Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

I do not intend this to become a dialogue between Thailand's Nak Muay realities and the social construction of the Japanese Samurai, but this photograph I took comes to mind. It is of arguably the greatest Muay Thai Fighter in Thai history, Chamuakphet (at least in the top 5) seated with dignity in the corner of a Kaimuay ring. I titled it Le Samourai, after Melville's assassin film. You can see a better quality of the print here: Le Samourai The photograph composes its own argument perhaps. But Chamuakphet is a profound example. Having one of the most extraordinary Thai stadium careers ever, one in which he was dominant even when older, stacking up a record 9 stadium championships, he moved to Japan and has been training fighters over there for more than a decade I believe. Here is is visiting Thailand. But I saw in him, imagined in him, that Japanese - Samurai - posture. An actual legendary Thai fighter who then has positioned his body within the social regimes of Japanese society. Maybe the closest we come to a "real" (contemporary) samurai, at least in a certain fighting sports sense.

Of course, there is a very obvious parallel here: the fighter as Martial Artist. That entire trope, with its complicated history - for instance how the Japanese concept of Budo was forwarded by western influences and conceptualizations. This still leaves the very compelling question: What does it mean for a person to make of their life a Work of Art? What does it mean ethically? What does it mean Aesthetically? What does it mean in terms of efficacy in the fighting arts (sports) themselves? What is potent about Thailand's Muay Thai is that nobody is producing "Martial Artists" qua artists. We are much more in the realm of craft. Crafting fighters. The Western (or more properly globalized/captialist/modernist) image of the Martial Artist projects out like a fantasy sometimes, perhaps as an afterimage of its own soul: lost traditions, lost practices, lost "men". There is no doubt that the image of the Martial Artist has been calling out to us at least since Bruce Lee and Hong Kong cinema burst on the scene and changed the way that Asian men and traditions of the East are perceived. We have to grapple with how much of these fantasies are of our own projection, and how much they are real self-diagnoses of our real illnesses and disbalances, self proscribing, self creating, artistically reaching for a new and possible Us. Maybe the acme of this entire register of creation is in the extremes of the figure of the Samurai, imagined as the summit of both Artistic and Ethical being. Even if a fantasy of our creation, for the West, it is an creation with meaning, purpose and use.

