Chinese Medicine in the Martial Arts

Perhaps one of the most frustrating challenges for a martial artist is a physical injury which disables them from training. Like an all-star quarterback who breaks an ankle before a big game, an injured martial artist is stuck brooding on the sidelines while hours of valuable practice go on without them. While much can be gained from watching a class from the outside (I highly recommend this practice to those temporarily unable to train), learning martial arts is inherently experiential and requires intuitive and physical feeling rather than intellectual understanding. Watching will provide a clear image of what is to be done, but only by doing does a martial artist develop technique to a level of applicable refinement. Thus, being injured, a martial artist’s learning, too, is injured, and their training must take a temporary back seat to healing.

                While I have missed a day or two of training here and there from jammed toes, swollen ankles, and bruised ribs in the past, I have been fortunate in that I did not come to know the bitter disappointment of a serious injury until this past year. Working as a field assistant on a remote natural history reserve in central California, opportunities for formal training were few and far between. After hours of hiking and carrying equipment to census woodpeckers for a Cornell University study, I diligently kept to my own independent training, which consisted of alternating sessions of shadowboxing, Tang Soo Do forms, strength and conditioning, yoga, and suburi (practicing sword cuts). After a month of intense practice, I felt my techniques growing smoother, more natural, and more powerful, and eagerly anticipated the opportunity to train at Shobu during my three week vacation that winter.

 Not long thereafter, I slipped on rocky scree while walking obliquely on a steep hill and fell heavily with my load of equipment. Unable to break my fall, I strained the LCL of my left knee, and experienced sharp pain with nearly every weight-bearing movement. I took a week off from outdoor work and searched frantically for any way to speed up the healing process—I would be returning home in a few weeks and couldn’t stand the thought of missing a day of training—but my injury persisted, and I spent my last month of work limping up and down hill after hill. Even the gentlest of exercises and techniques of my independent training routine seemed to aggravate the injury, and I felt the progress I had made beginning to slip away as I ceased practice altogether. To make matters worse, the stumbling limp I had developed as a result of my ligament strain had begun to take its toll, as I developed patellofemoral pain (runner’s knee) in both knees from the excessive hiking required in my job. By the time I made it home to Boston in December, I could neither sit in seiza, squat, nor stand in hanmi (triangle stance), and knew I would be unable to train without risking further injury.

I arranged for a visit with an orthopedist before returning home, but was unable to get an appointment until halfway through my time in Boston. By the time I had my appointment, I had missed most of my opportunities for training at home, and was given a frustratingly small amount of information regarding my condition.  It was unclear how severe my injury actually was, and whether or not I would need surgery. I would need to have make an appointment for an MRI and come back afterward; an imaging center would contact me in a few days to schedule an appointment. A few days, I thought to myself, knowing that yet more opportunity for training would be lost.

Heartbroken, I attended a few classes at Shobu and visited my friends there, eagerly watching classes and taking what I could from sensei’s lectures.  He approached me after one class to ask about my injuries, and when I described them he was quick to recommend a practitioner of Chinese traditional medicine who he explained had helped him many times in the past. Frustrated to no end with the snails-pace approach of Western medicine, I welcomed the alternative and took her card. Due to the hectic nature of my last few days in Massachusetts, I didn’t have the time to call and arrange an appointment, and before I knew it I was on a plane back to California, having never received a call from the imaging center.

I had all but surrendered myself to simply tolerating the pain as I returned to work in January, when I received a call from a close friend and fellow martial artist. Aside from being one of my first close friends in the martial arts, this friend was also a practitioner of alternative medicine and dedicated student of traditional Chinese martial arts including Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan. The advice he gave me was analogous to sensei’s, and he even went so far as to send me a book on the subject, “A Tooth From the Tiger’s Mouth” by Tom Bisio—a book which I shall explain here to some degree, but most certainly deserves its own post in the future.

