accuracy (often extremely important). you can do this with some points and experience different sensations from physical to electrical

[Nick Forrer]

A question like this was asked on the WC forum recently

Just to be clear- my wing chun makes no mention/use of meridians, chi, deadly techniques or any thing like that. Some peoples might but everything in mine can be explained using basic physical and biomechanical principles.

On the Bil Gee form- as i understand it this is not a deadly form- but a collection of emergency techniques designed to either get you out of a tight spot or to help you minimise your loses if you are loosing a fight. For example

- how to block with one arm if your other arm is injured
- how to escape from a double wrist grab.
- how to get up from the floor if you have been knocked down without exposing your head to attack in the process
- how to escape if you have been pinned up against as wall via your elbow
- how to use someone as a shield against multiple attackers
-how to convert a kick into a sweep if your kick has been blocked and someone is closing in on you.

Its true that there is a greater emphasis on finger strikes- but these are aimed at soft parts of the body like the eyes and throat so i dont see the need to 'condition' them as such.

Hope this helps

[fa_jing]

AFAIK, Willam Cheung says there's Dim Mak in Wing Chun, and everybody else says that there's no Dim Mak in Wing Chun

[kungfu cowboy]

Nobody understood why he was Dim Mak. The rest of his family were geniuses!

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

As i understand it, Dim Mak is just an expansion on Accupuncture/accupressure theories.. it makes sense.. but, in the fast, fluid and dynamic conditions of a fight, it is very difficult to execute such precision Dim Mak movements as to be highly effective.. i use and teach pressure point control for enhancing Qinna.. and, i demonstrate the application of focused strikes to the liver and spleen gates, relatively simple applications with good results.. beyond that, the effort and attention required to effectively utilize Dim Mak will usually distract you from more pressing issues (like the fury of an attacker)..

Dim Mak has sound theory behind it but is mostly too detail oriented to be first-choice responses to a street encounter.. some highly trained people "may" be able to effectively use it, but i see it as only one of many weapons for the well-rounded CMA practitioner.. to focus on that alone doesn't seem wise, to me..

Be well..

[David Jamieson]

There are very very few martial artists who can effectively use finger strikes.

consider that the monk hai deng was probably the onlt recent example of someone who had mastered the one finger zen and teh amount of compression to achieve the rigidity he could achieve with his fingers was truly astonishing. i.e 1 finger handstand against a wall!

anyway, that's the kind of skill you would need to effectively use strong and forceful thrusting fingers.

who these days has that ability? well, practicly no one really. sure there's a ton of guys who can use it on soft tissue but most practitioners stick to fists or palm strikes.

It does take a hella long time to develop the ability.

I don't think tehre are more than maybe a handful of people worldwide who can actively do dim mak and the number drops even further when you think about who can use it under the duress of live action fighting.

anyway, something to think about, it's not a dime store skill you can train up in a few months after all, it's one of those kungfu things that takes years and years and you could probably get more value out of learning to play the piano instead.

cheers

[SevenStar]

How long do you think you'd have to train in order to gain that skill?

[MasterKiller]

Personally, I think people spread dim mak stories so they wouldn't be challenged in street fights. If someone thinks you can kill them with one finger, they probably won't talk **** to you.

[Ford Prefect]

I'm moving next week and found out there is a Dillman school down the street from me. I'm tempted to stop by for some tom foolery.

[blooming lotus]

like I said..I have been raining dimmak for under a yr...and i feel confiemt enugh to hold my head my head up....

dimmak can be executed by palm, finger , halffist , seveal finger, elbow, toe, instep, ball, heel, etc and a range of many strikes from hand and toe....I don't know what n0n-practioners are preaching,but as far as i'm concernerd from gongfu city, dim mak, chin-na, is indispensensable...and there is no art equal....

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
I'm moving next week and found out there is a Dillman school down the street from me. I'm tempted to stop by for some tom foolery.

Dillman does seminars in Altus, OK every year. I know a pretty no-nonsense guy who says they knocked him out for 8 seconds at a seminar by hitting three points, so I'm thinking about attending the next one to see for myself. Rich Mooney lives about 1 hour from me, so I've heard plenty of his stories but have yet to see anyone duplicate his claims.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, MK. That's what I was thinking. I'm about as big a skeptic as they come, and I'm certainly not going to go along with anything they try to do to me. I see two things happenning:

a) Nothing happens and they say I have very "hard to find points" or have some natural defense.

b) I get knocked out and I pee my pants.

[rubthebuddha]

ford -- you have around .2 percent body fat, right? if someone can't find a specific point on your body, who ARE they going to be able to find it on, kate moss?

just go, keep the "if it's hard to find on a fit guy, how can you find it on a fatty?" attitude -- and bring some extra shorts and a wetnap just in case.

[red5angel]

Dim Mak and wingchun - most chinese martial arts probably claim to have some Dim Mak in there somewhere, although you may never hear anything about it because possibly that fact may have been lost somewhere. If it has any sort of pin point, pressure point striking, its "dim mak" for the most part.
There's a lot of confusion on Bil Gee as well and you usually get about 10 different ideas on what it is or is supposed to be. The "emergency use" theory has basically been debunked. It's not for "emergencies", it's for possibly awkward situations, but you could consider it just advanced techniques like any other art. It's also been called the "deadly" form of wingchun, because you have all sorts of jabs and finger strikes, that sort of thing. If you were one to buy into the idea of dim mak as something more then pressure point attacks, you might consider it deadly, but for the most part, again, it's just advanced techniques.

I think Dim Mak is one of those much maligned, much misunderstood - even by the chinese - things you run into in the martial arts from time to time. Pressure points are certainly viable targets, and hitting some of them right can have some pretty dramatic effects on your nervous system (yep, it turns out all the really effective strikes are on sensitive parts of the biological body, like nerve clusters, sensitive organs, etc. not Qi) but along with Qi, this has unfortunately been given a more mystical background then is probably needed. Just another selling point I guess.