This reflection is based on my reading of "Existing Not as a Subject But as a Work of Art" which outlines the way in which Deleuze (and Foucault) cut through the boundary Kant tried to establish between Ethics and Aesthetics, allowing definitive domains for how one should be, providing registers where differing regimes of discourse can vie. As is outlined in the essay Ethics is the Realm of Good and Bad, judgements governed by prudence, whereas Aesthetics is a very different space, one in which feelings, affectual attractors, trajectories of composition, govern. Is it Beautiful? Existing_Not_as_a_Subject_But_as_a_Work.pdf <<< download the essay PDF here, Chapter 8 This is an unspooling of the medieval (and Greek) trinity of True, Good & Beautiful, and it suffices to say that Deleuze and Foucault find an unnecessary schism in the blurring of these (likely contrived) boundaries, between the Good and the Beautiful. What the essay investigates is something along the lines of "Is it possible (or advisable) to live your life as a work of art?" The best parts of the essay are found in these caps here below, where it is outlined just what an Aesthetic (non-Subjectivized) life might be like: Above is set out the differing "individuations", Subject (Good vs Bad) vs Event (Beautiful vs not-Beautiful). Deleuze wants to trace out these different kinds of becomings, the way in which some people - or at least some experiences in phases - are like "events", sweeping across us, and much less like being a certain kind of person. The molarity of a person, a "subject" falls back into the judgements of Ethics. The examples of event-individuations then appeals to literature and the separation between Love (ethics) and Passion (Aesthetics), quoting at length: This is the very interesting part - just as the example seems to veer the furthest from the realities of a Nak Muay in the figure of Heathcliff. I'm going to take this on from the Western Nak Muay perspective to begin with, because there the door is open the widest. The project and ambition of a typical - but very committed - westerner who moves to Thailand, dives into the World of Muay Thai here (a pre-existing, extremely rich and varied sub-culture of fighting, which produces great meaning for the country) is rightly much better called a "passion" rather than a "love". Yes, some from the west come to Thailand to create a "subjectification", which is to say the Image or the Picture of being a "Fighter", a "Nak Muay", which is to say, something they can idealize and present to others as noble or virtuous. An "I'm such-and-such kind of person" project of creation. In this case this might be called a Love of Muay Thai. But most fighters - predominantly western men, but also western women (each having differing projects) come to Thailand out of a passion. How are we to define this? Taking Deleuze's lead, this would mean that they are seeking to create "event-type individuations", which are much more ephemeral (Time Fragile), and I would suggest, programmatic. In these projects there is in no real sense a Self, at least for the duration for the event individuation. The passion is lived through these repeated endeavors. To not lose the thread here - and I'm going a little slow on this, because there is a risk for being unclear - what happens when a person from the West comes to Thailand and takes the deep dive into Thailand's Muay Thai, is that they submit themselves to existing regimes that I would argue are already traditionally focused on Event Individuations. This is another way of saying that the Thai Kaimuay (gyms) which are houses which create Thai (stadium circuit) Nak Muay are creating Works of Art, or...people who live as Works of Art more than they do as Subjects. Another way into this - a slight detour - is that the preoccupation that the West has with the beauty of Thai technique (and beyond that, at a much deeper level, the Beauty of Individual fighting styles) is that that beauty is signaling to all of us that fighting is an Aesthetic endeavor, and that the Aesthetics that rule over scoring and "proper" technique (jangwah/timing/rhythm, emotional self-control, ruup/posture) are keys to the very nature of what Muay Thai is, not only to Thailand but to the rest of the world. As westerners engage with that beauty - and often try to mistakenly "hack" it mechanically - what they really are trying to do is reach an Aesthetic realm. To live one's life, at least in part, as a Work of Art. Backing up again, returning to the Kaimuay. The Kaimuay is the artisan's house where training regimes have been established to produce these works of art. These regimes are no different than the traditional regimes of metallurgy and sword making, for instance, involving the annealing processes of forging and sharpening a sword. They involve time-tested periods of heating and cooling, of shaping, folding and pounding. A good Kaimuay knows how to make good (Thai) swords, and sometimes a master sword. Why am I turning to the analogy of metallurgy? It's to bring forward the subjectless aspect of what is being done in a Thai Kaimuay. Yes, it is very true that Subjectification (Ethics) is a very important part of Kaimuay reality. The young Nak Muay has to slot his (her) person in a hierarchy which is quite rigid, and there does run an ethical parallel to the aesthetic work of a Kaimuay, but I would argue that it is