08.06.05 - 2nd Annual West Coast Kenpo Confederation

Hypnosis in the Martial Arts
I took this class more out of curiosity than anything. It was lead by a gentleman named Bob Choat, who has grown up with the martial arts and has also spent some time in the service, though I don’t know what capacity. The thrust of this class was how to utilize hypnosis for benefit in Kenpo and the martial arts.

He started by handing out a sheet with some information on it. This may have actually been the highpoint in the class. The information was used with permission by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and was entitled Effects of Hormonal Induced Heart Rate Increase. The key to this chart was that these heart rates are actually induced by hormone levels, and not activity levels such as exercise. The information contained is summarized as follows:

• 115 to 145 beats per minute (bpm): Optimal survival and combat performance level for:
  - Complex motor skills
  - Visual reaction time
  - Cognitive reaction time
  - Note: at 115 bpm, fine motor skills deteriorate. At 145 bpm, complex motor skills deteriorate.
• 175 bpm - Things start to get bad:
  - Cognitive processing deteriorates
  - Loss of peripheral vision (tunnel vision)
  - Loss of depth perception
  - Loss of near vision
  - Auditory exclusion (tunnel hearing)
• Above 175 bpm
  - Irrational fighting or fleeing
  - Freezing
  - Submissive behavior
  - Vasoconstriction (= reduced bleeding from wounds)
  - Voiding of bladder and bowels
  - Gross motor skills at highest performance level (running, charging, etc.)

Mr. Choat states that one can train one’s self to better maintain a level of performance by mentally preparing yourself in advance using several techniques, including hypnosis. His definition of hypnosis was a little different than I would have defined it myself. He started his description by asking if we had ever come out of a movie theater after being fully engrossed in a movie and forgot where we parked the car. He then asked if we had ever been going down a familiar stretch of road, perhaps coming home from work after a long day, and suddenly become aware that you are already home – not recalling the details of your drive. There were a couple of other questions along this same line but his point was that, by his definition, we were in a hypnotic state during these times.

He asked if anyone in the class had heard or used NLP before. I and one other person acknowledged that we had and he went right on without really discussing it. NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and was made popular several years ago by Tony Robbins (famous self-help guru). Since that time, there are psychologists and others that have taken the early practices far beyond its early stages and it has sort of become its own science. It is more or less a system of determining how your physical, visual, and emotional well being is triggered by any number of stimuli that we may encounter in any given day. The idea behind the usefulness of NLP is that if you can consciously control these triggers, you can control your state of mind at any given time and thus improve performance, mood, concentration, etc. To listen to Mr. Choat describe it, he would have you believe that it is a form of hypnosis.

He had us all lay down on the floor and did his hypnosis thing. In a nutshell, it was really just focused visualization from a very relaxed state of mind. Hypnosis? Not sure about that. Useful? Not sure about that either. From the little that I have dabbled with NLP, I personally didn’t see any correlation, but perhaps that’s why I’m skeptical. He was trying to get us to focus on our ‘well being’ and had us visualize a wash of relaxation starting with our feet and traveling up our bodies to our head. I think the idea was simply to begin understanding that we could consciously control our own states but anyone who has spent any time in meditation could tell you that. I’ll bet if you asked Mr. Choat, he would tell you that meditation was a form of hypnosis.

There was one very interesting thing that came from this class. He had us partner up and do an emotional test where we visualized something negative first, then something positive. This was toward the end of the class and I thought he was pretty full of it by this time but went ahead on with the exercise. After several seconds of visualizing something that was ‘bad’ or ‘hurtful’ or ‘hateful’ to us, we would raise our left arm parallel to the floor and our partner would apply downward pressure on our arms in an attempt to ‘measure’ how much resistance you could withstand. After this was done, he had us visualize something powerfully good to us for several seconds and then repeated the arm thing. To my great surprise, I was able to hold my arm straight and provide more resistance than the first time around. Mr. Choat described this as a function of the subconscious. He states that the amazing thing about the subconscious mind is that it only allows positive memories, emotions, etc. to come through. He went on to describe how positive emotion can literally strengthen the body and the mind, and conversely, negative emotions can do the opposite. To tie things together, he stated that it is for this reason that it fighters who become angry with their opponents will lessen their abilities while in this negative state. True or false, this was a fun experiment and it did leave an impression.

One other small memory comes to mind from this class. Paul Metz was in attendance in the beginning of the class, curiously quiet with a skeptical air about him. He stayed for a whole 10 minutes or so before he quietly got up and left without interruption. Given how boisterous and outspoken he can be, I found that his silence spoke just as loudly in his opinions of what he had heard as had he spoken up and stated his opinion verbally.