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Dox47
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25 Apr 2013, 12:54 am

really cool article I came across over at The Atlantic, the videos are priceless.

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Yanagi Ryuken, an aikido practitioner in Japan, managed to convince many people -- himself among them -- that he had mastered the "no-touch knockout": an ability to vanquish his opponents without even touching them. The first of these two videos, which you've featured in your essay about Brazilian jiu-jitsu, "The Pleasures of Drowning," shows Yanagi effortlessly thwarting dozens of his students as they appear to attack him:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdUxPLIJVgI#![/youtube]

In the second video, he confronts a martial artist not in on the delusion, and that second martial artist punches Yanagi in the face.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jf3Gc2a0_8[/youtube]

Yanagi's students seem to be under some kind of spell. Why would they be willing to go along with Yanagi's charade for so long? Are we seeing a phenomenon like religion?


The whole article is well worth reading, and really, it's actually about atheism.


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TheValk
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25 Apr 2013, 1:48 am

There's a good deal of spirituality involved in Eastern martial arts, that's one thing that's sure.



boywonder
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25 Apr 2013, 6:31 am

some people cannot be hypnotised



thomas81
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25 Apr 2013, 6:33 am

The first video looks fake to me however I used to attend the Bujinkan and I've seen this sort of technique used before. Its nothing to do with hypnotism. What you are doing is using psychological trickery to encourage the attacker to lose balance and fall over. For example, if you place your hand over the intended target (your face) the attacker gets confused so if you move it at the last moment the attacker will try and hit your hand which can cause him to be diverted allowing you to make a counter attack.

You can apply the same principle to make the opponent fall without touching them.


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techstepgenr8tion
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25 Apr 2013, 9:26 am

I haven't watched the above but I did a while back buy a Systema series by Vadim Starov just because I was hearing excellent things about it, and it looked fascinating until I saw them doing them 'empty-force' throws and I realized about that point that I'd been had. The ballistics striking, ie. the weird figure-eight flail punches *could* work but wow - talk about broadcast.

I'm clearly not an atheist but I do see a lot of quackery and 'magick' in certain styles, especially the belt-factory stuff. Needless to say you're either in it for the practicality of the martial arts or... you're an AD&D nerd looking for more AD&D. Seems like the later siphons off a certain group of people where the practical, as I consider myself incredibly blessed to have found, tends to draw FBI and law enforcement which we have a fairly strong contingent of in our class.



Fnord
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25 Apr 2013, 9:31 am

Quote:
Yanagi Ryuken, an aikido practitioner in Japan, managed to convince many people -- himself among them -- that he had mastered the "no-touch knockout": an ability to vanquish his opponents without even touching them. The first of these two videos, which you've featured in your essay about Brazilian jiu-jitsu, "The Pleasures of Drowning," shows Yanagi effortlessly thwarting dozens of his students as they appear to attack him:

In the second video, he confronts a martial artist not in on the delusion, and that second martial artist punches Yanagi in the face.

Yanagi's students seem to be under some kind of spell. Why would they be willing to go along with Yanagi's charade for so long? Are we seeing a phenomenon like religion?

More like a scripted scene from a chop-saki movie - you know, where the hero is attacked by a hoard of students who fall down without ever being hit...

Yanagi: "Okay, disciples, here's how it's going down. When the camera starts rolling, I want each of you to fall down as if I had struck you. Anyone who does not do as I say gets a boot to the head. Got it?"

Chorus: "Hai, Yanagi-san!"

:roll:



techstepgenr8tion
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25 Apr 2013, 9:39 am

I'll add something - again as a non-atheist. If you're practicing a martial art that can use empty force; warning - you're practicing sorcery. Repent of it in Jesus name.



thomas81
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25 Apr 2013, 9:41 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I'm clearly not an atheist but I do see a lot of quackery and 'magick' in certain styles, especially the belt-factory stuff. Needless to say you're either in it for the practicality of the martial arts or... you're an AD&D nerd looking for more AD&D. Seems like the later siphons off a certain group of people where the practical, as I consider myself incredibly blessed to have found, tends to draw FBI and law enforcement which we have a fairly strong contingent of in our class.