not central to what is happening. Instead, largely, the subject is fixed, so that the metal can be worked on, so the metal can be transformed. Look again at the Deleuzian examples of what an event-type individuation is. These are transversing energies/intensifications. For a painter it can be the swath of blue paint that you just pulled across a canvas in oil. They are time bound and require regimes of practice. They require styles to embody them and guide them. Because they are trajectories, these styles and regimes are guardrails, directions, but they never are determinate. What I suggest is that largely what westerners are doing when they come to Thailand - either consciously or unconsciously - is submitting to Training regimes and Fighting regimes that are governed by the learned wisdom of the Kaimuay or kru/s. The 100 kicks at speed on the pads, burning to collapse, is an event-individuation. The 45th minute in clinch in the suffocating heat is an event-individuation, the Ram Muay before hundreds of onlookers is an event individuation. What makes these ephemera events not just indulgences or self-flagilations is that they hold within a regime, an aesethic which produce a "thing"...a Nak Muay. A style. A Work of Art. One of the most interesting elements of this is that the westerner is entering a house of craft - the Kaimuay - which in its long custom has learned to produce swords out of a particular type of metal. The young Thai boy (and there is much to write about the variances of this) is shaped and modeled into the Nak Muay art in this custom. The folds and bends, the reheatings and coolings, the sharpenings are founded on that metal. Those properties. An adult western man (or woman) has very different properties. It's of different "stuff". This isn't to say that the programs and regimes that work on in the common metallurgy of a Thai Kaimuay would not work on this metal, these metals, it is only to say that the traditions (ethnically, sociologically segmented) of swordmaking comes out of generations of practice on a certain material. And, it is unknown fully what the result is on other metals, other materials. Ultimately, it is an experiment. "Heat and fold me, like you heat and fold these other metals". Whether this comes out of the malaise of Western Subjectivation - the particular ills we suffer from in the West, a certain kind of mal-nurishment, deprived of the Aesthetic...perhaps, it is not known. And, if we take this perspective we cannot avoid the truth that the Westerner is taking on a Aesthetic project more or less consciously, that the Thai takes on much more systematically, as aspects that arise not so much from the person but the culture. This is another way of saying that Thailand and its Kaimuay traditions operate on a much more fundamental Aesthetic level. Not only Muay Thai, but many other aspects of Thai culture operate on a Aesthetic (event-individuation) plane. The Kaimuay tradition comes out of a much wider comprehension that also subsumes, or is subsumed by, Buddhism. And Buddhism perhaps provides a glimpse into the solution to a unsolveable puzzle that is posed at the end of the essay. Which is: How can one live one's life as a Work of Art (aesthetically, governed by the production of event-type individuations) and still live an Ethical life? Does not the pursuit of trajectories necessarily transgress the ethical Self? This is complex, layered question, full of historical examples of the antagonism between the Ethical and the Aesthetic. But, the Nak Muay, as meager a personage as she/he is, does offer a compelling compass heading, in the shadow of Buddhism. Buddhistic practice - at least much of its meditation and daily expression - is quite event-individuation producing. It is in many ways a regime of aesthetics in which - even logically - the Subject is barred, but it is also fundamentally an ethical practice. The aesthetics are ethically driven, or...the perceived ethics of the event-experiences is much of what drives the practice. It is true that much that is in Thailand Muay Thai, and the Nak Muay in it, is far from the ethical, but at bottom, in the art itself, the kind of flourishing fighter who beautifully conducts her/himself under intense duress, the balance - both psychological and physical, the grace and timing, the customs and traditions, are evoking an acme of Beauty that possesses its own ethics, embedded in its forms. The Nak Muay, forged as she/he is, is a sword, aimfully a beautiful sword. And a sword holds its own ethics, I would suggest. I also believe that the dichotomy that the essay sets up, between the event and the subject is a somewhat false one. Nobody - not even the greatest yogi - lives in an Event-Individuation world. Forever there is a dialogue (we can call it) between the Subject and Event worlds. One is always passing between the Good/Bad vs Beautiful/Ugly registers. They form the warp and weft of the weave of us. Knowledgeably though, if we can grasp that the intentions of a westerner coming to Thailand to "become a fighter" are aesthetic ones we might be able to train our eyes on the right things. Focus yourself on the productions of events. Let the Subject go. Submit to traditional regimes that will and can transform you. Find the beauty of your Muay Thai not in your plans or intentions, but in the development of senses, of sensibilities, of ventures, of flights.

