Quote:
Originally Posted by celticlonghouse
When my kids were little, we’d wrestle. They’d have a blast and laugh their heads off when I would tickle them. And always they would try to tickle me. I willed myself not to laugh. It was tough at first...but I learned to steel myself. This was the first time I ever practiced using my mind to suppress a reflex. A small feat to be sure, but they were impressed.
Can fear be controlled? Can you suppress the reflex to flinch? Ignore an itch? Can pain be ignored? Physical pain? Mental or emotional pain?
To learn techniques (if possible), would surely take practice to achieve level 4 competency- that they become like muscle memory- reflexes in their own right.
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Oh, I am insanely ticklish and no amount of mental focus can change that for me.
I think fear can be controlled. I've heard that courage is merely overcoming your fear. I've been in situations where I was terrified. My idiot copilot once nearly put the aircraft into an unrecoverable attitude - high bank angle, low power, cross controlled, which would have killed us. It was all instinct that allowed me to take the controls and recover. I did have a stiff drink at the club later and shook like a leaf for a few minutes.
I think flinching too, can be controlled. Flinching is the cause of shots going low because something is exploding in your hand. We have an iaido paired technique called Tachiuchi no Kurai in which we use unsharpened steel in a kata like form. When taking motodachi side where you "lose" the exchange you have to not flinch when the blade stops close to your head. Flinching would make the exercise much more dangerous.
I've always been told that repetition is the mother of all learning. Dry firing for firearms or suburi (repetitive delivery of cuts) ingrains the technique into muscle memory.