TKD Wellness

When I was first learning how to execute a flying side kick over an obstacle, it took quite a bit of mental gymnastics to build up the courage that ultimately helped me overcome my fear. I have seen my students experience similar fears while training and that’s my cue to have a “mat chat” on the topic of indomitable spirit.

Indomitable spirit is having the courage to face one’s fears and possessing unbreakable determination. There is nothing like overcoming our fears to build our self confidence. Here are three ways courage impacts our mental health:

1. Destroys Anxiety: Fear is at the core of most anxiety disorders and courage may be the antidote. Exposure plus response prevention is the standard treatment for some types of anxiety in which individuals are taught to use coping skills while confronting the very situation that causes anxiety rather than retreating from the fear-inducing situation. As one might imagine, there are plenty of circumstances that incite fear while practicing Taekwondo whether it is when breaking boards, demonstrating poomsae in front of class, or executing a flying side kick over an obstacle.
2. Builds Confidence: By repeatedly overcoming fear, it becomes easier to face that fear, and other related fears, in the future. In doing so, we build confidence and the more we build confidence the easier it is to have a “yes I can” attitude, which is advantageous both in and out of the dojang.
3. Create Neurological connections: Interestingly, the two above mental health benefits of indomitable spirit have a neurological basis. Specifically, our brains may develop unhelpful neuropathways over time through experiences that trigger negative thoughts, increase heart rate, and create a feeling of nervousness when confronted with a stressful event. The more one engages in this unhelpful neuropathway, the stronger it gets. On the other hand, the less we engage in this unhelpful neuropathway, the weaker it gets. Moreover, if one develops a healthy response to anxiety, it establishes a healthier neuropathway. Thus, every time we overcome our fears in Taekwondo, we are in fact strengthening our healthy neuropathways and weakening our unhelpful ones.

Keep in mind that fear is a very real experience. It is important to know that with proper guidance and support and a lot of hard work, students can grow and overcome these challenges. If this post was helpful, please leave a comment below and tell us what’s your answer to our question below.

What has been your greatest fear that you have overcome in Taekwondo?

Indomitable spirit is one of the five tenets of Taekwondo taught at Taekwondo Wellness. Check out my previous posts if you’re interested in learning about how perseverance, courtesy, integrity, and self control impact mental health. Also, be on the lookout for my next blog post about indomitable spirit and how it impacts our mental health as well. If you are interested in learning more about our programming, please call 520-333-3320 or visit our dojang at Intuition Wellness Center.

Image by: Ayuntamiento Roquetas de Mar…

Have you ever felt like giving up? If the answer is yes, then you’re not alone. I won’t lie, when I train hard, my muscles ache and I sometimes think, “what’s the purpose.” Life would be so much simpler without these aches and pains wouldn’t it? Well, that’s debatable! I know that my life would definitely lack depth and the satisfaction of accomplishment that comes when I persevere through life’s trials rather than giving up. So what does perseverance mean and how do we get better at it?

In my last post, I wrote about Integrity: 3 Reasons Accepting Our Failures Lead to Excellence and how important it is to look at our failures as opportunities for growth. Yes, perseverance is not giving up and finishing what you have started. I like to think of perseverance as also not giving up on yourself or your goals. Perseverance is not only an action but the way we think about life’s challenges. It is a goal oriented mindset that helps you push through the tough workouts or other challenges in life. Let me share 5 tips that I’ve learned from my psychology education, clinical work, and from my years of training and teaching Taekwondo that I think will help you have a mindset of perseverance:

1. Develop goals: Goal setting is a blog in itself (coming soon) and is commonly cited by olympic champions as a primary factor leading to their success. Goals act as our compass not only in sport but in life. Goals are vital at directing our energy productively and motivation that fires us not to give up. However, in order for goals to be effective they need to be personally inspirational and meaningful.
2. Have shared goals: Whether you’re part of a team or a family, having shared goals makes a huge difference in how all the members work towards a common goal or set of goals rather than against each other. Keeping your shared goal/s in mind at times of hardship comes in handy as it will help guide our behavior towards a mutually beneficial resolution rather than a distancing and destructive resolution.
3. Plan to achieve: Once you have a goal, the next step is to work out the fine details that will help you achieve it. There are lots of ways to plan and varying degrees of detail. I suggest keeping it simple but specific and measurable. For example, if your goal is to qualify for a state poomsae tournament, then part of your plan might include to conduct strength training 2-3 times per week, to practice poomsae for one hour and flexibility for 30 minutes 4 times per week, and to make sure you are eating a healthy diet consisting of the recommended protein, carb, and fat intake, and getting 8 hours of sleep nightly.
4. Focus on your daily effort: The plan is built on actions such as training, sleep, and nutrition that are within your control. This is important because we can only control what we do and cannot control what others do. For example, we can control if we training or stretching daily or if we put effort into our training or just go through the motions. As you put your plan into action, you will soon begin to notice the very nature of achieving your daily efforts is very rewarding. Actually, sports psychologists have done research that concludes that athletes who focus on their daily effort rather than the end goal are more satisfied with their accomplishments regardless if they lose the tournament compared to athletes who focused on winning gold.
5. Accept failures and grow: As mentioned in my previous post, Integrity: 3 Reasons Accepting Our Failures Lead to Excellence, the knowledge we get from failing is priceless and ultimately leads to success if we persevere. Another factor that impacts our ability to persevere is negative self talk, which affects our mood and as a result, our ability to perform at our best. Check out this previous blog post: “Self Control: 3 Mental Abilities That Improve Performance & Wellbeing” for more info on self talk.

