SEQUIM — Kathrin Sumpter teaches people how to use weapons that restore their sense of personal power.
Sumpter, owner of Sequim Martial Arts at 452 Riverview Drive, leads free weekly classes for people coping with cancer, diabetes or loneliness and other stress.
Monte Mogi of Port Angeles has been coming to Sequim for Sumpter’s classes for more than a year. When he heard of the classes, initially billed as only for cancer patients, he called and explained that he’d never had the disease, but after his wife suffered a stroke and he became her caregiver, Mogi needed some kind of respite.
Sumpter instantly told him he was welcome in her class.
“It helps. It truly helps,” said Mogi, who lost his wife, Nadine, in May, three years after her stroke.
Mogi recently went with Sumpter and several other students to a diabetes support group meeting at the Sequim Senior Activity Center, 921 E. Hammond St., to demonstrate the exercises he’s learned at Sequim Martial Arts.
Mogi has become an expert practitioner of escrima, a Filipino art that involves a pair of long sticks and concentrated upper-body movement.
Sumpter taught the form to him, to Christlyn Hill, a dialysis patient for the past 21 years, and to Judy Harniss, who has recovered from a stroke thanks in part to the Wednesday morning classes at Sequim Martial Arts.
During the demonstration, Hill, 57, showed Cecelia Schouten, 75, how to twist and joust with the sticks.
“That was fun,” Schouten said after several minutes, while Harniss, 68, gave Marcelle Yeroshek, 83, a quick lesson.
The escrima exercises are easy, Hill said, and they’re helping to restore her atrophied arm muscles.
The form also involves switching movements from side to side, Sumpter added, which invigorate the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
As her martial artists have developed their physical skills, she’s watched something else happen.
Confidence, clarity
These exercises “give you this confident feeling, a feeling of clarity,” Sumpter said.
“When you’re ill and you have a weapon, there’s something very powerful about that. And when people want to get their own sticks, that’s music to my ears.
“I’ve seen the about-face,” in a student who starts out ill, tired and scared — and then turns a corner through mastery of this art form.
Sumpter herself has experience with cancer: Four years ago she lost her first husband, Jim Manders, to throat cancer. He was just 58.
In the midst of a chronic illness such as diabetes, “you feel powerless,” added Hill, who discovered Sumpter’s class after seeing a newspaper announcement.
“It’s given me a sense of control over something in my life. I still have trouble . . . but my strength has been built back up. I am so thankful that she offers this.”
Susan Sorensen, the nurse who leads the diabetes group at the senior center, said that any form of exercise, be it a martial art or simply walking each day, gives people a sense of power.
“By exercising, you’re in control,” she said.
For those who think of martial arts as high-speed athletics, Sumpter emphasized that her classes don’t involve strenuous moves.
“We’re not doing jumping, spinning side kicks,” she said. “We open with 20 minutes of stretching.”
For information about the cancer and diabetes fighters’ classes and offerings for students of all ages at Sumpter’s studio, phone 360-683-4799 or visit www.SequimMartialArts.com. For details about the diabetes support group and other Sequim senior center programs, phone 360-683-6806.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
