When a person is confronted with a life-threatening situation, his/her nervous system will release a secretion of hormones (substantially consisting of norepinehrine and epinephrine) that will physiologically push him/her into either a “Fight” or a “Flight” response. This phenomenon was first publicly identified in 1915 by Walter Bradford Cannon, a former Chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School.
One of the key aims of Martial Arts training is to inject some kind of logical control to this biological response, such that the person faced with a life-threatening situation will not totally be at the mercy of his/her hormonal impulses. Whether a person will choose “Fight” or “Flight”, that choice should ideally be arrived at on the basis of a rational assessment of the situation, and the conscious selection of the best course of action.
But about 30 years ago, I learned from a life-long Martial Arts practitioner family friend that one's choices in life-threatening situations do not have to be restricted to either “Fight” or “Flight”. There is a Third Choice.The able-bodied men of an entire village once ganged-up on him due to a bar fight gone bad (his losing opponent shouted “Robber!”). So he ran.
But while running, he noticed that the village lynch mob chasing him does not actually run together at the same speed. Someone would always try to play “hero” and break away from the pack by his lonesome.
Once someone had broken away from the pack for a considerable distance, he would stop and strike the "hero" down. This proceeding was repeated several times.
After he had struck down about 5 or 6 “heroes"... the village lynch mob gave up.
Welcome to the world of the Fighting Flight…
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