Book Review: “Dragons Touch, Weaknesses of the human anatomy” by Hei Long
This isn’t a huge volume so the review will be pretty brief too.
The preface of this book is a comment on the USA martial arts scene and a plea for combining solid techniques with the knowledge of this book.
In the introduction, the author talks about karma to explain that this knowledge isn’t to be abused. He states his belief that if you take a life unjustly, you will be punished for it later in life. Next is the classification of the targets. Mr. Long uses 2 categories: Numerical, which describes the anatomical level (brain, cardio-respiratory, muscular, skeletal, etc.) and alphabetical, which describes the physical reaction to striking a specific point (pain, structural damage, unconsciousness and death). I very much appreciate this system for it’s clarity and lack of complexity.
The main part of the book now follows with an anatomical and physiological review of the target areas, followed by a series of photos demonstrating techniques that could be used to attack them. There are 43 targets described, located on the head, back, chest, abdomen, groin and legs. The author also shows from which angle the targets should be attacked. [Read more…]