We're Featured on the Front Page of the Stockton Record Today!
I was ecstatic this morning to find an article on the Sheng Chi Foundation on the front page of the Stockton Record. The article focuses on the benefits of Shou Shu for those suffering from Stress disorders such as PTSD.
Benefits of Shou Shu for PTSD article
We had been interviewed some time ago and I had almost lost hope that it would actually hit the paper. But now that it has I see why it took so long. The Journalist, Dana Nichols, really spent his time doing the research and did an outstanding job of it. Kudos to Dana. It's a job well done.
The benefits of martial arts training as a therapy for certain disorders are not well known and one of the main reasons we started the Sheng Chi Foundation. Training in certain martial arts has huge benefits for those suffering from any sort of stress disorder or just plain everyday stress.
It's little known for a few reasons.
1)You've got to study it for many years before you start to get full understanding of why it works. Some of these reasons I just recently figured out myself and I've been immersed in the training for 20 years. We've always known it work. My grandmaster knew it worked at least 50 years ago and helped many people suffering from various problems. There are many people out there who have plenty to say about what he did for them or a loved one. 2) Not all martial arts train the same way. I believe you will find these benefits more so in arts concentrating on pure self defense. The training methods are different for competition arts. I've spent years tracking down fighting arts and they are a dying breed. For the most part closed door systems. Meaning they were kept private and only taught to a few individuals. What we do is quite rare in the commercial martial arts arena. There are benefits derived from all forms of martial arts training just not all the same benefits.
There has just been no reason why the general public or psychologists dealing with this would have any inkling of the effectiveness of the training. To understand it fully one would really have to be a combat veteran, a psychologist specializing in PTSD, and a Shou' Shu' black belt and I doubt that person exists yet.
I don't claim to know everything about it myself. But what I do know is that it works. I do have some theories though so I'll present those.
Exposure therapy
This is probably the most obvious yet the one I know the least about. The psychologists in the article mentioned it and I would defer to them to explain it better. Perhaps I can get some input from you readers.
Being in the Now - Presence
I was quoted a bit about this in the article but it was not fully explained. I think this is a hard one to grasp but those who have studied fighting disciplines or Yoga and possibly other disciplines will recognize the phenomena. Body awareness centers the mind and can rid the mind of extraneous thought. People who have undergone this training are far more centered and look at life differently. The phenomena is mentioned in many very popular personal development books such as Eckardt Tolle's “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”.
It's Primal
This is something I've recently figured out. It's a big one. Training in the art of Shou' Shu' is a very primal thing. Just as beating a drum, singing, dancing, and storytelling are all primal things that everybody once did, so is Shou' Shu'. Theoretically it dates back to the time of the Egyptians. References in the bible cause me to believe that Moses was a Shifu. It's been around a long time.
Now these primal things that have now been virtually erased from our society once brought us great benefit. I think this is pretty obvious when one realizes they just plain make you feel good. They do something biologically to us. The counter our negative emotions. They fire up our creativity. They help us visualize and develop intent. Among other things.
In the primal world stress was there to save us from harm. It gave us short term energy to run away from or fight off the threat. When a tiger was hunting us our bodies went into overdrive. In the real world there is no tiger that's about to eat you. In our world it's things that are not a physical threat that create the stress yet we have a physical response.
So if you look at how stress works in our bodies you can see that stress is a biological reaction to a non-biological threat. Stress is your body preparing for fight or flight. It pumps you full of adrenalin. It's robs the mind of blood flow to give it to the muscles. It makes the heart race. All of this over not being able to pay a bill or your boss being a jerk. Basically a totally disconnected reaction.
In the primal world stress worked for us. It gave us a better chance of survival. In our world it does quite the opposite. It dulls our mind and wreaks havoc on the body. This is certainly not conducive to solving whatever issue is causing the stress.
