The martial arts developed out of practical need – a village’s need to defend itself, a kings need for professional warriors, a community’s need for effective law enforcement, a caravan's need for security. And that practical need ultimately produced practical methods, means of fighting which are efficient, easy to learn and profoundly effective. As a result, every warrior tradition studied techniques for attacking the body’s weak points. Initially, the weak points targeted would be the obvious – eyes, throat, ears, groin. But, because these are obvious, the human body is particularly good at guarding and protecting them, so the arts needed to progress to the study of less obvious, but not less effective, targets.
As a result, ancient warriors adapted medical knowledge of pressure points (the same points used in acupuncture), into fighting methods, crafting specialized techniques which were unexpected and sublime. Pressure point fighting methods are widely attested in the histories of the martial arts, including marma adi (India), diǎnxué fǎ or dim mak (China), and kyusho-jitsu (Okinawa).
Because the pressure point methods were so effective, and because the strategies of the fighting arts were, in many ways, proprietary secrets, the knowledge of pressure points methods was passed only privately and to a very few individuals. But, as a result of incomplete transmission over the generations, pressure point fighting was in danger of becoming lost entirely.
Two Okinanwan instructors, Hohan Soken, and Taika Seiyu Oyata, each privately shared knowledge of pressure points with the American karate instructor George A. Dillman. What they did not expect was that Dillman would not observe the old method of secret transmission of knowledge. Instead, Dillman openly taught everything he was taught. And because he shared openly, others joined him and began researching the methods of pressure point fighting. As a result kyusho-jitsu experienced a renaissance, and today is being hungrily studied by martial artists around the globe.
Pressure point fighting uses the principles and points of acupuncture in highly effective ways. By attacking points in combination, an opponent is easily incapacitated with minimum effort. And these methods produce little or no harm in the application, which is a significant benefit for self-defense in this modern, lawsuit-happy world.
Chris Thomas, the head of the KJK, learned pressure point fighting directly from George Dillman and is one of Dillman’s most senior students. As the co-author, with George Dillman, of the definitive books on the pressure point fighting, he is one of the world’s best authorities on the subject.
