Traditional martial arts training is often cited as a mindful mind-body practice that can improve and maintain health. I often write about applications and implications of new research studies. Importantly, summary and review papers aggregate data across studies and time, allowing for estimates of replication and overall effects. <\/p>\n
Let’s make a map!<\/p>\n
Recently, researchers Lissandra Zanovelo Foga\u00e7a, Mariana Cabral Schveitzer, Arthur Ferreira, Andreia do Carmo Feitosa, Michael Pratt, Caio F\u00e1bio Schlechta Portella, Ricardo Ghelman, and Luiz Roberto Ramos in Sao Paolo, Brazil and San Diego, USA, surveyed the scientific literature on health outcomes in older adults after Tai Chi Chuan (or Grand Ultimate Fist) training. Their objective was to assess, synthesise, organize, and create an “evidence map” that summarizes what is scientifically known, what the quality of evidence shows, and what remains to be better explored about the health benefits of Tai Chi Chuan training across the lifespan.<\/p>\n
Their efforts are to be commended, as they surveyed almost 8000 published works, of which 118 remained after screening. Of those remaining, about 1\/3rd were of high quality, and the rest were mostly low quality. Yang style Tai Chi Chuan was the most commonly studied lineage, with typical training sessions of half an hour to an hour, twice or three times each week across 12 to 24\u202fweeks. They found that most research studies comprised a majority of female participants from the general community with an average age of 70. From all of these studies, the Brazilian and American researchers extracted outcomes related to 238 measurable effects and 56 associations.<\/p>\n
Where are we on the map?<\/p>\n
Foga\u00e7a and colleagues found evidence that was high quality, suggesting positive effects for “balance, depression<\/a>, anxiety<\/a>, cognitive performance, risk of fall, quality of life, well-being, sleep quality, and Parkinson\u2019s disease.” The majority of the positive effects are related to holistic psychological effects. The beneficial effects on modulating depression and anxiety and improving sleep quality are particularly notable.<\/p>\n Interestingly, for concentration<\/a>, agility, muscle mass, HDL cholesterol, stroke, hypertension, and coronary heart disease, there was inconclusive evidence or no effect.<\/p>\n Where are we headed?<\/p>\n Although Tai Chi Chuan was the martial art of focus in the research above, the effects and outcomes are almost certainly widely applicable to many traditional martial arts where mindful practice is embedded in training. The takeaway from this, like so much evidence in individual studies, is that traditional martial arts training represents a form of holistic practice with powerful and widespread health benefits. This extends as well to practices that include many elements found in Tai Chi Chuan with significant self-protection elements, like Okinawan karate, Wing Chun, Aikido, and more.<\/p>\n Something that I often ponder about is this: Are the effects so powerful because living in modern society generally precludes mindful practice? “Trainability” in physiological outcomes like strength usually refers to how strongly a person might respond to a training stimulus and the idea that as you do more training, the effects of dose are lessened. That is, there are diminishing returns over time because the person already has a trained status. Are we so untrained in mindfulness<\/a> now that these effects are even further enhanced?<\/p>\n Regardless of why the effects are so large, the evidence is compelling that mindfulness should be a key component of training across the lifespan. A relatively convenient methodology exists in the ongoing martial arts classes and training sessions found in just about every community. <\/p>\n (c) E. Paul Zehr (2026)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Traditional martial arts training is often cited as a mindful mind-body practice that can improve and maintain health.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-704371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}