According to the films and anime cartoons, a martial artist can hit a certain spot on your body that can either knock you out, paralyze you or even cause death by leathal pressure, sometimes cause death a few days later. This is known as Dim Mak, Touch of death, death touch, the palm of death what ever you want to call it. But what’s the truth? Does Dim Mak really exist? Nothing polarizes the martial arts world like Dim Mak. There are supposedly experts in the controversial art and skeptics that say it’s all rubbish.
So what is Dim Mak? sometimes misspelt s Dimmak. In American, it’s called pressure point fighting or pressure point martial arts and it’s the art of attacking certain areas on the human body through acupuncture points to have a certain effect. The skeptics and critics will argue that such points do not exist or are ineffective in actual combat. They base their evidence on the lack of there being no documented cases of injuries caused by Dim Mak. But that doesn’t seem the case. Modern medical literature contains numerous articles and case studies that provide evidence that attacking the body’s vital points can result in serious injury and that such injuries can occur during real confrontations.
The so-called “death punch” performed by Ninjutsu practitioner Glen Levy was mostly confirmed. Delivering a precise type of hammer-fist blow to the chest deflected the ribcage 2 inches into the chest cavity, causing damage measuring 0.8 in Viscous Criterion (a measurement of soft-tissue damage)
The stomach 9 point is reputed to be able to cause 
knockout, death and delayed death. Located directly over the location at which the carotid artery bifurcates into the internal and external carotid arteries. Blows to the carotid sinus via stomach- 9 can damage or cause small tears on the inside of the carotid artery, which can cause blood clots leading to occlusion and subsequent stroke or death.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1344809/
It seems the most extreme documented case was of a young man who received a blow to the carotid artery during his Karate class. He developed a stroke and weakness to one side of his body a week later. Now the blow was probably an accident but say a Dim Mak expert was purposely aiming for this point with hard blows? Could this be the touch of death?
The Touch Of Death, Death Touch (Dim Mak)
One of Dim Maks most lethal points is the acupuncture point bladder-10 point. Located on the back of the neck at the base of the skull. Now it’s probably a no-brainer that receiving a hard blow here will cause some sort of injury. Some people actually think Bruce Lee’s death was caused by a martial artist performing the death touch on him. There is a documented case of a man who died suddenly after receiving a blow to this location. An autopsy showed the cause of death was blunt trauma to the bladder-10. The mechanism of death was believed to have involved stimulation of the occipital nerves leading to dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.
Ripping out your opponent’s oesophagus. Instant death, and a Dim Mak technique. They tried it on an episode of Fight Science. First, the practitioner measured his strike. His “Tiger Claw” strike generated 2600 lbs of force. Tiger claw practitioners toughen their fingers and grip by pounding their fingers into bits of wood.
Also, don’t forget back when Dim Mak first came about, they didn’t have the medicine and hospitals about like now so many blunt force traumas probably went untreated eventually resulting in death.
Another documented case showed the autopsy of a homicide victim—a young man who died after receiving blows to his chest, abdomen and solar plexus—showed no external or internal signs of injury. Consequently, his death was attributed to dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system secondary to the solar plexus blows.
Medical doctors/martial artists have created their own guides to aid the understanding behind the science involved. Many martial artists like to say Dim Mak interrupts the flow of Chi and this is where many skeptics come in because many simply don’t believe in chi.
After some more research, I came across this guys article.
He conducted his own experiment with his teacher who was also curious about Dim Mak. They chose to stick to the stuff that supposedly doesn’t cause death, just KO’s and pain. Their initial tests worked. Then they attempted to block the techniques and remained mostly unaffected.
We tested it on about 4 other people. We ended up with about a 70% success rate with willing participants… for the first application. If someone knew what was coming and tried to block it, we only experienced a 20% success rate. Over the years I’ve tested it further. My success rate is up to about 95% (The 1st Time) with people open to experience something cool. Unfortunately, with people who aren’t open to the experience, I still get effects, but they are much smaller than the “drop like a rock.” My favorite two hit “spasming diaphragm” technique tends to be about 90% effective, but that’s considering a clench that slightly bends the target over and forces them to shift their focus away from me a success. Sure, I’ve had experiences gently showing the technique where suddenly the recipient is on the floor gasping, but they are NOT the majority.
Eventually, it goes on to describe that with truly willing participants you can literally do it from a distance. This is because the student believes in it so much it does physically affect them. But this is when you see all the chi masters believing their own bullshit throwing out chi waves against a real fighter then getting their arses handed to them.
From my real-world experience of Dim Mak, my teacher has demonstrated some of it and it’s literally just a case of finding tendons in your arms and neck and giving them a good pull or push and yes it does hurt. For example, one is getting your fingers in your collarbone, I mean right in and pushing down very hard. It will force you to the floor from pain especially if the person has a strong grip and fingers. But even my teacher admits there is like 5% of circumstances you can actually use it.
So, can you perform the Vulcan nerve pinch and render someone unconscious? Is Kill Bills 5 point palm of exploding heart technique real?? Probably not but you can certainly hit someone in a certain part and rupture some sort of artery or organ. Whether you hit them or grab them in the precise spot is all down to practice and there will also be individuals out there it simply just won’t work on. And yes, there are classes out there that will teach you Dim Mak but I would take it them with a pinch of salt. If you start seeing demonstrations of cult students being sent across the room by the master’s sonic booms then you know what to do.
