But Marma Atti is a refined form of a rudimentary self defence system taught widely in rural south India, enabling a common person to take care of him/her self in case of an attack while keeping his/her physical limitations under consideration. But Marma Atti is a limited set of physical self defence and behavioural patterns, emphasising on calm rather than fear in case of attacks.

The psychological aspect of this martial art involves reasoning with the attacker after repeatedly foiling the incoming attacks (the art teaches to successfully evade punches, kicks, knives, sticks and other weapons, frustrating and humiliating the attacker in process) and trying to reason out with the attacker while successively foiling his attack attempts and exhausting him in the process.

But Marma Atti is comprised of fighting using evasive movements, reversals and soft striking.

The practitioners of But Marma Atti are also taught to be of unimpeachable character to have the moral high ground and inner strength to both evade and psychologically exhaust their opponents.