But Shou' Shu' is. In Shou' Shu' training we mentally put ourself into that threat situation. It's only in our mind so there is no real threat but using visualization and intent we can make the mind think it is. And then we deal with it. We whoop that bully. We fight off the tiger. We feel good. We rid ourself of stress. We Beat stress to a pulp.
There is probably more mechanism than this. It would be wonderful for an expert to explore it further. It would be wonderful if this idea was catalyzed. Hopefully our foundation can be successful enough to further our knowledge of it.
So the Sheng Chi Foundation is at work trying to make this into something big. It's great that we can help locally. Would it be crazy wonderful if we could help on a bigger scale. Maybe we can.
You can help us and it'll only take a moment of your time!
Dana's article is a wonderful start. With a little help this sort of information can go viral. Social news sites can make it happen. If you don't know what I mean it's really easy. I'm submitting the story and this blog to all of the popular social news sites. All you have to do is go there and vote it up. If it hit's the front page of any of the popular ones the exposure could be huge. It's estimated that the front page of Digg alone gets 250,000 views per day.
On the story page in the upper right you'll see some buttons that link to social news sites. Click on them and vote them up. If you don't have an account at these sites it only takes about 30 seconds to create one. It's very easy and they will not spam you.
I really value you giving a little of your time to do this. The sites will show a record of who does so it'll be great to see how many people we get to do it. It truly can make a huge difference.
Of course so can money and if you'd like to give that we'd be thrilled also.
Currently there is only one commercial school that we are aware of teaching traditional Shou' Shu'. That's us, The Sheng Chi Training Center. People travel from all over to train with us. Shou' Shu' is an incredible ancient art which was nearly lost in recent years. It has the potential for helping many people with various needs. Please help spread the word. Email this to others. Vote it up. Contribute. Talk to others about it. There's huge potential here. Let's help that potential turn into something real.
I'll create a list of links here to the article on the social sites. You can use the links to vote them up. Do as many as you have time for. I'll put them in order of importance. I'll keep adding to the list so keep checking back
Here's the list of social news sites
http://digg.com/arts_culture/Finding_peace_in_ancient_art
Benefits of Shou Shu for PTSD
I agree with you, Phil, on a few counts. First, I feel you are right on in regards to exposure therapy. In the 1980’s, Dr. Terence M. Keane and his colleagues found that exposure therapy was effective in treating the PTSD symptoms of Vietnam War veterans. Exposure therapy, previously known as imaginal flooding therapy, involves carefully exposing the patient to prolonged and repeated imagined images of the trauma until the images no longer cause severe anxiety. In Keane’s randomized clinical trial involving 24 Vietnam veterans, Keane found that exposure therapy was effective in reducing many of the veteran’s PTSD symptoms, including nightmares, flashbacks, memory and concentration problems, and irritability (American Psychological Association, 2008). Through the art of Shou Shu you are effectively activating one of the symptoms in PTSD, easily startled or agitated, using a safe environment and essentially re-wiring the brains response to stress using the art. Next, PTSD patients generally have a hard time concentrating, so performing the specialized moves in Shou Shu you are able to bring the person into the now and bring the mind to a more productive state. Shou Shu is primal, I agree; essentially we are connecting to our roots and helping to re-wire the brain so that when situations do arise we are well equiped to deal with them through the conditioning we receive when practicing Shou Shu. There is much to be learned with the mix of Shou Shu and PTSD. One suggestion would be to have someone do their thesis or dissertation on the subject.
Sage
Tom Callos
I want to make sure to give credit to Tom Callos. He's the guy that came up with the idea and inspired us to do it. There was an article on it in WIE magazine which is where I first ran into the idea.
Tom has also sent it out to his lists which include some very important people. I was quite impressed to see some of the names which were cc'd in the email he sent out. Very impressed.
"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." --Albert Einstein
Attention
News travels fast. I've already had out of state relatives run into the article and have recieved many nice comments from the martial arts world. Isn't the web great? :-)
Phil
Post new comment