Baduanjin Used as a Therapeutic Activity Within a Youth Detention Facility
BY ELLIS AMDUR ON FEBRUARY 14, 2021 IN UNCATEGORIZED
Foreword
BaduanJin 八段錦 (‘eight brocade exercise’) is a classic system of Chinese physical culture. Such systems are generically called qigong. There are an almost innumerable number of qigong sets that integrate, in different proportions, breathwork, stretching, physical exercise and meditative practices. Some are crafted to enhance health; others are for the purpose of developing power or martial arts abilities. Each set can have quite different effects on body and mind. Baduanjin is known to enhance skeletal-muscular fitness and vascular health, as well as enabling practitioners to modulate and control their emotions. [1] The term ‘brocade’ can be interpreted in a variety of ways. One that the author finds most useful is that brocade refers to the body’s web of connective tissue (fascia, ligaments and tendons). These are stretched and strengthened through the integration of specific physical movements with certain breathing techniques. A useful image for this is a Chinese finger trap, a tube of woven bamboo strips, that is inserted on the ends of two fingers, and locks (becomes rigid) when pulled, thereby tightening the weave of the bamboo strips.

There are a number of variations of baduanjin, both standing and sitting. The set that I use in my clinical practice is a standing set, that has the following exercises:

Two Hands Hold up the Heavens
Drawing the Bow to Shoot the Eagle
Separate Heaven and Earth
Owl Gazes Backwards or Look Back
Sway the Head and Shake the Tail
Two Hands Hold the Feet to Strengthen the Kidneys and Waist
Clench the Fists and Glare Fiercely
Bouncing on the Toes
A comprehensive discussion about baduanjin would require a book. To do justice to the topic, such a work would include a full discussion of the history of physical culture in China, as well as a discussion of the proto-scientific theories that underpin these exercises. Furthermore, it would also be necessary to discuss the physical and psychological effects that the performance of baduanjin, and whether any of these claims are research-based. Such a study would be further complicated by the variety of exercises, both sitting or standing, that can comprise a baduanjin set, as well as the different ways that the practitioner is taught to execute that set.

Instead, I will be quite specific here. I am going to discuss one extended case where I used baduanjin as a mode of ‘stealth psychological intervention’ among incarcerated American youth. It is, in essence, a phenomenological case-report. Phenomenological accounts can be of considerable value, because they often bring new, unexpected information. All too often, researchers search for confirmation for what they already expect to be true. Phenomenology introduces us to the unexpected, offering new directions for research on areas of human existence that have not been thought of before.

Were one to carry out further research on using baduanjin in circumstances much like the following case-account, one would need:

‘Differential sorting.’ so that the researcher is sure that she or he has a cohort of incarcerated youth who are detained for similar reasons, coming from similar socio-economic circumstances, etc.
Several research cohorts. One would need to standardize the practice of a specific set of baduanjin for the study. Or, one could choosing two or more different baduanjin methodologies to compare. Finally, one could add a different type of exercise, anything from yoga to such things as body-weight calisthenics to compare rates of improvement.
A consideration of teachers. Will differences in teacher personality or style of teaching effect rates of improvements. In other words, is it the messenger or the message?
In Lock Up: Baduanjin as a Vehicle Towards Personal Integrity
Approximately thirty years ago, I worked at a community mental health agency, specializing in crisis intervention. The local youth detention facility contacted my supervisor, and outlined the following problem: The facility functioned as a jail for youth under the age of eighteen. They had forty single bed cells, holding young people as young as twelve, detained for misdemeanors like truancy, vandalism and petty theft, as well as holding those either awaiting trial or after- conviction placement in a long-term facility for serious drug dealing, rape, assault and murder. They were approximately ninety percent male, and a number of them were gang affiliated, divided among Crips and Bloods (which were, perhaps surprising to some of my readers, multi-racial) and various Hispanic gangs.

The detention facility generally had between seventy and eighty young people incarcerated at any time. “Wait a moment,” the reader might ask, having read the number of ‘forty single-bed cells.’ The overflow slept on mattresses in the hallways. The director described the facility as ‘hot,’ meaning that there were frequent conflicts between inmates and staff (called ‘counselors’ rather than ‘correctional officers,’ as is customary in youth facilities) as well as fights among the youths themselves. The director requested that mental health specialists be dispatched to the facility to conduct twice a week group therapy sessions to lower the ‘heat.’

Another therapist, Carola Schmid and myself, were each dispatched to separately conduct such therapy sessions. They were a disaster. No one talked. What would they talk about anyway? Their crimes? Other people’s crimes? Their gang affiliation or their conflict with other gangs? Each of these would have put them at either legal or physical risk. How about talking about their insecurities, their fears, their loneliness, or their traumas? What do you, the reader, think would happen to any youth who exposed his or her vulnerability within a group where some were predators, and others willingly lent themselves to pack and mob aggression? Any jail or prison community is a dominance hierarchy, and self-disclosure would be the same as painting a bright blue spot on a magpie’s neck—all the other birds in the flock would peck at it, until the bird was killed.

There were other problems. The population was not stable. Some youth were quickly released—their minor misdemeanors attended to by family, attorneys or probation officers. Others were hospitalized due to complications from drug abuse or mental illness. Others had their crimes adjudicated and they were transferred to other facilities. There was stress among different ethnic groups, different gang affiliations, and the rare girl in the group would, just by her presence, precipitate macho posturing, roughhousing, clowning around or sexual harassment.

Ms. Schmid and I came up with a plan that we proposed to the facility director and our supervisor. She is an expert at Astanga Yoga, a very powerful, dynamic form, sometimes referred to as ‘power yoga,’ and I am an expert instructor of traditional martial arts. We would go there, alternating on a weekly basis, and she would teach yoga and I would teach baduanjin. [2]

As I did not attend Ms. Schmid’s classes, I cannot report in detail on her success, but in our regular conversations, she clearly had much the same effect on her classes as I did. (In some respects, Ashtanga Yoga works the body in the same way as baduanjin, but in a much more intense and extreme fashion).

Ms. Schmid writes of her own classes:

On one occasion, I wanted to teach them handstands without the wall, so I asked them to get in groups of three, so two people could help/spot the person going in the handstand. There was some reluctant movement and then one kid said, “No f**king way,” which seemed to be what all the other kids were thinking. I asked why, to which he replied “I don’t f**king trust anyone in here.” They agreed that they would all try if I was one of the two people helping/spotting, and we worked our way through the group.
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