Why is everybody yelling?

I think my favorite question to date about my martial arts school came from a young woman who rather sheepishly asked, "Do they... yell?" Here was someone who was interested in taking up a healthy hobby to stay in shape but she was terrified (TERRIFIED!) that she would be forced to yell in front of people.

I sympathized with this woman. As a young child the prospect of getting to scream your head off is rather inviting but for adults the only thing it usually invites is a fear of looking completely ridiculous. The movies and competitions I have seen with everyone shouting and trying their darnedest to look FIERCE have always come across as a little silly to me. As a teenager beginning to learn karate and suffering from voice changes to the extent that I was sure my own mother was embarrassed on my behalf, I loathed the part where my teacher told me to yell.

As it turns out, very few people are privileged to know the real reason sound is important in martial arts, even among martial artists who have practiced for decades. I asked one of my teachers why we yelled while punching and kicking and the response I got was something like "to intimidate your opponent."

"Weren't they intimidated enough when I punched them in the face?" [I never actually asked this, because back talk would have resulted in something... unpleasant. But I thought it ALL the time.]

Another of my teachers told me that the yell was called a kiai, and it was done to focus your power. Kiai, he said, meant "spirit yell" and was performed on lethal techniques. This at least sounded cool and so it was the explanation I went with for years. It was almost right, too.

It wasn't until I started studying pressure points and chi kung that I realized the potential sound offered, and what everyone else seemed to be missing out on. Turns out that kiai does not mean "spirit yell" at all, but is a combination of two words, ki and ai. Ki is energy, the same as chi in chi kung, and ai (in this case) can mean focus or harmony. A kiai is therefore a method of focusing your energy, or even harmonizing your energy with that of another person. There are a lot of ways to do it. A kiai does not have to be a yell, and in fact some of the most powerful kiai are merely a whisper, barely audible at all!

So how's it work? It's all about vibration, not volume. When you think about it, all nerve stimulus is a result of vibration of some kind. Sound is obvious; light also has a frequency and wavelength. Heat is just the result of molecules with more energy vibrating faster, and if you read up on string theory you might see matter itself as energy vibrating in a particular way. Everything we sense or experience is some kind of vibration, and kiai is designed to enhance this, for health or martial purposes.

Our nerves respond to vibrations of many kinds, but some nerves respond particularly well to specific frequencies and wavelengths that we can produce with sound. The Chinese grouped these nerves together in meridians and gave them a specific elemental quality. They didn't do this because of sound (it was actually by a nerve point's association to a particular organ or function), but it turned out that the right "elemental sound" would affect all the acupuncture points that correspond to that element in one of several particular ways. By studying this they were able to add sounds to enhance the nerve stimulation in their meditation, and they were also able to enhance the effects on their opponents in their martial arts. The results even a novice can achieve are quite drastic and well worth the study, but great care must be taken because overdoing it can have painful consequences.

Aside from elemental sounds there are chakra tones common to many types of meditation, as well as sounds to project energy from particular parts of the body and directional sounds. Directional sounds are simply vowel tones that project the body's energy in a particular direction. If you think about someone watching the trapeze ("Ooooooo! Aaaaaaah!") you'll see that these sounds are natural even though you may not realize why you're making them. The "oooooooo" (Not "Oh" as in "Ocean" but an ooooo sound like the "Choo choo" train noise) sound directs energy downward while the "aaaaaah" sound sends it upward. [This is why many of us will say "oooooo" as we stand on the edge of the cliff or some other great height. We are sending our energy downward to improve our connection to the ground so we don't fall off!] You can try this to see how it feels for yourself:

Hold your arms in front of you with the elbows bent, in a posture like you are about to lift something heavy over your head. Make sure your arms and body are relaxed. Now try lifting your arms and saying "aaaaaaah." Notice how heavy your arms feel. Repeat the arm lifting, but this time say "ooooooo" as you do it. Did you notice a difference? It is subtle, but your arms should feel heavier the second time. Try whispering the sounds and really focusing on feeling the vibration to get a better effect.

Not convinced? If you practice martial arts you can try this with a joint lock that directs force downward or upward. Experiment with different sounds (GENTLY!) and ask your partner how it feels. They should notice a difference. This will work with striking as well for downward and upward strikes, but since the sounds affect the nerves you have to activate a pressure point to access the nerves before it will be noticeable.

So, to answer that woman's question: Yes, we do yell. But it's not so bad. We also whisper. We do a lot of it but there's good reason behind it. It's healthy and it makes your martial arts work a lot better, and with that added level of focus and concentration I hope you'll find it's nothing to be so embarrassed about.