A new study done by researchers from the University of Hawaii's medical school and Queen's Medical Center has discovered that learning hula can help lower blood pressure for people with persistent hypertension and help rehabilitate patients after heart attacks or cardiac surgery. Mele Look, the director of community engagement at the medical school's Department of Native Hawaiian Health, stated, "It is both appealing as well as effective. We found that they were affected not only on the physical front, by all that movement, but there was evidence of emotional and maybe even spiritual benefits that participants were getting. Hula has never been used before as an intervention in a scientific research study. We wanted to understand it both from the cultural side as well as from the Western scientific side."
In one study, patients leaving the hospital after cardiac events such as heart surgery or heart attacks, were assigned either usual medical care of 12 weeks of hour long hula classes, three times a week. The study showed that those taking the hula class had better physical improvement as well as the feeling for increased social support. Mele Look added, "People in the group often felt no one else really understood what they went through or how they were feeling, how vulnerable, facing their mortality. In the environment of a hula class, they felt supported, and it happened very fast and it lasted."
Mapuana de Silva, the kumu hula (hula teacher) for the cardiac patients, noted that 95 percent of her students had no prior hula experience. De Silva stated, "Most of them are older, they think, ‘I'm too old, it's too late. Because they were getting hula as a result of their heart incident, I think it just helped them relax and enjoy the exercise and the atmosphere of hula. Through that, they almost didn't realize how much their health was improving. We weren't sure, going into the study, if the students were going to be able to have a halau kind of family, spiritual, emotional experience, but they all did."
Source: Honolulu Star Advertiser, 8-2-2013, www.staradvertiser.com
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