Student Wellbeing 

Wellbeing News

Martial Arts Therapy (MAT) is an active therapeutic program that helps students learn the life skills required to effectively manage the challenges in their lives. The MAT program combines the principles of mental wellbeing and emotional regulation with those of therapeutic martial art training techniques. Brookside has been lucky enough to run this program for multiple groups over the last two years with such positive outcomes that MAT is now included in the Year 9s’ FUTURES Program.

In Term 2, however, we ran the MAT program for a group of grade 4, 5, and 6 students – read about their experiences here:

We learnt about awareness and how we need to notice things around us. We learnt this skill by playing a game called Virtual Forest where Rodrigo, the facilitator, would call out an action and we needed to respond in a quick but smart way or we would get hit by the pool noodle!

We learnt how to do palm strikes using boxing pads for a few weeks to build strength and accuracy. This was to help us break tiles at the end and there were different colours of tiles, each with different levels of difficulty. To break the tiles we needed to concentrate in order to aim for the middle and use enough strength. My favourite thing to do during MAT was the tile break.

The code for MAT was be strong, be calm, be kind, and try hard. If there is a stressful situation, don’t rush the decision that you make. You have to be patient to have the best outcome. -Jacob C 6E

Martial Arts Therapy is a therapy to help kids deal with problems at school and at home, and we learnt to control how we respond in different ways. Virtual Forest was a very fun game but it was tricky because you had to think quick and things were coming at you so fast.

Before MAT I used to cry all the time but during MAT I’ve learnt how to control myself. For example, when other people upset me, I don’t get angry because I know how to stay calm.

My favourite part of MAT was making new friends and meeting the new teachers. MAT is a fun program to do but it also teaches you how to control stuff that you might not have been able to before. -Mia 6C