* Photo is not directly related to the writing. Photo by Mats Sommervold on Unsplash

Fighting for Peace:

Grappling and striking as potential pathways to peacebulding

Caio Amaral Gabriel

Combats—both grappling and striking—can be strategic moments in a martial arts training experience capable of providing the neuroendocrine foundation needed to optimize the development of prosocial and peacebuilding skills. This insight can help instructors design martial arts training experiences more intentionally and deliberately regarding the sequence of moments, activities, and tasks throughout the training.

By principle, each martial arts training session is an experience in which each moment promotes effects on the body and influences the practitioner's development in some way. Interpersonal interactions and the culture of the training environment are powerful relational and social forms existing in the context of martial arts capable of influencing human development. In fact, the human nervous system is physically and biochemically sculpted by social interactions (Carter & Porges, 2014).

A type of relational experience existing in most martial arts is combat, dynamic and challenging processes of antagonistic engagement that end in a sense of altruism and mutual respect (Kimmel & Rogler, 2019; Clapton & Hiskey, 2020), which occur in a controlled way and can be manifest in two broad categories: grappling and striking.

Surprisingly, both combat categories have been shown to increase the production of a peptide hormone: oxytocin. Rassovsky et al. (2019) investigated whether the practice of grappling and striking would result in the production of endogenous oxytocin, i.e., oxytocin produced by the body itself. For this, the researchers recruited 68 participants, between beginners and advanced in martial arts practice, and measured the participants' baseline oxytocin level through saliva, and oxytocin levels immediately after practice in both combat categories and also after the cooldown. The researchers found that regardless of the participants' level of expertise, both grappling and striking increased endogenous oxytocin production, although oxytocin levels were higher after grappling.

The fact that martial arts increase the production of endogenous oxytocin is relevant because of the broad involvement of this hormone in the emergence of prosocial and peaceful behaviors. This finding supports that martial arts programs can be pathways to peacebuilding by having the potential to establish the neuroendocrine foundation needed to strengthen the prosocial skills needed to cultivate peace (Britto et al., 2014).

But the effects of oxytocin are not always prosocial (Carter & Porges, 2014). Studies show that oxytocin has the potential to favor prosocial behaviors, but not in everyone or in all contexts. In certain cases, oxytocin can contribute to increased defensive aggression towards “out-group” members, which is the opposite result of strengthening the culture of peace. Furthermore, oxytocin may not promote prosociality in individuals with unfavorable caregiving experiences (van IJzendoorn & Bakermanss-Kranenburg, 2014). What seems to predict whether or not oxytocin will favor prosocial and peaceful behaviors is the feeling of safety (Carter & Porges, 2014) experienced by students.

Indeed, humans are on a enduring lifelong quest to feel safe, a biological drive that appears to be embedded in DNA (Porges, 2022). The feeling of safety provides the physiological basis that is required for healthy lifelong development, secure patterns of attachment, positive interpersonal interactions, prosocial behaviors, learning, restoration, healing (Porges, 2011; 2017; 2021) and peace-associated behaviors (Carter & Porges, 2014). More specifically, feeling safe is key for the oxytocin produced through combats to favor prosocial and peaceful behavior. This suggests that there is a sequence of fundamentals that must unfold throughout a martial arts training experience to favor the development of peaceful children who have internalized the values of non-violence and social justice (Christie et al., 2014).

First, the martial arts instructor seeks as much as possible to remove existing threat cues that may exist in the training environment and that might elicit a threat physiology that will create barriers to learning (Gabriel et al., 2021 have provided examples that may be helpful for both neurotypical and neuroatypical students). Second, the instructor can provide safety cues in a number of ways, e.g., by recognizing their alloparental role and adjusting their leadership style to be a secure source of attachment for students; intentionally creating a sense of affiliation and belonging between the student and their peers. Third, once there is a feeling of safety, the possibility that the moment of combat will produce oxytocin in a way that favors prosocial and peaceful behavior is increased.

After the moment of combat, students will be in a more favorable neuroendocrine state to carry out activities and tasks that seek to strengthen characteristics associated with pro-sociality, such as kindness, love, empathy, social intelligence, impartiality, leadership, teamwork, forgiveness, morality—at first for “in-group” members. As a next step, when the instructor observes that there is a maturation of the students in relation to these development of prosocial skills, a progression can be made towards peace education after combats, seeking to develop prosocial and peace competences especially for “out-group” members in ever-widening ecological systems.

Peace can be seen as a domain of competence that must be nurtured (Masten, 2014) intentionally in students, and martial arts training experiences can provide an enriched context with the potential to foster the neuroendocrine foundation necessary for the nurture of prosocial and peaceful competencies, especially from intentionally designed activities and tasks that occur subsequent to combat in a training environment that provides the feeling of safety. This is a way in which martial arts demonstrate their potential to strengthen sustainable development: from neurobiological foundations, they can be understood as powerful and concrete pathways to peacebuilding.

REFERENCES

※ Views in this writing are the author's own.