As soon as the book arrived in the mail, I was burning through it with enthusiasm. In it I found a fantastic overview and explanation of Chinese traditional medicine, including its history, doctrine, techniques and applications, and relationship with Western medicine, as well as detailed explanations of treatments for nearly every common martial-arts-injury imaginable, and exercises specifically designed to help martial artists prevent further injuries. I immediately found an explanation of both my knee ailments, their likely causes, and how they might be dealt with until I could get real treatment.

I learned that my repeated use of ice to kill pain after a day at work may have actually been slowing or preventing the healing process by restricting blood-flow, and that heat and gentle flexion exercises could be used to bring blood (and qi, best translated as “life energy”) back to the injured areas, allowing my body’s natural healing processes to take place unobstructed. I immediately stopped icing my knees and instead used a heat pad nightly before bed, and soon noticed a dramatic improvement in the ligament pain in my left knee. Using the book’s detailed explanations and guide to acupoints, I massaged specific points on both legs which reduced swelling and lessened pain during the day; a productive activity to keep me busy during hours of waiting in hiding for elusive woodland birds.

By the time I had finished my work in California and returned to the East Coast for good, the ligaments in my left knee had healed completely, and my patellofemoral pain had become more bearable. Training at Shobu was still painful, however, and I arranged an appointment with sensei’s friend immediately. Within a week I scheduled two hour-long acupuncture sessions before moving to Ipswich. The practitioner was direct and to-the-point, plainly describing the problems I was having and how she might help my body to solve them itself (a principle difference between Eastern and Western medicine), yet providing enough scientific rationale to put my biologist’s mind fully at ease. Based on the acupuncture work alone, she was able to tell me that scar tissue had developed around my kneecaps (this was causing the pain and inflexibility) and exactly where it had become most severe. While I am no expert on modern medicine, I would say information of this level of detail is remarkable without the use of imaging technologies. After having me lie still under a heat lamp pin-cushioned with needles, she sent me off with a set of herbal plasters, moxa sticks (herbal sticks which are burnt and used to direct heat into acupoints and injured areas), and a few exercises as homework, and asked me to return in a few weeks for a follow-up appointment.

After the first session of acupuncture I felt little change in my knees and was highly skeptical, yet the next morning I had already begun to notice a dulling of the pain around my kneecaps. The pain was further softened after my second treatment, though I was still unable to perform certain movements (particularly techniques in suwari-waza which involve sitting and moving in seiza, or kneeling position) during training. After a couple weeks of diligently applying and changing plasters, heating my knees with moxa, and exercising my knees each morning, I was astonished to find the pain disappear altogether. It was a remarkably quick and complete transition; enough to give me the confidence to start training in an art as physically intense and demanding as Muay Thai.

Since that treatment, I have used techniques of Chinese medicine to aid in healing a number of injuries (mostly severe bruises and minor sprains) from my training at Sityodtong and Shobu, and have been equally impressed at how quickly they enable me to heal. My knees are stronger and more limber than they have been for quite some time, and in my last few visits to Shobu I practiced suwari waza for nearly an hour with no hint of pain around my knees.

As I have said before, martial artists are practically-minded and results-oriented people, concerned ultimately with what works, and not necessarily why it does so or where a certain solution comes from. Holding to that mindset, I would heartily recommend that any serious martial artist investigate how Chinese Medicine might be applied to their injuries and wellness routine. “A Tooth From the Tiger’s Mouth” is a well-written, clear-and-simple account of Chinese medicine, emphasizing its utility to the martial artist. Aside from that, it contains—in neatly distilled form—volumes of useful specifics on how to self-diagnose, treat, and prevent injuries with techniques of Chinese medicine. A book worth well beyond its retail price for any interested practitioner, and a good introduction for those interested in getting professional treatment.

Training in the martial arts, minor injuries are an inevitable—if not somewhat necessary—part of learning. Healing minor injuries and preventing severe injuries are important priorities for any martial artist hoping to practice for any length of time—especially those who view the martial arts as a life-long endeavor. Chinese medicine is a fantastic tool to help both treat injuries and prevent them in the future, and provides a more straight-forward, less time consuming solution than some approaches of Western medicine. For those hoping to continue practicing well into the next few decades of their lives, a look into Chinese traditional medicine would be a wise move indeed.