It's a Mindset!

Martial arts provide a focus on
health and fitness

By Keith Harris and Vincent F. A. Golphin
Photos by Brandon Vick

Slavery's legacy still affects African Americans' thinking and behavioral patterns when it comes to health. More than a hundred years ago, those in human bondage were often denied access to doctors. Today many blacks deny themselves. Dr. Reginald Wills, an assistant professor at Howard University's Medical School who is outraged by the trend says, "The single most pervasive problem for Americans of African descent with respect to health care is the universal under utilization of health services." To fight back, he opened an Internet site, www.doctorwills.com, to challenge the uninformed and school the curious.

Tae Kwon Do expert Sandra Flowers hammers that pulpit, too. "A majority of African Americans put health at the bottom of their priority list," said the master instructor who with husband Charles operates the Gold School Unified Tae Kwon Do Fitness Center at 24 Seneca Avenue in Rochester, New York. After a quarter century's practice of the defensive art, the fifth-degree black belt offers discipline and diet as a way African Americans can take a pre-emptive strike against crippling and killing sickness and disease.

It's a cruel truth-far too many African Americans accept a wide range of illnesses as a kind of cultural death sentence. "We have been conditioned and trained to think that mistakes are failures and not opportunities from which to learn," said Sandra. "When it comes to our health, if we fail in keeping commitments to a specific exercise routine or a certain diet, we view ourselves as failures and give up our dietary goal." To avoid negative comments from others and self-condemnations, many African Americans ignore poor eating habits and health problems.

"When it comes to health, the biggest obstruction African Americans face is their current mindset regarding themselves and their bodies," Charles said.

"Our self-esteem collectively and individually is nowhere near what God intended," he added. "If our focus is on health and exercise, it should stay there regardless of external influences. The biggest challenge most of us face is our frame of mind!"

Sandra doesn't just talk. She used the determination and knowledge gained from decades of practice in Tae Kwon Do to fight her own health problems-a stroke and major surgery. Less than a decade ago, about 1992, she was hobbled for more than a year by a stroke-like condition.

"The doctors gave her a dosage of medicine that she took and had a severe reaction," Charles explained. "She almost died. She was laying there on the floor, and if I hadn't been there, she would have died."

Later, she had a major leg operation. "Almost completely blew out the knee," Charles said, "but she can teach the 'whip butt class' so good now, it's unbelievable."

Sandra said Tae Kwon Do is known as a peaceful art. "When it was created over in Korea, it was used as a self defense tactic for those who were unable to defend themselves," she explained. "So it wasn't even a martial art where you would go out and attack and fight. It was simply created to defend oneself and to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. So it is a noble art within itself. This is a skill that you can use in your daily life, the skill and ability to control yourself, emotionally and physically, to stand strong when you need to be."

Blacks have the highest rates of hypertension, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes. Those are just a few of a long list of maladies recorded by the Centers for Disease Control, a government think tank. "We are still trying to get past the greens, hog maws and chitterlings," said Sandra, who is among a select covey of women and one of only two African-American women to have reached such high ranks in the martial art. "We don't consistently eat a variety of foods that balance our biological functioning."

Sandra said diabetes, stroke and high blood pressure are preventable diseases that can be controlled by diet. "On the other hand, a bad diet can lead to severe intestinal problems," she said. "A vegetarian diet as well as dramatic changes in a diet consisting of high levels of meat, fatty substances, sugar, artificial foods and flavors, can greatly reduce the onslaught of these physical ailments."

She and her husband offer classes that deal with the whole gamut of health, weight, diet, exercise and mind purification. Students, some as young as age 4, are introduced to facts on different types of food and how it affects the body.

"Originally, before being forcibly introduced into the European dietary habits, African Americans were more focused on eating vegetables and fruits, which are the best natural foods," explained Charles. He also described natural ways to cleanse the body of the pesticides and chemicals sprayed on fruits and vegetables by agriculturists. "The most natural way is to take fresh lemon and lime with 22 ounces of water, and add a little honey and cayenne pepper or molasses-whatever is to your liking. Drink it everyday-once in the middle of the day-on a regular basis for about two months to cleanse your system."

The Flowers also recommend fasting as a cleansing method. "Fasting is a process, and should be done gradually to prevent nutritional deficiencies. Start off with a meat fast, then the next week begin a water fast, then a vegetable and fruit fast," Charles suggested. "This process enables you to proceed into the most demanding form of fasting, which is the foodless fast."

Sandra Flowers talks a great deal about nutrition, but her academic interests are in sociology. She is a full-time student at the State University of New York at Brockport.

"The field of sociology is the study of groups and people and behaviors and the culture, and those types of things reflect more of my interest and what I'm moving toward understanding." She said the family structure is a key factor in health.

"Many teenagers are having children in their early teens, when they are still in their candy and junk food phase," she said. "So they can't pass on healthy eating habits to the next generation. Often, because of socialization, a person will eat whatever their culture presents, regardless of the negative health affects."