Now you have the secret sauce to perseverance, goal setting. Keep your goals in your awareness, or even better, written down. By doing this it will help motivate you towards achieving your goals by more effective training, conflict resolution, and growth. If this post was helpful, please leave a comment below and tell us what’s your answer to our question below.

What goals help you persevere?

Perseverance is one of the five tenets of Taekwondo taught at Taekwondo Wellness. Check out my previous posts if you’re interested in learning about how courtesy, integrity, and self control impact mental health. Also, be on the lookout for my next blog post about indomitable spirit and how it impacts our mental health as well. If you are interested in learning more about our programming, please call 520-333-3320 or visit our dojang at Intuition Wellness Center.

Written by Yoendry Torres, Psy.D., Clinical Psychologist

Image by: BK

As a clinical psychologist, I find myself looking at the deeper meanings of what my students and clients say and do. For example, how often have we heard a child say “this is easy” while they can barely complete the training drill. This is typically a healthy, normal response in order to maintain our ego or belief that we are “good.” However, the problem lies that this behavior does not demonstrate integrity and can lead to further self deception that limits our ability to improve our skills by learning from our weaknesses. With that said, lets explore the meaning of integrity more and how slight changes in our mindset can make a huge difference in our performance, wellness and lead to excellence.

Integrity is more than just doing the right thing when others aren’t looking. It’s more than being honest with others. I believe integrity is also about being willing to look at oneself in an open and honest way. It is about our willingness to tell ourselves the truth. It is about having awareness of our weaknesses, faults, and failures and seeing them as opportunities to improve. This concept is called growth mindset and Dr. Brandy Baker recently wrote about it on her two part post, “When a Child Says She Hates To Learn, Part One” and Part Two. Here are 3 ways in which integrity can lead to excellence:

1. Accepting Failure: Being able to accept one’s failures and be motivated by them to improve our performance is crucial to becoming an olympic champion or a master in other areas of our lives. The priceless insights we gain by looking at our failures allows us to identify areas that we can improve and thus improve our performance through deliberate practice as a result.
2. Examining Failure: Without the ability to see the truth of our failures by examining them with curiosity rather than shame, we miss an opportunity to strengthen our weaknesses bit by bit, which in turn is what sets the best from the rest. Therefore, it is important to help our students shift their mindsets about failure from shame and embarrassment to one of growth and opportunity. One way this is done is by being honest with them; for example, rather than fall into the common trap of telling your student they were cheated from a first place trophy, explain to them in a gentle and compassionate manner that they weren’t good enough. Yes, that was not a typo. Tell your student they weren’t good enough and if that want first place, they are going to have to work hard to earn it. Another example, is to simply lead by example and when we, as instructors, fail at something, think out loud so that our students hear how failure can become an opportunity to get better.
3. Growing From Failure: Like the phoenix raising from the flames, we too are able to raise stronger after a failure when we have a growth mindset. Yes, the that old adage is true about “the truth can be painful” but what it missed is that it also craves the way for growth. Once we have accepted our failures and see them as an opportunity for growth we can create an improvement plan. The key to this is to identify and deliberately practice the specific ability that caused our initial failure. Thus, if the failure came from poor balance or an improper side kick technique, we would create a training plan that would focus on improving our balance or a plan that helps us develop a stronger side kick technique.

With that said, remember that integrity is about taking an honest look at ourselves and examining what we discover with curiosity in order to identify our areas of growth. These areas of growth, are the ones champions and masters train to achieve the highest level of excellence. If this post was helpful, please leave a comment below and tell us what’s your answer to our question below.

What ways do you respond to failure?

Integrity is one of the five tenets of Taekwondo taught at Taekwondo Wellness. Check out my previous posts if you’re interested in learning about how courtesy and self control impact mental health. Also, be on the lookout for future blog post describing how the other tenets may improve mental health as well. If you are interested in learning more about our programming, please call 520-333-3320 or visit our dojang at Intuition Wellness Center.

Written by Yoendry Torres, Psy.D., Clinical Psychologist

Image by: theilr

When I enrolled in my first Taekwondo class, I remember instructors expressing a strong emphasis on self control. At that time, in my youth, I understood self control to be strictly about being able to control my body in such a way that it would display balance, power, speed, and accuracy. I have come to discover with my clinical psychology education and my continued Taekwondo training, that our ability to control our body movements is just the physical portion of self control. There is an entire other portion that is rarely discussed during Taekwondo training, the mental portion.

