Vann Taekwondo

🐉🕊️Rest In Peace

The best way to handle anger isn't to vent, but to breathe.

For decades, the "pressure cooker" metaphor has led us to believe that venting anger—through shouting, punching pillows, or visiting "rage rooms"—is a healthy way to release tension.

However, a groundbreaking meta-analysis of 154 studies involving over 10,000 participants reveals that this common wisdom is fundamentally flawed. Researchers found that expressing anger through high-arousal activities does not provide catharsis; instead, it often reinforces aggressive feelings and keeps the body’s stress response in overdrive. Even traditionally healthy habits like jogging can be counterproductive in the heat of the moment, as they further increase physiological arousal levels rather than dampening them.

To truly defuse fury, the key lies in turning down the body's heat through arousal-reducing techniques. Activities like deep breathing, mindfulness, and progressive muscle relaxation were shown to be consistently effective across various ages and cultures. Surprisingly, even gentle yoga proved more beneficial than high-intensity sports because it focuses on breath control and lowering the heart rate. By choosing to "chill out" rather than "blow up," individuals can effectively rob anger of its physiological fuel, offering a simple yet powerful alternative for managing daily stress and emotional outbursts.

source: Kjærvik, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2024). A meta-analytic review of anger management activities that increase or decrease arousal: What works and what doesn't. Clinical Psychology Review.

Congratulations to all the graduates! 🎓🎈🎉

I have former students graduating high school, college, technical school, nursing school, medical school, law school, and other schools of training.

Considering the whole of my life, I am beyond proud, excited, and hopeful that when each of you leave your mark on the world, that it’s one worthy to be retold. ❤️☮️

Imagine that 👽. An eye poke stops one of the greatest UFC heavy weights. Now, imagine an eye poke is a core pillar of your fighting method ........

👉 It’s common for someone who has survived any form of attack… …(physical, sexual, verbal, war zones, and even non-human threats like natural disaster, anything wherein it was not possible to escape that threat) to ‘beat themselves up.’ 😞 Because they wanted to fight and defend, but they could not. They were helpless to save themselves, or those around them. This LACK of action talked about in this clip happens because when one is under severe threat, and they know they can’t fight back, run away, or engage to diffuse the threat (whether that’s coming from a person or a situation) the next option* on the polyvagal spectrum is to freeze. 🥶 *So freeze is actually a BLEND of the fight/flee and shutdown responses. Then, if the threat remains and the individual or animal is still alive, the next survival strategy is to collapse (aka: full parasympathetic shutdown < where a portion of our vagus nerve comes in). 📌 The more we can educate ourselves and others about how our nervous system ACTUALLY works, and that this ‘lack of action’ is not a sign of weakness, or our brain not working properly, but a real biological survival strategy, the better off we will all be. If YOU have survived sexual assault or other forms of inescapable attack, working with your nervous system and learning how to come out of that survival physiology is something that I cannot recommend highly enough. Learn about the nervous system and healing sexual trauma via a somatic/nervous system approach by watching this popular long-form video I did a few years ago on this exact topic: https://irenelyon.com/2023/05/21/healing-sexual-trauma-a-somatic-nervous-system-approach-2/

Awareness + Preparedness

“The only weapon that can’t be taken away…is YOU!”

Unless you’re physically kidnapped by masked ICE agents who have no warrant for your apprehension and who have orders to violate your due process, then it’s up to you whether you face that fear and defend your own agency (your being) or whether you give in to that fear and allow your rights to be squashed by illegal means.

Tulsa residents seek self-defense training after park attacks After a surge in local interest due to park attacks in Tulsa, Midtown Martial Arts is offering a public self-defense course. Learn how physical preparedness and awareness can help deter threats.

what are they afraid of? #northcarolina #highschool #graduation