Not fight photography, but Martina Hoogland Ivanow's Speedway offers keyholes for us was we struggle to get away from "get the strike!" photography - which, if we are honest about it, it just sensing the fight, having a decent lens, and machine-gunning the shutter. It's just gorgeous, see the series here: Martina Hoogland Ivanow's Speedway. A few screen caps below: Here we instructively have a subject which one would think would involve capturing "Speed" - just as we are challenged to capture the "fight", but instead are presented with lunar reality, the superb isolation, the "way of life" even of the track racer, depicted in so many textures, grits, "near monochrome". It is radient. I came upon this in this article on cinematography, telling of the inspiration for the film Arrival: As a sidenote, I stumbled upon this reference studying cinematographers to inform my photography, where here the cinematography is inspired by the photography. A swimming dialectic. I'm truly moved by what I see in film, it makes me want to press my shutter. The first photo in the series, the suited up portrait, is just amazing. Damn. That steely palette, the solitary oranges that they took for Arrival. In this, I think we can learn - open our eyes really - to all the tools we can use to bring to bear on what fighting IS. It's not strikes landing. In fact, it's probably much more strikes missing, than it is strikes landing. Posted here as reference, and for discussion.

Here is Sylvie's article on how to get more out of padwork: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/secret-great-muay-thai-padwork-thailand

Another photo from our visit to the cave temple of Wat Khao Aor, showing the Tiger Ruesi that gave birth to this thought thread:

I can't see the videos for some reason. I'm on Firefox, maybe it's some kind of block in my browser.

Here is an image collection of a few Tiger Ruesi figures I've seen over the years, giving some aesthetic contexts for the Wat Khao Aor figure:

What does this mean for the role of rage and/or ferocity in Muay Thai, especially in the Muay Thai of Thailand? Because the Nak Muay himself/herself occupies a hybrid place in the culture, synthesizing holy and (possibly) unholy aspects of the human condition, Thailand's Muay Thai has a special offering to the Western fighter, and even viewer, who is drawn to fighting as an expression of aggression, anger, pride, frustration, rage, either as they occur in themselves or in society. When you train in Thailand you'll hear the Jai yen yen admonition, "Have a cool heart", which can work as a counterbalance to all the hot-hearted drive to the need to fight, or enjoy fights. But Thailand's Muay Thai is not just Jai yen yen. It rather creates a vehicle for sudden violence, even ferocious violence, which can erupt in only a flash, or a wave. Or, it can pulse in a Muay Khao derning. The Buddhistic take on anger and reactive passions certainly about controlling oneself, and ultimately one's mind. But the Tiger Ruesi figure gives us something more. A kind of magical balance where the two sit in repose with each other. The surging Tiger terror lays there in the figure, pulling to mind things like the original meaning of the holy idea of "awe" as it relates to "awful". The full vitality of the Tiger, all of his thymotic real power, lays almost in reserve, perhaps. If you take this meaning and look at the incredible Muay of the Yodmuay of the Golden Age, I believe you can see this simmering vitality on almost all the great fighters, whether it is Samart the Tiger who almost never has to get up from his rest in the shade, or Dieselnoi who stalks, counters and then threshes his opponent savagely, or Karuhat who silkily moves from rope to rope, and then strikes a mortal blow, decisively turning the fight. At the highest levels this seems to be the art of Muay Thai, and as we look at the yodmuay of the past we can see the infinite variety of the ways that Tiger Energy has been alchemized into personality and style. As a western fighter coming to Thailand this is what, perhaps, the art and training has to offer. A more nuanced and pronounced way to express your thymotic energies. It is not just "Jai yen yen", it is Jai yen yen so that the Tiger can come out beautifully, expressively, in control of itself, striding and in full glory. At least that is what it seems like to me, come from the years I've spent in gyms all over Thailand, and from being in the presence of so many past great fighters. They all are Tigers.

Just as a point of context, this is an Internet story of how the Tiger Ruesi got his Tiger head. I suspect there is much diverse lore about these figures, and I'd imagine that this is not a definitive story. I've seen other tales. This one was found here:

