Kung Fu and Natural Response to Stress

Your body's natural stress response is divided into three stages. These are alarm, resistance and exhaustion. The stages of a confrontation can also be divided into these same stages.

Alarm is the initial stage. This is the initial confrontation where a decision on fight or flight must be made. In Kung Fu it is always preferable to avoid confrontation but there are times when a fight is necessary. Each person must quickly be able to assess the situation and make a determination on whether or not a fight is necessary. If a fight is necessary, the next assessment should be how to quickly end the fight or escape the situation. In a physical confrontation this is an important as the wrong decision can be disastrous.

Resistance is your natural attempt to store things to normal by eliminating the cause of stress. In a fight this is the desire to return yourself to a safe state. This is a result of disabling your opponent, fleeing the fight, or fighting until the opportunity arises to escape. Once you have returned things to a normal state your body will slowly return to its pre-alarm state as well (heart rate, adrenaline, blood flow, etc.)

In a case where you cannot return things to normal through resistance, your body will become exhausted and start to show strain through the onset of minor health issues and later more serious issues. In a physical confrontation, the results can unfortunately be much more drastic as this is the point where you would be unsuccessful in the fight.

Through training in Kung Fu we are developing some moderators that can influence how we deal with these situations. We learn to remain calmer during confrontations, be more confident in a positive outcome, be physically prepared to absorb some damage if necessary, how to properly execute techniques that would end the confrontation and how to defend against physical attacks. Your personality is the other factor that will play into the outcome as each individual has different ways of dealing with confrontation.