In my last post, I proposed 4 Ways Courtesy May Improve Mental Health and in this post, I want to share how mental control impacts our overall performance and wellbeing. Lets examine 3 mental abilities and how they relate to  self/mental control. Moreover, these skills have been shown to have a significant positive impact Taekwondo performance as well as our performance in our daily lives. Here they are:

1. Attention: This ability has to do with how well we are able to focus on what we choose rather than be distracted by extraneous stimuli. In the dojang, this might look like not being able to focus on poomsae or basic training drills because your mind is wondering off to problems at home, school, or work. Not surprisingly, our performance decreases if we are not attending to the matters at hand. Thus, it is very important that we are able to improve our mental control of attention.
2. Self talk: This ability is known to increase or decrease our anxiety depending if it is negative or positive self talk respectively. Negative self talk can be heard when a student is presented with a new challenging drill and it may sound like, “I can’t do that” or “I’ll never be able to…” Needless to say, negative self talk can have a negative impact on self image, confidence, and performance while positive self talk can improve them and as a result should be a vital component of any training curriculum.
3. Our responses to our emotions: I consider this ability is by far the most important in sport and in life. It is our ability to take a hit in the face and not respond with rage. It is our ability to feel depressed and not hurt ourselves or others. It is our ability to not let our feelings of nervousness stop us from experiencing life. Let me make an important distinction. This ability is not about controlling our emotions. Our emotions are appropriate responses to things that happen. Controlling our responses to our emotions is what we do with those feelings of anger, depression, or anxiety. We can choose to express rage or outstanding sportsmanship. We can choose to seek social support rather than self harm. We can choose find healthy ways channel our anxiety instead of letting it cripple us.

There you have it! Three mental abilities that I encourage all martial arts instructors as well as coaches to incorporate into their lessons. These mental abilities can improve with consistent training, just as balance, power, speed, and accuracy can improve. Research has shown these skills to improve performance as well as our wellbeing.

How do you define self control?

Self control is one of the five tenets of Taekwondo taught at Taekwondo Wellness. Be on the lookout for future  blog post describing how the other tenets may improve mental health as well. If you are interested in learning more about our programming, please call 520-333-3320 or visit our dojang at Intuition Wellness Center.

Written by Yoendry Torres, Psy.D., Clinical Psychologist

Image by: Republic of Korea

I remember training in Chicago, Illinois and hearing my sa bum nim, Master Rodriguez, say “families that train together, stay together.” I am now reminded of that value as Intuition Wellness Center restructures Taekwondo Wellness classes with the vision of establishing a family oriented program that brings families closer together.

As a result, we have decided to lower our Taekwondo Wellness monthly fees to $95/month so that it is more affordable for Tucson community members to participate. For families with two children interested in learning the art of Taekwondo, they only pay an additional $65 for the second child. Most importantly, we have created a $175 monthly “Family Membership” that encourages parents to enroll with their kids and benefit from Taekwondo Wellness training.

Lets kick together to make our families stronger and happier.

If you would like to enroll, please call us at 520-333-3320 or stop by our office between 9-7 pm.

Thanks, Yoendry Torres, Psy.D.

Our team at Intuition Wellness Center is proud to share that as of May 1, 2017, Taekwondo Wellness group classes are open to all Tucson area community members young and old and with or without a mental health diagnosis. This change was in an effort to be more inclusive of all Tucson area residents and to lower financial barriers for those interested in learning the art of Taekwondo. Private Taekwondo Wellness and psychotherapy sessions are still available.

For more information or to enroll, please call 520-333-3320.

Thanks and be well,

Yoendry Torres, Psy.D.

Taekwondo Wellness has been offering its unique wellness classes to children, adolescents, and adults of all ages and skill levels experiencing emotional, behavioral, or relational problems since 2008. Taekwondo Wellness was developed by Yoendry Torres, a bilingual Cuban American, during his clinical psychology internship (2008-2009) at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. The program originally had a focus on physical fitness to help treat childhood obesity, which is not only a growing problem in the United States but also more common in youth or adults experiencing mental health issues.

After internship and graduation from doctoral clinical psychology program, Dr. Torres obtained a job as a post doctoral fellow and then as a psychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago, Illinois where he further enhanced and streamlined his program. A much stronger emphasis was given to the importance a family has on participants’ wellbeing with the incorporation of parent coaching during group sessions. Additionally, emotional regulation was emphasized by regular practice of meditation at the end of every session.

At the present time, it is the goal of Intuition Wellness Center and Dr. Torres to bring Taekwondo Wellness to youth, adults and families in Tucson, Arizona in 2016. Corporate and private programing will also be available through Intuition Wellness Center. For more programing information visit our Programs page or to see the Taekwondo Wellness training curriculum visit our Taekwondo page. If you would like to be added to our waitlist so that we contact you once the group is about to start, please give us a call or email us.

Thanks,

Yoendry Torres, Psy.D., Clinical Psychologist, 4th Dan Taekwondo Black Belt