Radically Embodied Compassion
The Potential Role of Traditional Martial Arts in Compassion Cultivation
Neil Clapton and Syd Hiskey are two Clinical Psychologists researching how traditional martial arts may be powerful ways of cultivating radically embodied compassion.
Their hope is to stimulate further research into the underlying mechanisms of martial arts practices and their relationship to compassion, as well as the further development of martial arts-based psychotherapies and personal practices that help cultivate compassion for all.
com·pas·sion /kəmˈpaSHən/
noun
1. sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.
"the victims should be treated with compassion"
I practically highlighted the entire article, but here are some of my key takeaways from their article. (See article for citations)
Martial arts and well-being: “At their core, traditional martial arts are mind-body self-cultivation systems that help develop compassionate and virtuous character strengths such as courage, benevolence, wisdom, temperance and justice. Seen from this perspective, martial arts can become a vehicle and pathway to reducing suffering, promoting well-being and flourishing at a personal and social level.”
Martial arts and self-control: “Research also suggests that martial artists are more endogenously prepared to engage with and respond to uncertainty and are more distress tolerant when faced with and despite repeated exposure to threatening situations, as well-having greater sustained attentional abilities and impulse control. All of this combines to lead to skillful action that is reasoned, assertive and conflict-ending rather than mindlessly aggressive and designed to excessively hurt another.”
Martial arts and conflict resolution: “Martial arts might be implicitly and explicitly entraining value-driven abilities to stay affiliatively engaged in conflict situations of high relational threat and end such conflicts by reaffiliating, with minimum harm done. Thus, martial artists develop the courage and confidence to face and resolve conflicts non-violently and compassionately, whereby potential suffering is halted and prevented and relational harmony is restored. This is compassionate conflict resolution and transformation.”
Martial arts and oxytocin: “Sparring also often involves some form of physical touch and contact either via blocking and/or grappling. Such martial arts training has been shown to increase endogenous oxytocin production, a neuropeptide that plays a central role in regulating mammalian social behaviors by down-regulating threat-based processing and defensive behaviors and up-regulating affiliative and prosocial behaviors associated with compassion.”
Martial arts and every day life: “Crucially, such compassion and compassionate abilities cultivated and entrained by the martial arts are likely transferable to non-martial situations, through a process which has been termed somatic metamorphism. This has been described as a mode of deploying the body to make sense of and wisely respond to non-martial challenges such as day-to-day relational conflicts and challenges, supported by first-person accounts of Aikido practitioners’ somatic metamorphism in everyday life. In this way, martial values of care for ourselves and others generalize from the dojo/training hall to one’s broader relational context(s).”
Martial arts as therapy: “Traditional martial arts training and practices also hold promise as a compassion-focused psychotherapeutic intervention in their own right and/or as an adjunct to other psychotherapies. Early evidence suggests that martial arts training is a potentially powerfully transformative intervention for individuals who have experienced interpersonal trauma, possibly because of martial arts’ highly embodied and somatic-based nature that is akin to other somatically- informed psychotherapies that target the amelioration and healing of trauma more directly via the body.”
Martial arts and healthy relationships: “A growing body of research and evidence supports the notion that longer-term training in traditional martial arts reduces aggressiveness and increases prosocial behaviors. Some of these other compassionate behaviors include the development and expression of prosocial assertiveness and helpful bystanding as well as respect for others, perseverance, self-confidence, and healthy habits.”
Thank you Neil and Syd for your work in this area! Check out their website here: www.fiercecompassionmartialarts.com