Well I can assure you the Bujinkan is no 'belt factory' however these sorts of techniques, while decidely shady in these videos are possible to the right practitioner.


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Fnord
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25 Apr 2013, 9:48 am

"Empty Force" in this case is most likely to mean "Staged Performance", as there is no evidence of "magick" being involved, even if "magick" existed in the first place - the concept of "magick" is, at best, mythical...


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techstepgenr8tion
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25 Apr 2013, 10:04 am

Fnord wrote:
"Empty Force" in this case is most likely to mean "Staged Performance", as there is no evidence of "magick" being involved, even if "magick" existed in the first place - the concept of "magick" is, at best, mythical...

There are some serious shakers and movers in the world who'd disagree with the mythical part. From the best I can tell the Aleister Crowley model where reality and BS meet somewhere in between and reality has an elastic attraction to BS - there definitely seems to be something to that.



Fnord
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25 Apr 2013, 10:17 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Fnord wrote:
"Empty Force" in this case is most likely to mean "Staged Performance", as there is no evidence of "magick" being involved, even if "magick" existed in the first place - the concept of "magick" is, at best, mythical...
There are some serious shakers and movers in the world who'd disagree with the mythical part...

Links, please?

Aleister Crowley claimed to hear the voices of angels - a common claim among schizophrenics and other delusional types.



techstepgenr8tion
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25 Apr 2013, 10:28 am

Fnord wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Fnord wrote:
"Empty Force" in this case is most likely to mean "Staged Performance", as there is no evidence of "magick" being involved, even if "magick" existed in the first place - the concept of "magick" is, at best, mythical...
There are some serious shakers and movers in the world who'd disagree with the mythical part...

Links, please?

Aleister Crowley claimed to hear the voices of angels - a common claim among schizophrenics and other delusional types.

If you're sincerely interested in taking that puzzle apart I'll PM you - just for the sake of not derailing the thread. In exchange for taking it off-thread I'll shut up about it from here out.



boywonder
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26 Apr 2013, 9:07 am

accumulating chi in the tantian is an art, I have done it a few times to good success
the pelvic and abdomen area developements gives you guts
jesus would approve I think



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28 Apr 2013, 5:18 pm

Fwiw, Daito-ryu isn't quite the same thing as aikido (not that some aikido dojos don't have *exactly* the same issues).

There was one part of the original article which I disagreed with, which was when a bullet is described as basically making a little bullet-sized tunnel through the body and nothing else. That's more akin to what a lazer might do that a bullet; the latter can basically liquify the tissue around and in front of its passage, depending on the size and speed of the projectile.



Dox47
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28 Apr 2013, 5:24 pm

LKL wrote:
There was one part of the original article which I disagreed with, which was when a bullet is described as basically making a little bullet-sized tunnel through the body and nothing else. That's more akin to what a lazer might do that a bullet; the latter can basically liquify the tissue around and in front of its passage, depending on the size and speed of the projectile.


I caught that too, but since I wasn't trying to make a gun thread, I let it go on by. I've had to explain hydrostatic shock and some of the other gorier aspects of terminal ballistics to certain medieval fetishists overstating the effectiveness of middle ages weaponry; the metaphor I use is that it's like a sonic boom going off inside the body.


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Dox47
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28 Apr 2013, 5:28 pm

thomas81 wrote:
The first video looks fake to me however I used to attend the Bujinkan and I've seen this sort of technique used before. Its nothing to do with hypnotism. What you are doing is using psychological trickery to encourage the attacker to lose balance and fall over. For example, if you place your hand over the intended target (your face) the attacker gets confused so if you move it at the last moment the attacker will try and hit your hand which can cause him to be diverted allowing you to make a counter attack.

You can apply the same principle to make the opponent fall without touching them.


That doesn't seem to be what was going on here though. Look at the second video, the guy's technique is completely ineffective when he tries to fight someone who doesn't know that it's supposed to work.


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