Charles Flowers added that many African-American families' eating habits have roots in the antebellum South where African-American women developed culinary traditions that are high in fat and cholesterol.

The Flowers' fitness center also stresses self-esteem, self-confidence, self-control and self-discipline. Sandra said one of the most daunting barriers to an individual's healthy lifestyle is psychological. "That is why we try to instill positive psychological reinforcements in our Unified Tae Kwon Do classes with positive words and attitudes."

The fitness program accommodates individuals with different emotional and physical disabilities, such as special needs children, those with Attention Deficit Disorder, as well as the blind and physically challenged. A family atmosphere is created within the unified Tae Kwon Do classes, to provide psychological and emotional support as participants work towards their physical and dietary goals. The Flowers have found their style particularly effective with "problem students."

Charles and Sandra said Tae Kwon Do can be used to work on anger management and aspects of Attention Deficit Disorder, from minor all the way to severe.

"We have taken on children whose parents and teachers have said that child or student will never be able to do the martial arts because they don't have enough of an attention span," Sandra said. "These same kids have gotten their black belts and moved on. Some are in college, some are out on their own and in the military. All they needed was somebody who would believe in them and encourage them and trust them."

She said the same is true for adults who think they are too far over the hill. "We call them 'tight,'" she said. "You just keep working with them on different stretches, and basically just warm up and relax the mind. That's all it takes most of the time. You might have to overcome some mental blocks that tell you that your legs are just not going way up there."

Charles said the students hold the key. "Sometimes, once you've mentally formed a block, it's hard to jump over that wall," he explained. "So what we have to do is figure out how to jump over that wall or figure out ways around the wall. Once you go around the wall, you'll start saying to yourself, 'Wow, I didn't know that I could do that.'"

Sandra said the muscles have a flex enzyme. "You have to just keep working at it to loosen it up and release the tension a little at a time," she explained. "If you don't use your muscles, you lose the flexibility. You may have to do a combination of massaging with oil and then stretch until you work the tightness out."

She offered the story of her mother, Louise McKinney, as proof. "My mother also works out with us in the 'whip butt' class," she said. In the beginning, her mother had trouble walking up the two flights of stairs to enter the school.

"She would be winded when she came up the stairs, and would have to sit down and get her breath," Sandra said. "Now she pops up those stairs with no problem, and she's ready. It was just a matter of time. She just had to get into it. When we get people in the classes who are her age, she competes."

Charles smiled and said, "She won't let them outdo her." He said martial arts is like a fountain of youth. Ironically, it was Sandra's mother who came to the sport only recently, who got Sandra and her seven siblings involved in Tae Kwon Do.

Sandra studied under Korean grandmaster Bukwang Park, who taught that Tae Kwon Do is a lifestyle. She has been involved since 1976.

"I was an adult and my siblings were all much younger," she recalled. "They were all in high school or middle school and junior high. So my mother decided that everybody needed to get into a program and begin some type of formal training, and that was it. Now, mind you, we were never involved in any kind of organized sport in school, so this was new. But we did get a chance to get into the martial arts and everybody took off in Tae Kwon Do."

Two of her brothers dropped out. "It just wasn't for them," she acknowledged.

She said the McKinney Family developed a strong presence on the tournament circuit in Canada and throughout the state. "It would be us-my siblings and then our significant others, and we would have our own cheering squad. We were just that large, so it was phenomenal and the name of the McKinney Family just took off. We just had an awesome time with that and it encouraged a cohesiveness among us. That gathering and that strength of bonding was just stronger within us, and those who were a part of us, we just included them in. So it wasn't saying somebody wasn't blood kin so they weren't part of us.... Nooo, everybody was included into that. And it has just been a phenomenal experience for us."

Charles started karate lessons about the same time, then expanded into the study of Tae Kwon Do in the late 1980s. Together and individually, over the past 35 years they have earned rankings in the International Tae Kwon Do Federation and the World Tae Kwon Do Federation, the leading organizations affiliated with the sport. They see the benefits in their immediate family, too.

"We have three children, one 25 (Salim Flowers), 18 (Shabasha) and 12 (Raymound)," she said. "The 12-year-old just achieved his black belt last year. And we have one granddaughter in the art right now. She's 6 (Jalyn Flowers) and is just as full of talent and skill and just enjoys being in there."

She said the fitness center was an extension of their joy. "My husband had a vision to open a school so the students can experience what we experienced," Sandra said. "We just had a fine time, and did so much traveling, it would be a shame not to share that with others."

The Flowers said many African Americans think mostly whites and Asians are involved in the martial arts. Only recently, said Charles, that impression has begun to change, largely due to the efforts of high profile devotees, such as actor Wesley Snipes. "He's given recognition to many people, especially among the black participants, for their diligence and discipline," he said. "I would say that in this country, there are close to 200,000 of them in different places who haven't been recognized for their efforts. But the really good ones, he's tapped into them, and now he has a medium to showcase them, and let them be seen on television."

African Americans have much to learn about Tae Kwon Do and its benefits for a healthy lifestyle.