Martial Arts and Resiliency
By Judy Wood In InsightMy wife and I were introduced to the concept of resiliency almost twenty years ago. Resiliency is more simply described as “grittiness”, our ability to handle stress, challenge and adversity. In the early 2000’s the US Department of Health and Human Services had found that there were teenagers all across the country who should have dropped out of high school due to family problems, poverty, community fragility and other risk factors, but they hadn’t. They had very little in common in terms of gender, ethnicity, interests or goals, but they all had one thing in common, which the educational and healthcare communities defined as resiliency. Unable to directly improve their life circumstances, a national initiative was formed to help build these kids’ resiliency, their grittiness, so they would stay in high school and graduate.
The stakes for at-risk kids were high then (and high now), and so were the costs to society if they fail. High School dropouts are far more likely to end up incarcerated, costing up to $100,000 (in 2007 dollars) per adjudication and perpetuating a cycle of poverty into the future.
So, Hester and I designed and ran a program called the Leadership and Resiliency Program. It provided cultural and artistic activities, community service projects and, wait for it…martial arts classes. The goal: reduce dropout rates in three Southern Maine Counties by partnering with alternative education programs in four different high schools. It worked. I still run into some of the students we worked with over the course of seven years. They’re not always living as well as we had hoped, but they graduated high school, and a few of them went on to exceed our expectations and their own.
I was reminded of this when I did a document search recently. I searched for “martial arts” and “resilience” and discovered some interesting articles in the National Institutes of Health Archives. Several hundred articles came up, I picked a few that seemed interesting and relevant and read them with interest. There’s clearly something unique about martial arts, in terms of its impact on resilience, its effectiveness at reducing bullying and other social health and wellness impacts. There were also a lot of articles on the impact of creative arts on resilience as well.
These kind of database searches were much harder to do when Hester and I were working “in the field” nearly two decades ago. I recognize that there’s so much research out there that it’s relatively easy to find data to support any correlations that you want to make. Still, it’s interesting to see that martial arts (and creative arts) have measurable, data-driven support at a very high level. My work in resiliency is definitely a huge factor in how we run Centerpoint today, with its emphasis on martial arts and creative arts as catalysts of lifelong growth, success and achievement.
Community building is the third pillar of resiliency and this where things are getting truly interesting. Connection to the people, institutions and traditions of our communities is key to an individual’s success. At risk folks tend to be isolated, and creating community connections was a big part of our work all those years ago. Community is growing at Centerpoint as well, and is doing so organically, in ways I had neither researched nor designed, nor even guessed at. It’s in the Demo Team that Nolan is building, and the way that Camille and Ethan genuinely love spending time with the kids. It’s in the extra time Alexandra is putting in to plan and execute better classes, and how Evan took the time to help Isis and Austin test for their Black Belts. Older kids help the younger ones tie their belts and fold their uniforms, and parents dropped off cookies before the holidays. I don’t know how you’d quantify something this organic, so I don’t know that we’ll be seeing data on any of these things in the National Institute of Health Database. Still, I’m grateful that the work that I began so many years ago is continuing in such a unique and precious way.