excessive yonkyo

[Please visit our sponsor:]

[ian]

After several sessions of yonkyo (to the point where you can just touch my wrists gently now and I'm in agony) I have been wondering whether there is any long term damage from this technique.

As far as I know it lies on the heart meridian - many of these nerve strikes are definately not good for people. Also many other nerve attacks can increase the risk of strokes in later life or have other negative effects on the body.

Whether traditional chinese medicine or conventional medicine, what are the short and long term implications of this nerve attack?

[Arianah]

Well, the nerve that I'm guessing is affected in yonkyo as I know it (pressing laterally and somewhat anteriorly on the distal third of the radius) is the superficial branch of the radial nerve. I guess, you could technically injure the nerve if you were doing excessive amounts of yonkyo (and I'm guessing it would have to be a lot of yonkyo.) However, the superficial branch doesn't feed any muscles, just carries sensory information to the posterior thumb, pointer, and middle fingers. So any damage would simply cause numbness to these areas. And even this would probably go away by taking the stress off of the nerve. Permanent damage? Possible, I guess, but again, I think this is very unlikely. So don't worry about it; there are a lot of worse things that aikido could do to you. Worry about those! :p

*shrug* But I'm a novice with this stuff. Hopefully someone more knowledgable will step in and take over.

Sarah, finished thinking she might know something about anything

[Kevin Wilbanks]

My inclination is to trust the feedback that my body offers. If something happens that hurts really badly, and there is prolonged, extreme residual soreness and even inhibition of normal function due to pain, I don't think I need a guru or an anatomy degree to tell me that it's something to avoid. This is one of my objections to reliance upon vital or pressure point techniques - I'd rather just keep it mostly mechanical. Even if the long term consequences are "only" some kind of permanent throbbing pain in my forearm or loss of sensory capacity in some fingers, it still seems unacceptable to me. Aside from practical considerations, the implications of any permanent localized numbness on a lifetime of lovemaking are enough to keep me away from unnecessary risks. Screw that. I'm willing to put up with my share of pain, as Aikido is an ascetic discipline, but when anything strays into the realm of persistent pain of permanent damage I step back and reassess the situation.

[ian]

P.S. I made a mistake - I'm pretty sure it is the lung meridian (heart meridian is on the other side of the inner forearm).