Positive Psychology in Christian Perspective: Foundations, Concepts, and Applications by Charles Hackney

Author:Charles Hackney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Positive psychology;mental health;personality;cognition;relationships;CAPS;Christian Association for Psychological Studies;psychology;counseling;psychologist;counselor;Christian counselor;Christian counseling;psychotherapy;Christian therapist;therapy;Christianity and psychology
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2021-01-30T07:10:15+00:00

MARTIAL ARTS AS A PATHWAY TO FLOURISHING

I have been a student of the martial arts since 1995, with a background that includes hapkido, Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, Brazilian jujitsu, traditional jujitsu, European medieval martial arts, bartitsu, and judo. Way back when I was an undergraduate student, the first psychology study I ever designed and ran involved personality and martial arts. I have had martial arts on the brain for a while now.

I argued earlier in this chapter that judo fits very well within MacIntyre’s (2007) definition of a eudaimonic practice, but the same can be said for the other martial arts, including those arts that are more traditional and less competitive in nature (Hackney, 2009, 2013). In this section, I return to this topic that I am passionate about and argue that training in the martial arts is associated with an increase in positive psychological variables and a decrease in negative psychological variables. A MacIntyrean perspective on the martial arts (Hackney, 2010c) allows us to see the training as a venue for character development and flourishing.

Zivin and colleagues (2001) found that youth who participated in a kenpo program demonstrated improvement across twelve different variables, including happiness, attentive ability, and schoolwork performance. Kurian and colleagues (1994) examined taekwondo practitioners’ personalities, concluding that “belt rank is associated with a pattern of enthusiastic optimism and self-reliance” (p. 905). Martial arts training has also been associated with increases in positive self-image (Finkenberg, 1990; Richman & Rehberg, 1986) and self-control (Focht, Bouchard, & Murphey, 2000).

Martial arts training has also been found to be associated with the reduction of negative characteristics, including aggressiveness (Harwood, Lavidor, & Rassovsky, 2017), and anxiety-related characteristics (Kurian, Caterino, & Kulhavy, 1993; Layton, 1990; Ozer & Bandura, 1990), such as neuroticism (Layton, 1988), as well as feelings of vulnerability (Madden, 1990, 1995), nightmares (Slater & Hunt, 1997), and symptoms of PTSD (David, Simpson, & Cotton, 2006). Because of these psychosocial benefits, some have advocated for the martial arts as an adjunct to traditional psychotherapy (e.g., Gleser et al., 1992; Weiser, Kutz, Kutz, & Weiser, 1995) and as a way of encouraging the reform of delinquent youth (e.g., Trulson, 1989; Twemlow & Sacco, 1998; Zivin et al., 2001).

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