Acupuncture, Injury Treatment, and Martial Arts

Martial Traditions of Asian Medicine

Asian Medicine, historically, has many branches that have been passed down through many different lineages.  Many of the martial arts systems throughout Asia encompass medical traditions that cover all or most of the branches of modern sports medicine.  I believe that these traditions have much to offer us as Oriental medical practitioners, and through us to our clients.

Sports medicine is a multi-disciplinary branch of medicine. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), it includes the “physiological, biomechanical, psychological, and pathological phenomena associated with exercise and sports”.

Sports medicine covers many different areas of exercise and sports science that relate both to performance and care of injury.  Sports medicine specialties include clinical medicine, orthopedics, exercise physiology, biomechanics, physical therapy, athletic training, massage therapy, sports nutrition, and sports psychology.

Many martial arts systems in Asia address most of these fields within their teachings.  Certain schools of Taiqichuan, Bagua, Xingyichuan, Jujutsu, Judo, etc., include partial or complete systems of medicine, which while well within the mainstream of Oriental Medicine (OM), are seldom taught in our American schools of OM.  As exercise systems, they include a large body of knowledge relevant to athletic training.  As medical systems, they offer a unique application of traditional medical principles to medical aspects of athletic training, general medicine, and traumatology.

Generally, one thing that these traditions have in common is that there is a lot of overlap between the martial and healing aspects of the systems.  The theories, philosophies, and practices taught within these schools derive from many years of study of the human body, and offer unique insight into OM theory.  Usually they are solidly based on a philosophical system derived from the Classics, and both the martial and healing aspects are applications of the same fundamental understandings.

These traditions largely center around the branches of OM dealing with traumatology. The practitioners from these traditions are specialists of palpatory diagnosis, manual therapy, and the use of external compresses and poultices as well as acupuncture, moxabustion and herbs to treat traumatic injury.  As martial arts traditions, they also include sophisticated insight into anatomy, body mechanics, training methods, and performance enhancement.

These traditions really encompass a wide range of knowledge and technique that is particularly valuable to modern acupuncturists wishing to specialize in sports medicine.

One thing that these traditions have in common is the centrality of touch as a method of both diagnosis and treatment.  Having evolved long before the modern diagnostic methods of x-rays, MRIs, and CAT scans, these practitioners needed to have the palpatory skills to diagnose soft tissue injuries through touch alone, and affect these conditions manually based on their palpatory diagnosis.  In order to do this, they had to be thoroughly skilled in the subtlety of diagnosing through touch, and working with all of the body tissues.  The skills needed to acquire this subtlety are the same skills that are trained through martial arts practices such as push hands, chin na, aikido, etc.  This is why, across cultures, martial arts and medical traditions are so frequently intertwined.

A Zheng Gu Fa (Martial arts trauma medical specialist) practitioner in the Northwest, from Shanghai, told me that “Tuina (Chinese medical massage), Medical Qigong (direct energetic treatment), and Zheng Gu Fa are basically the same practice, but for Zheng Gu Fa, your Kung Fu has to be better.”   Masahiro Nakazono, a long-time teacher of Aikido and Japanese medicine, frequently commented that “Martial arts and medicine are the same”.  I once had a discussion with a massage practitioner from India, about Ayurvedic medicine.  In response to my question about traditional trauma therapy practitioners, he said “Oh yes – we have those in India.  They are mostly wrestlers.”

In my experience, practitioners of these systems have a lot in common, regardless of the culture they came from.  Japanese and Chinese acupuncturists who come from their respective martial traditions of medicine both have said that their acupuncture is an extension, or refinement, of the manual therapy they practice.  They tend to diagnose, locate points, and even use needling techniques similarly.  Manual therapy and acupuncture are applied in treatment as two methods arising out of one diagnosis and treatment plan.

I believe that these martial traditions of medicine contain very sophisticated knowledge that we can bring to our patients.  As practitioners of sports medicine acupuncture, we can all benefit from increasing our palpatory diagnostic skills and manual therapy skills.  Martial arts practice, especially the traditions which include partner practices such as those mentioned above, can be invaluable in this, while also increasing understanding of body mechanics, training philosophies, and other aspects of sports medicine.

For more information, please give me a call at (206) 632-5640, or email me at ed@hibikimedia.com (Click the envelope icon at the top right of this page)