I want to relate some of the very powerful effects that adrenal stress has on the human mind and body. As an instructor, you must understand how the adrenal reaction can affect a student’s ability to defend himself during an actual encounter.
We ask applicants to our RMCAT self-defense course if they have ever been assaulted and had to defend themselves. One 3rd-Degree Black Belt and contact-tournament champion related this ATM incident:
“I saw a man standing near the ATM and I knew something was not right. He was very big and looked like a homeless, transient type, maybe 50 years old. I went to the ATM machine anyway to get money. When I turned around, he was standing right there behind me!
“I don’t know why, but I just froze. I didn’t even see the punch that hit me. I just saw stars. I know I put my hand in front of my face, but that’s about all I did. I felt another real hard shot to my face, and then I was on the floor. I received a hard kick to my stomach that totally took the wind from me. I couldn’t understand what had happened. How did that broken-down bum attack me? I knew it was because I had just choked, and my martial arts was no help to me at all.”
“There are two different ways that our brains and bodies store information and motor skills.”
Here’s another somewhat similar account of a barroom incident that also shows how adrenal stress can work, especially for those with no prior conditioning.
“I guess at first I thought, `Hey, I’m a Black Belt and this guy just doesn’t know who he’s fooling with. When he was in my face and screamed at me how he’d stomp me into the ground, I just couldn’t believe it was happening. Then, he hit me in the face and I’m still just standing there. I didn’t do anything.
“There are two different ways that our brains and bodies store information and motor skills.”
“He hit me maybe three or four times before I even started to try to fight back; but none of my stuff was connecting and I felt no power in my shots at all. I can’t remember what techniques I tried, if any. He was just pounding on me again and again; and his shots were hitting my head and shoulders. Then, some of the guys who worked there pulled him off me. By that time, I was totally enraged and saw that I was bleeding, but I didn’t really feel any pain. I knew I was not hurt too badly either, but my whole body was shaking. I felt like I would explode. I’d definitely received the worst of the fight. Later, when I calmed, I asked myself, `Where was my Karate?”
Where was his Karate, indeed? The answer is that his Karate remained in the dojo, as that is the only place he had ever practiced it. He had never practiced his techniques during the type of adrenal stress that he felt when that bully was in his face. Neither had the Black Belt at the ATM.
Yet, one might think that, since both of them had been in tournaments with some level of contact and many people watching, that those experiences would have prepared them for this adrenal reaction. Clearly their “formal” fighting experiences did not, and I’ll tell you why that might be.
There are two different ways that our brains and bodies store information and motor skills. Dr. William Cahill’s research at the Irvine Center for the Neurological Bases of Learning and Memory provides very strong support for this idea of the “adrenal mind and adrenal memory.” Information and experiences that occur during ordinary circumstances are stored as memories in one part of the brain, while information and experience that occur during adrenal stress are stored in another memory system. The adrenal memories are also much more persistent and permanent than the memories acquired during ordinary circumstances.
Consider a familiar example that illustrates this. Do you recall where you were when you first heard that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded, and all aboard were killed? Do you recall where you were, even if years ago, when you heard a family member had died? For those my age I would ask, do you recall where you were when you heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated?
You likely do remember, even though these events happened years ago. Yet, it would be difficult to remember what you were doing the day before or the day after. This is because those ordinary daily events weren’t recorded in your “ordinary” memory, while the traumatic events were recorded in your adrenal memory.
This also applies in another manner. Have you ever entered a room or, perhaps, opened a box and suddenly a scent is released that recalls, with surprising fidelity, a memory of which you were not previously conscious? Have you ever taught someone to drive a car and discovered yourself in the passenger seat stomping furiously and automatically at an imaginary brake pedal on that side of the car?
Though it may not be obvious, both of these events are products of that “adrenal-type” memory mechanism. Adrenal-stress effects are very real, as our students at the ATM and in the bar fight discovered. The adrenal reaction is an integral part of us and, thus, there’s no escaping it, nor should you want to escape, either. What you must do is to learn to use it to your advantage rather than being paralyzed by it.
Don’t you want your techniques in a self-defense situation to be as “automatic” and immediate as that person stomping on that nonexistent brake pedal? Yes, you do. Is this not the very concept of Mushin-the state of “no mind”-but only instant, automatic reaction that the Asian masters so often spoke of as being the ultimate goal of your training?
