She was pretty rattled, she thanked me later.

I dont know about more prone to it, I know some medical conditions will make you more prone to passing out faster but I dont know enough to give advice on that end of things.I do know a lot of it is how you land and how long you hang there.

The old safety belts that just went around your waist were death traps, if you wound up upside down and unable to get ahold of anything you pass out quickly.Some of the harnesses have eyes up high between your shoulder and ones down lower at waist level.If you use the lower ones you might be wind up in trouble for the same reason.All of your straps, shoulder and leg should be tight but you should still be able to get a couple fingers in between the strap and your body.Ideally what you tether yourself to the tree with shouldnt let you fall lower than the platform of your stand, it may be the only thing you can get ahold of to pull yourself back up.Even if you cant free yourself completely if you can take the pressure off your legs and chest you wont pass out.

And the knife thing is very real, not only for you but if you run across someone else in trouble you may need to cut you or them down.People fail to realize that a 200 lb man dangling on the end of a line makes it pretty much impossible to get enough leverage to take the pressure off and release the harness manually.

Dont get me wrong, Im not preaching, and generally speaking self rescue can be done fairly easily if you can get ahold of the stand, tree, a step, or the ladder.For some reason though we still wind up with people dying from fairly short falls that shouldnt kill them.Its these rare occasions when everything goes terribly wrong that you should cut anyone including yourself loose and only if nothing else is possible.