Per Moderator request:

This is taken from Bruce Evertt Miller's Pressure point: the deadly touch pages 15-17

"A physiological fact that we must cover is the reflex called pain withdrawl reflex.  the pain withdarwl reflex is a complex (as opposed to simple) reflex.  What makes it complex is the fact that there are three seperate levels or reactions to pain.  If you can understand all of these levels then you can easly and effectivly control your opponent, making them do what you want them to do regardless of how conditioned or strong they are or what their level of training is.  The fact is that the body responds to certain actions at reflexive level.  A person cannot help those responses, for they have been hard wired, so to speak, into our circuitry.  Thus, ther is a way to defeat even the best trained martial artist, but you must understand these reflexes completely and intuitively to do it.

The first level of pain withdrawl reflex is the reflexive action your body uses to get you away from a sudded onset of pain.  If you accidentally touch something sharp with your hand, your hand will be moving away from the source of the pain even before the conscious thought has identifed why you are experiencing pain.  your hand hurts-pull it back.  You dont have to think about removing your hand from the site of pain; it just happens.  This is tru because when you expierance pain in your finger, the nerve impulse carrying the message goes from the finger tip to the spinal cord.  At the spinal cord, the nerve impulse carrying the pain message, stimulates two differant and separaate nerve impulses.

The first of these newly stimulated nerve impulses is called the reflex arc and nerve impulses are stimulated and sent back to your arm muscles.  the second impulse is the message about the pain which is directed up the spinal cord to the brain.  it is extremly important to this concept that you realize the messages telling the muscels what to do are traveling down the arm from the spinal cord reflex arc at the same time as the nerve impulse telling of the pain is still heaidng for the brain.  Because of this, the physioligical fact of the matter is when you experience a sudden onset of paion, you actually have no control over ther reflex action your body initiates to remove itself from the painful stimulus.

SECOND LEVEL RELEXES
the next level of the pain withdrawl reflex is called the crossed extension reflex.  Crossed extension reflex action is where under sudden painful stimulation, the body not only moves the estremity in pain away from the paionful stimulus, but also causes the oppoisite extremety to move in exactly  the opposite direction...... (page 16)

ThIRD LEVEL of pain withdrawl reflex is the most useful.  in the third level the body not only does the above mentioned motions but also moves the body mass in the direction which will decrease the pain. 

The reason why this thired level of pain withdrwal reflex is as significant as it is, is that it is entirely reflex and it affects the entire musculoskeletal systm.

Being a reflex there is no thinking portion to the action which is iniated.  The reflex is a straight foward as the levels described above.  you hurt and your ENTIRE body mass moves as fast as it can in the direction which decreases that pain.  It sdoent matter that by doing it may cause the body to lose balance and fall, bounce, orr a wall or other object, or set the person up to receive even more pain........ (page 17)"

Miller goes into detail into the second and thrid stages and how to get someone there but you guys get the jist. If you pull someone's hair and their whole body moves with the head opening up the neck for a strike, youve acheived level 3. 

If you ever get a miller video, be prepared, he is somewhat full of himself and his videos are exclusvilly seminar related and dry.  You dont see any stink eye knock outs, or flashy pressure point knock outs on standing still victims.  Bruce uses charts and diagrams and goes in to deep detail on the medical reactions of his theories.   boreing but effective.

with all due respect....

the gist of this book is the actual locations of strike, grab, and punch points and physical result of.  It doesnt go into specific techniques.  THis article is nice because it puts into perspective what pain is and how we deal with it physically.

on a personal note, I'd say a grab like kotogashi would fall in the third because the whole body turns with the wrist.  Its an effective throw because youre rolling the body, by making the body escape the pain. which makes your partners eyes bug out like this 

Thank you for this refresher/reminder.  I was teaching yesterday and a question came up about in which direction one should direct the kotegashi. 

From then on, you kind of gave me my lesson, which everyone was well engaged in and enjoyed.  I stressed listening to the joint and how you could "steer" the person where you want them by listening and using your mind.  I demonstrated the motion each joint makes as one slowly increases the pressure until each joint up the line lockes out, and then the opposite quadrant leg and the cross extensor. 

This led to questions about counters for locks and how to prevent them.  I'd say that the class was one of my better adult classes for the past couple of months, so again, thanks for bringing this topic up.