It is worth noting that the Nak Muay in Thailand existed positioned in a kind of Tiger Ruesi place. He (she) embodies characteristics of both the monk, and the Nakleng (gangster). The Nak Muay is a kind of were-hybrid figure, in terms of powers and expressed affects. He (she) is both holy and unholy, in the art and violence of Muay Thai: The above graphic is from the article Thai Masculinity: Positioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail which examines academic Peter Vail's argument that Nak Muay are a kind of hybrid figure in Thailand. You can read the original excerpt of his dissertation here: ad hoc title: Thai Masculinity: Positioning Nakmuay Between Monkhood and Nakleng PDF In this comparison Peter Vail draws on the Tiger, but in a differing way. He argues that in the way that forest monks used spending a night in a Tiger-prawled forest, creating a calmness before that potential ferocity, that is facing Tiger Energy to produce thudong, in this way Nak Muay are like them. In a certain regard one might say that facing the Tiger Energy before you, and within you, and creating a synthesis, is the spiritual (affective) challenge of the Muay Thai fighter in Thailand. The Tiger Ruesi epitomizes and heightens just what the Nak Muay is.

Sylvie and I talk about the raw difficulty in processing "Tiger Energy" as a fighter in our Muay Thai Bones podcast episode 18. This link jumps to the section:

Now, the history of high level Muay Thai is not filled with "Tiger Energy" fighters. In fact we've filmed with almost a 100 legends and ex-fighters and only come upon it in a few times. Notably, when in the ring with Sagat Petchyindee, you can just feel it emanate off of him. You can see it in this slow motion we took of his shadow: (link divergence: You can see it more in particular in the Muay Thai Library sessions we filmed with him: #69 Sagat Petchyindee 3 - Muay Maat Tigers & Snakes (67 min) watch it here , #60 Sagat Petchindee Session 2 - All the Strikes Tuned and Dangerous (101 min) watch it here , #38 Sagat Petchyindee (part 2) - Maximum Damage (61 min) watch it here , #26 Sagat Petchyindee - Explosive Power (57 min) watch it here ) This is to say, the higher level affect dynamics of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is not fundamentally a synthesis of Tiger Energy, per se, but Tiger Energy does propose a kind of extreme (thymotic) energy what indeed needs to be given a vehicle of artful expression. And, at least to my eyes, the figure of the Tiger Ruesi holy man, brings this alchemy of thymotic anger and rage into close view. In the west we have synthetic/dichotomous figures which talk to that problematic. The Minotaur of Ancient Greece The Gothic Werewolf Contemporary Hulk It is as if Western Civilization has been trying to process this rage/pride/thymos synthesis for 2,500 years. That is what make the art and tradition of Muay Thai so very interesting to the western problematic. And, suggestively, the Thai Buddhistic tradition of magical synthesis, which aim to generate this resolution at the highest level. In the larger scope, it is the way in which Thailand's Muay Thai processes and redirects typified western affects of rage and anger (and the host of emotions expressed by aggro-fighting in western oriented promotions) into an art form of spatial and personal control, maintaining their edge and sharpness, but held more close to the vest, honed liked a Japanese sword...perhaps, that proves the value of Thailand's historical Muay Thai, a martial combat sport that has been closely braided to long standing principles of Buddhism. That a Tiger Ruesi can exist as an acme holy figure in Thailand's Buddhism points the way toward the resolutions and expressions of ferocity by the Nak Muay that make Thailand's Muay Thai like no other fighting art.

