Meet Our Team

Sifu Mathew Carver has been a student of martial and healing arts for the past 25 years, training and learning with such notable Masters and Grandmasters as Sifu Hing Wo-Tsim, Dr. Jwing-Ming Yang, Aaron Kwan Hong, and Chung Liang Huang. Currently, Sifu Carver is in the process of earning his doctorate in Oriental Medicine at South Baylo University, which he plans to utilize to alter and redefine the sad trajectory of modern psychiatric treatment.

After graduating from Loyola Marymount University and after years of strenuous training, Sifu Carver in 2003 attained the honor of Sifu (teacher-father in Chinese) and opened a small school of healing called Lau Kune Do Temple in Lake Forest, California under the tutelage and advisement of his teacher and close friend Grandmaster “Richard” Tsim. Using principles and modalities proven effective for thousands of years to balance lives, this temple grew into an outpatient addiction recovery center called Phoenix Healing Arts. A place where old lives are reborn anew. Sifu Carver also began pioneering Tai Chi and Qigong as standard practices in nearly every treatment center in Southern California at the time (the list is endless). Teaching at well over 20 different facilities, Sifu Carver honed his craft working with those who needed balance and restoration the most, people suffering from addiction and mental illness.

Sifu Carver conceived, constructed, and executed a stand-alone program in 2010 that combined all he had learned over the years working with brave souls suffering from addiction and mental illness. This autonomous program, Zen Recovery Path, used holistic methods to treat substance abuse as an alternative to traditional and celebrated 12-step programs. This program became known worldwide treating clients from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and even the Galapagos Islands.

During the all too brief years of Zen Recovery Path (2010-2018), Sifu Carver began to realize how many addicts suffered from mental illness as a primary diagnosis. Though mental illness seemed to be the underlying cause, addiction rehab facilities at the time only treated substance abuse and generally ignored or underserved those needing mental health assistance.

This changed with Barn Life Recovery. Barn Life Recovery was, and still remains, the only mental health treatment facility of its kind in California. Sifu Carver worked closely with the staff at the California Department of Social Services to create an outpatient adult day program that serves the mentally ill exclusively and on a primary level. No longer did people with mental illness have to pretend or overly exaggerate being addicts in order to receive proper and comprehensive care. Barn Life Recovery treats people with mental health issues first and foremost as well as co-occurring disorders that often arise. This groundbreaking program gave people the option to have discreet mental health care without having to go to a psychiatric hospital or an asylum for the mentally ill. No longer was mental illness a stigmatized or dirty word. Using modern psychotherapy and ancient Far East principles, Barn Life Recovery revolutionized the mental health recovery world in Southern California and it is Sifu Carver’s goal to end mental health stigmas and prejudices across the planet so that everyone who needs help, find it.