Talkin’ Basketball: Exercise Turns to Therapy for Homeless Youth

Newswise — At 9:45 a.m. on a rapidly warming June day in East Hollywood, Dr. Mo is on the blacktop courts of Lemon Grove Recreation Center cooking these young fellas good. Why this 45-year-old clinical psychologist is playing basketball on a Wednesday morning with five other guys who have yet to cross 30 is some kind of story, but it will have to wait till the doctor has finished the lesson he’s supplying out here free of charge.

One-on-one at the edge of the free throw line, he gives his defender a herky-jerky move that’s as old school as a paper check, bursts by him with a tight right-hand dribble, and then scoops in a shot off the backboard that has both sides whooping. “Doc is in his bag!” a teammate exclaims.

That he is. This is where Dr. Mo does some of his best work. Each week at this park and three others like it across East and South L.A., Moises “Dr. Mo” Rodriguez, PhD, runs the therapeutic exercise program he created in his role as Mental Health Director of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Homeless Adolescent Wellness Clinic, a support group for young people who are experiencing some level of homelessness or housing insecurity.

The Homeless Adolescent Wellness Clinic is a component of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Consider the basketball court an outdoor wing of Dr. Mo’s practice. It’s suited for the population he is serving, which he says is more easily reached through a looser, informal approach that doesn’t start with a lengthy set of intake questions or heavy explorations of past traumas. Since the program began in 2008, hundreds of young men—and many women, too—have participated. A game of pickup basketball offers Dr. Mo a side entrance into their personal histories.

“I’m not probing,” Dr. Mo says, noting how that might be resisted. “They’d look at me like, ‘This person’s going to ask about all my intimate moments and whether I’ve been abused or whether I’ve been assaulted, or whether I’ve seen stuff happen with my parents.’ You have to be receptive to that kind of conversation, and not everybody’s there. It’s just too much. This helps people come around on their own terms.”

Putting their nervous system at ease

Dr. Mo began seeing the benefits of a less structured style of therapy in the course of his training at the NYU Child Study Center. While performing home visits, he would take his young patients on walks around the neighborhood. He repeated the practice during his internship at a facility in Santa Monica.

“I saw that their comfort level increased and they became more balanced, grounded, and open and warm,” he says.

Though it may seem unsystematic, his approach was rooted in scientific theory and neurobiology—though he didn’t find that out until after he was already applying it.

“I didn’t go theory first,” Dr. Mo says. “It was more of, ‘This seems like a cool outlet for connecting with people.’  backed into finding all kinds of stuff that was evidentiary in nature about why it’s so beneficial.”

He discovered the Neurosequential Model, which broke down the science behind what he had arrived at intuitively. The model explains that the brains of individuals who have experienced trauma and are focused entirely on finding their next meal or a safe place to stay are often operating in the limbic system—survival mode—and don’t have the luxury of using the brain’s frontal lobe, which performs our more advanced executive functioning.

By providing a physical outlet to these patients—he also brings boxing gloves and pads, a jump rope, a deck of cards, a chess board, and other activities—Dr. Mo lightens their immediate struggle and frees them to use their higher faculties.

“I put their nervous system a bit more at ease,” he says. “Then you can access the other parts of the brain, and then you might open up. You might just start sharing. Giving that person an outlet helps us build a relationship.”

A bond between doctor and patient

Two of the four recreation centers where Dr. Mo and his group gather are located across from homeless shelters, so those who wish to join just have to walk on over. At the other two sites, they’re driven in.

Albert comes by bus. He goes by AMoney—big A, big M, no space, per his instructions. A longtime patient of Dr. Mo’s, he’s a regular at Lemon Grove. “I’ll always keep coming,” he says.

AMoney became homeless when he was 18, the same age he met Dr. Mo. He turns 26 in July. He’s cheerful and optimistic, against expectations. He takes a bus from Carson to join Dr. Mo twice a week for basketball, bearing witness to the effects of therapeutic exercise.

“It has really impacted me mentally,” AMoney says. “I don’t think about anything but basketball, and it makes me feel good. A couple of hours. That’s all I need.”

He says Dr. Mo helped turn his life around, giving him resources and leads that have led to employment, educational, and housing opportunities. He’s now out of the shelter and in a transitional housing facility, which hopefully will next lead to a fixed residence. This is a place of peace. As long as you can find that, you can get whatever you need to get done. You can manifest your life.

In September, he starts at West Los Angeles College, again with a boost from Dr. Mo, who clued him into a local work-study program called Angeleno Corps.

“It’s all due to Doc,” AMoney says. “I got my student ID and I’m in the student portal.”

He’s enrolled in a course in game design. “So pray for me,” he says with a small laugh. “That’s always been my goal—to be a video game programmer. I’m good at computers.”

As AMoney looks on, Dr. Mo sinks another shot. “Doc’s still got it, surprisingly. He has it. He’s cookin’ everybody, man. He can’t be stopped!” He considers what Dr. Mo has meant to him. “Without Doc, I don’t know where I’d be right now. Me and him got a bond. He made that bond. I never had a person who’s so consistent.”

The word seems to have revealed something to him. It is perfectly chosen. “That’s what I’m saying—consistency. I don’t have a lot of people like that. He gives you a toothbrush, toothpaste. He helps me out with hygiene! Nobody does that.”

He explains the effect of the basketball outings in a way that bears out the neurological benefit Dr. Mo described. They free up a part of his brain that the daily striving to survive cuts him off from.

“I got a lot on my plate,” he says. “This is a place of peace. As long as you can find that, you can get whatever you need to get done. You can manifest your life.”

‘Micro-moments’ that lead to breakthroughs

For all of his 17 years at CHLA, Dr. Mo has run the therapeutic exercise program. Patients cycle through. Some come once, others repeatedly. He gains their trust because they share “a similar flavor dynamic,” he says.

“I’m not pretending to be something. I’m a psychologist providing a service, but I’m also just another dude who likes to play basketball. That’s where that shorthand, that cultural connection, comes in. These are mostly young Black and Latino men. We get along a certain way that builds community and camaraderie. What it provides is a respect for accessing more privileged information.”

Just as these sessions don’t begin with a traditional intake, they don’t end with a dramatic self-awakening or an emotional outpouring. Advances are made in smaller, practical sizes.

“I’ll have these little micro-moments with someone who got to the park before anybody else showed up,” Dr. Mo says. “We have time to shoot around and chat, and life stuff comes out. ‘How’s work going?’ ‘Do you know a place where I can get a job interview?’ ‘Yeah, I know a place.’ ‘Can you help me with housing?’ ‘Yeah, I can help you with that.’ We might chat for seven minutes, but it’s a valuable seven minutes.”

Occasionally those conversations are followed up in private for those who wish to share something away from basketball.

“It’s a starting point. ‘Do you have some time afterward? I wanted to ask you something. Maybe we can have a phone call later.’ But some people are very straightforward. ‘No, no, I don’t need all that. I just want to play ball.’ And some take what they need and then you’re just someone along their way, someone who contributed along their path, hopefully something positive to their life.”