On our visit to Wat Khao Aor in Phatthalung, a 900 year old temple that was built around a sacred cave that likely featured worship for a much longer time. There are stories about the elephant-like shapes in the stone of the cave walls for instance. In that cave now are a host of spiritual figures/statuary as the cave has been a place of organized ceremonial retreat, mediation & merit-making for centuries. Among these figures is a Tiger Ruesi, something that has long captured my imagination, especially as I try to figure out the affective/spiritual path of the Nakmuay in Thailand, the particular way in which Muay Thai mitigates, translates, hones & even amplifies violence, alchemizing it into a artform, and a possibly a minor practice of transcendence. The Tiger Ruesi - and there are many differing tales, and likely differing Ruesi with a Tiger head, is a spiritual (magical) hermit who advanced in his (dark?) arts so thoroughly his head transformed into one of a tiger. One such tale of this event involved dualing Ruesi testing their magic upon each other, but whatever the stories, the figure itself expresses the incredible harmony/dichotomy of a holy man holding both the ferocity of a Tiger's Truth (energy), and the Buddhist epitome of equanimity. He, like the figure itself, feels like a living contradiction...or, a reconciliation of opposites. Below are two photos I took of the figure: It's the second of these photos that I'm really interested in, but the first captures some of that flaming, gold-encrusted (there is leaf on his fangs, etc), eruptive energy in the Tiger. The genuine terror of what a Tiger is. I think for us in the West we have domesticated the Tiger in our minds, a sleek, sexy, dynamic beautiful energy, but that is because we are not connected, historically, to environments where if you walked out alone into the forest or the jungle you might not come back, due to a Tiger. The Tiger is perhaps close to the image we have had of a Great White Shark, which might mercilessly snatch you while swimming, or maybe the uncompromising hunt energy of a wolf. That is the energy that has become magical. The synthesis/tension of the Tiger Ruesi proposes a Thymotic energy resolution. (link divergence: Thymos is this. How Homer treated Thymos. And some of thymos is this. Thymotics and anger. But this is maybe the best treatment of what Thymos is). It is the surging dignity/pride/rage that comes from what feels like an animal core. The Tiger Ruesi, especially this one, seems to have come to hold in one hand both the terrifying ferocity of thymotic rage and Buddhistic repose...like a carefully balanced flame that burns calmly and unwavering in a breezeless room. Most Tiger Ruesi figures show him much more in repose. But this figure is practically erupting with the energy in his face. But...what is very cool is his up-turned clawed palm, an aspect of his meditative posture. This small detail of the statue is just enormous. The claws, the weapons and expressions of his seemingly very nature, are open and relaxed. Anyone who has spread the claws of a cat's paw knows the natural tension that closes them back up. The figure must be so relaxed to have his clawed palm upon up so much. And that one thumb claw that really hangs down drives home the meaning. It's truly spectacular, the poles of the spectrum of experience.

It, as far as I have read, is a reconstruction. The article to read is below: (read it here in PDF). I haven't read this article in while, I think this is the one that talks about the reconstruction.

Phan, in addition to his BKK fight writes ups, puts up a Muay Thai show Google calendar, with all the times and links: Muay Thai Show Calendar Looks like this:

Funny you should ask! We're trying out a new column on our Patreon, free for everyone. Below is an end summary of how/where to watch, but Phan is right now covering the most recent fights, and also what fights to look forward to, twice a month: How to watch Stadium (BKK) Muay Thai? Some people find it hard to find a place to watch elite circuit fights and there are many reasons for this, whether it be the language barrier, significant time zone differences, difficulty following the sport or whatever else. In fact, it has never been easier to watch shows live than today. Nowadays, there may be about a dozen shows per week but only three shows are behind paywall (Chefboonthum and Rajadamnern, no way to pay the iPPV without a Thai credit card) and only one requires a VPN (Channel 7). Otherwise, the rest are all either on Facebook or Youtube (or adintrend). Rajadamnern Stadium typically publishes the entire show 12 hours after the live show itself and Chefboonthum does the same a few days after on Facebook. The best free (no paywall) shows of the week are typically Sia Boat (Petyindee)’s Muaymumwansuk show on Fridays at 6 PM local time, Muay Jet Si at Channel 7 Stadium on Sundays at 2 PM local, Suk Jitmuangnon (only live link) on Saturdays at 4:30 PM local, and Suk Jao Muay Thai at Siam Omnoi Stadium, every Saturday at 12 PM local. Following the sport has also gotten significantly easier with the advent of websites like Muay Thai 2000 and English speaking pages dedicated to the sport on essentially all major social media platforms besides Youtube. See his most recent article here: Best of BKK Muay Thai: fights you missed, fights coming up: vol 2 (early Nov, 2020) https://www.patreon.com/posts/43771237 This way not only do you know where to watch, but also what you are looking at, what the storylines are for all the best fights.

