Pankration: The original MMA

I have been giving a lot of thought lately to going back to school and as I was looking into a local college I decided to see what what athletics programs they had.

I ended up doing more reading that I needed but found out something interesting in the process. Apparently the original mix martial art is called Pankration and it was invented by the Ancient Greeks.

Contests were regularly held at the Olympic games in particular. Pankration was considered an all encompassing fighting style that combined both boxing and wrestling also with emphasis on lower body strikes and others.

Pankration, like many Greek stories and ideas, also comes with it's own mythology. In Greek mythology was said that the heroes Heracles and Theseus invented the martial art.

For anyone who's ever seen the movie 300, you can get a pretty fair idea of how ruthless and violent the Greeks could be. There was one story I found in particular on wikipedia about the Olympics:

"In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion (Ἀρριχίων) of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent's toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion's hand, it was discovered that he had died from the choke-hold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and taken back to Phigaleia as a hero."

I would personally love to know how this fighter called Arrhichion was able to break his opponents foot while being choked out. That's sounds like the kind of shit that would put Kimbo Slice to shame. If the story is true, then I would also question did this guy really refuse to surrender? Like he wanted to win so bad that he refused to give up and instead gave his last energy not to signaling he forfeits but instead to break his opponent's foot, causing him to tap out.

What could make a man do that? These people must have placed a lot of value in what we might consider extremists viewpoints. My only question is, where can I find someone to teach me pankration and how to never give up and break foots!

Sensory Perception: Sixth Senses

I was thinking about the senses and what a sense is. A sense, I thought, is just a way to get information. We use eyes to get information about the world around for example.

It is said that there are 5 senses. If a sense is just a way to get information though, shouldn’t there be more?

Why not say imagination is a sense? Could imagination be a sixth sense?

Is reasoning a sense?

Saying that there are 5 senses is really quite stupid. There are obviously way more than 5 senses or ways for an intelligent person to gain information about reality.

I discovered something else too. Nikola Tesla apparently had some 6th senses. Here’s an excerpt from wikipedia:

“Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, supposedly having a photographic memory.[21] Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his brain with extreme precision, including all dimensions, before moving to the construction stage; a technique sometimes known as picture thinking. He typically did not make drawings by hand, instead just conceiving all ideas with his mind. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; this began to happen during childhood.”

All these different ways to gain information about things. Tesla was just one man. Who knows what others or even you or me are capable of doing?

I’m sure Tesla had to develop his qualities at least a little.

Maybe we all have 6th senses we can develop?

Maybe some of us have expert memories; can hear sound well; can visualize pictures; who knows what people can do!

It could be that we don’t even know what we can do. Who truly knows themselves after all?

The journey of life I think, is at least partly agreeable, that we are journeying to find out who we are.

You go to school when you are young and find out all sorts of things about yourself: What subjects your good at, what “Crowd” you fit in with, etc…

There’s really no right way to do things, you can go any number of routes.

Take any road. They’re all good roads that lead to interesting places.

Mind Body

You know, if you talk to most any neuroscientist he or she will most likely have a lot to tell you about the soul and human consciousness.

The most popular reason is because the soul is or mind is evidenced as a collection of electromagnetic frequencies called brain waves which are activated and controlled by both conscious awareness or sentient control as well as automatically.

This may seem amazing, but the entire system of electromagnetic conductive systems in the body is referred to as the Central and Peripheral nervous system (CNS & PNS). The CNS is generally the part of you which is conscious while the PNS is automatic like breathing.

When we sleep the CNS, which composes the brain, the brain stem, and the spinal cord, changes but the PNS remains active and constant.



You see, In order to explain how the mind relates to the body, I actually don't have to use new theories or information. It can be done using existing and old ones. Some idea's on duality are old as human's themselves you know. Yin Yang, for example, has been around since, at the very least, recorded history or about 6 thousand years. Yin-Yang is a symbol of universal energy and duality.

Energy in the body is I think what fascinates us most. Energy propagates as waves through space-time which is directly indetectable as a substance or thing, however we can measure it's effects [Wave Nature]. As a result, we have discovered that there is a kind of symphony being played out in our heads. A note in this symphony can represent a thought or idea. At any one time, our brains are processing information when thinking about a subject. Much of the information is either already organized, or in the process of being organized, so, like a real symphony, there is a definite rhythm and flow to our thoughts.

Thought is essentially a collection of brain waves. Each time you produce a thought or think about something, you are sending impulses of information along nerve pathways. These impulses or brain waves are typically divided into four groups that represent a category which describes our state of being during the various brain wave frequencies. The frequencies of a normal human can be said to range between 0 & 40 Hz. but it is not altogether clear and definitions vary. Typically the categories are thus:

Delta
0-4 Hz
Deep sleep

Theta
4-7 Hz
Light sleep
Theta frequencies are supposed Associated with relaxation, meditation, and creativity. For many people and proponents of binaural's, theta waves are a favorite.

Alpha
8-12 Hz
Alpha is said to be the brain waves that are dominant in the relaxed or normal state of mind.

Beta
12-30Hz
Awake. Beta generally responds to the point when you actually feel awake in your day.

Gamma
30+hz
(?)
What happens in Gamma state? Is it unhealthy? Is it useful in any way? We simply don't yet know, as most ideas are hypothesis which don't have a lot of evidence.