Sylvie's vlog today on some of how we are processing this, and organizing training:

Another recent Noir take on Muay Thai: photography, this time capturing the Golden Age fighter Pairojnoi striding in a gym.

This study found that those with physical abuse in childhood (as differing from sexual abuse), had a heightened reaction to sad faces, due to the right amygdala (which broadly, maybe more stimulated in the follicular phase): Childhood Trauma History Differentiates Amygdala Response to Sad Faces within MDD

This study suggests that sexual abuse victims and those with PTSD have a heightened anxiety response to fearful AND neutral faces, through the left amygdala. In female fighters it is possible that Luteal Phase left amygdala stimulation could amplify this: read it here: Amygdala habituation to emotional faces in adolescents with internalizing disorders, adolescents with childhood sexual abuse related PTSD and healthy adolescents

one study: the left amygdalais more closely related to affective information encoding with a higher affinity to language and to detailed feature extraction, and the right amygdala to affective information retrieval with a higher affinity to pictorial or image-related material. Furthermore, the right amygdala may be more strongly engaged than the left one in a fast,shallow or gross analysis of affect-related information. read the study here: Differential_Contribution_of_Right_and_Left_Amygda.pdf They found in 17 normal subjects thatthe evaluation of unpleasant visual stimuli activated(among other regions) the left amygdala. This activa-tion not only held for fear-related, but for a wide rangeof unpleasant stimuli.Studying regional cerebral blood flow changes in re-sponse to the presentation of faces with different emo-tional expressions, has provided a major basis for es-tablishing a differential role of the left and right amyg-dala in cognitive information processing. Interestingresults were obtained in a series of studies by Mor-ris [85, 87, 88]. Morris et al. [85] found enhanced...On the other hand, Mor-ris et al. [87, 88] found a significant neural response inthe right, but not the left, amygdala to masked presen-tations of a conditioned angry face. Combined, thesefindings suggest that unconscious (masked) process-ing is mediated more readily by the right, and con-scious processing more readily by the left amygdala(among other structures).

In some Follicular = left, Luteal = right from wikipedia, the amygdala Hemispheric specializations In one study, electrical stimulations of the right amygdala induced negative emotions, especially fear and sadness. In contrast, stimulation of the left amygdala was able to induce either pleasant (happiness) or unpleasant (fear, anxiety, sadness) emotions.[10] Other evidence suggests that the left amygdala plays a role in the brain's reward system.[11] Each side holds a specific function in how we perceive and process emotion. The right and left portions of the amygdala have independent memory systems, but work together to store, encode, and interpret emotion. The right hemisphere is associated with negative emotion.[12][13] It plays a role in the expression of fear and in the processing of fear-inducing stimuli. Fear conditioning, which occurs when a neutral stimulus acquires aversive properties, occurs within the right hemisphere. When an individual is presented with a conditioned, aversive stimulus, it is processed within the right amygdala, producing an unpleasant or fearful response. This emotional response conditions the individual to avoid fear-inducing stimuli and more importantly, to assess threats in the environment. The right hemisphere is also linked to declarative memory, which consists of facts and information from previously experienced events and must be consciously recalled. It also plays a significant role in the retention of episodic memory. Episodic memory consists of the autobiographical aspects of memory, permitting recall of emotional and sensory experience of an event. This type of memory does not require conscious recall. The right amygdala plays a role in the association of time and places with emotional properties.[14]

We filmed an entire session at Sangtiennoi's gym, just to give an inside look at what training there is like, one of the more "authentic" Muay Thai gyms with a history of training high level westerners as well. [edit in, November 2021 - seeing that I posted this, Sangtiennoi has since sadly passed away. The gym is still open and being run by his wife and his son Moses who have survived him.]

Follicular Phase is linked with more aggression: Anger and Interpersonal Aggression (book)