Wayfinding: Finding the Way (Patreon)

• If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contents

Introduction to Wayfinding in Liberation Martial Arts (LMA)

Wayfinding, a concept deeply ingrained in Liberation Martial Arts, is not just about navigation or orienting ourselves in physical space. It's a profound and dynamic interaction with our surroundings. This includes land, material conditions, community, and superstructure. In some cultures, this is known as the Way.

Wayfinding is a blend of cognitive and perceptual processes like perception, attention, memory, imagination, anticipation, and decision-making. This embodied knowledge of the Way is both innate and learned, passed down through ancestry and tradition. Unlike the Western/colonial paradigm, which places knowledge solely in the head, Wayfinding and LMA root knowledge in our space and conditions. Learning means dwelling in space.

Interconnectedness of self and environment

In LMA, the environment and the individual are inextricably intertwined. Without the person, there is no Way, and without the environment, there is no person. Progress in LMA does not occur in a vacuum; it's a collaborative process between the individual and their surroundings. You are not just in the environment but an inseparable part of it. The environment shapes your behaviors and actions, and in turn, you shape the environment. You seek cover when it is sunny. You plant a tree to give yourself cover. The environment is you, and you are it. This mutual influence is fundamental to LMA.

Understanding affordances

In the context of Wayfinding, an affordance is a possibility for action that is provided by the environment. Action capabilities are the range and variety of actions an individual can afford. For instance, water affords swimming, stairs afford climbing, and a path affords walking. Wayfinding is about perceiving and responding to these affordances in your environment. In LMA, a skillful practitioner perceives their environment as a rich source of actionable potentials that guide their movements and adaptations. Skillful Wayfinding always finds the Way.

Action capabilities are shaped by experience, abilities, constraints, background, and the demands and context of the conditions. These elements, intertwined with our environment, influence our ability to navigate our surroundings effectively. We cannot know our action capabilities without knowing what our environment affords. We cannot learn unless we're oriented to what we are learning. Learning is decision-making. Decision-making is the process and the result. What is practiced is improved. But decisions need context. Finding the Way requires feedback, sensory cues, and environmental information.

The role of perception in Wayfinding

Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information in order to make sense of the world. Our goals shape our perception. Since Wayfinding is about finding our Way through our surroundings, our perception organizes information and makes it alive rather than dead and inert. Perception is both an ability and a goal: we perceive to move and move to perceive.

Imagine yourself in a sensory deprivation tank so absolute that you can't perceive your body or even tell if your eyes are open or closed. How would you know how to do something as simple as blinking or even know you are blinking? Perception and action are inseparable. Without perception, orientation is lost.

The environment is not a static backdrop but an active and dynamic force. It can facilitate and hinder our ability to find the Way and necessitate our adaptation to changing conditions. Wayfinding emphasizes effective navigation and learning, especially in the face of new and challenging situations. It entails learning to learn and uses previously acquired knowledge as scaffolding.

Expanding non-Western perspectives

For LMA, exploration also means exploring non-Western knowledge systems. Non-Western cultures have accomplished and endured so much without ever being introduced to concepts like "toughness" and "grind." It's a colonial framework that means putting up with oppression in lieu of self-determination.

Wayfinding is not toxic pride in enduring oppression. It's a fluid and adaptive engagement with the world that rejects the cruelty of colonial practices and prioritizes exploration, curiosity, and self-determination.

Dynamic learning environments

For LMA, this translates into designing and organizing dynamic training environments where movements are not only executed but explored. Our approach is to create conditions that stimulate learning by actively engaging perceptual-motor skills in the environment.

Fostering the Way means controlling the conditions rather than the learner. There is no teacher—you are the organizer of the training conditions, not the dictator of the practitioners. This stands in stark contrast to coloniality and its procedures.

Training organizers can design training environments that are tailored to the individual needs and abilities of practitioners. A part of this process is scaling, which challenges practitioners without overwhelming them, providing opportunities for adaptive learning.

Emphasizing design allows the practitioner to explore and develop their skills in context. Skills without context are not skills. The organizer provides the space, and the practitioners provide the actions. Learning is about acquiring knowledge to make informed decisions for yourself on the fly. Constantly telling practitioners what to do robs them of learning how to make decisions for themselves. If the training space is rigid and top-down, the practitioner is memorizing, not learning, and will fight-flight-freeze-fawn under dynamic and stressful conditions because they know no alternative. Don't confuse cruel and toxic environments for dynamic ones.

Skillfulness is land-based and materialist

Skillfulness is a practitioner's ability to adapt a movement pattern based on environmental cues. It's always land-based or, more broadly, environment-based. Coloniality demands consistent, repetitive, isolated, and alienated, top-down practices that dehumanize learners into machines. It removes the environment from the person and the person from the practice—erasing their context and humanity.

Traditional knowledge and Wayfinding propose an alternative humanizing approach where individuals engage and explore their environment to develop a diverse and fully embodied action repertoire. The organizer provides the action space and allows the practitioners to flourish.

In LMA, practitioners are not passive recipients of instruction but active agents of their own development. They interact with their conditions and adapt their behavior in response to them. They learn.

Learning something new means understanding how it is different

An integral but overlooked part of the learning process is learning through differences. By comparing different ways to do something, something is learned. In missing a shot, something is gained. When learning is messy, something is understood. Only by going through the process do you find the Way.

Watch kids

Why do kids touch everything, do everything, and accidentally break things? They're exploring their environment. Learning through differences and personal discovery fosters a deeper understanding and ownership. Knowledge is non-linear and messy.

I took my four-year-old to the science center the other day. Little did I know that several elementary schools had also organized visits that same day. As a result, we found ourselves amidst a crowd of over a thousand students immersed in Wayfinding.

The students were actively engaged, connecting with their surroundings and community. Children possess a natural inclination to explore and push their boundaries. They rely more heavily on touch experience than adults. Regardless of gender, there was a notable lack of judgment surrounding physical contact among the young learners.

They explored their relationships with each other and themselves, delving into their own boundaries and those of their environment. Whether consciously or unconsciously, their exploration extended beyond the physical realm, encompassing facets of personal identity, culture, sexuality, and gender.

My son was constantly establishing rules based on discovering what was off-limits. Through this exploration, he maximized the space he was permitted to inhabit and expanded his freedom of movement. When you don't know the boundaries, you often self-impose limitations beyond what is necessary. However, this exploration of boundaries is not confined to physical movement and touch; it extends to words, sounds, and self-expression.

Wayfinding enables children to grasp not only the possibilities and constraints but also the norms and rules of their environment. Exploring all the possibilities and then making sense of it is how we all learn. However, the best learning occurs when children are guided and supported, ensuring that traumatic consequences are avoided. Complete autonomy (without support or guidance) can be just as discouraging and frightening as top-down authority.

Wayfinding and trauma

Many of us come to martial arts after trauma. In some cases, martial arts was the cause of trauma. Trauma detaches us from our bodies. Training as Wayfinding helps us find our Way back to our bodies.

Unlearning to learn

Exploring a wide range of possibilities develops strategies for finding our Way despite changing conditions. Constantly exploring new ways of navigating space fosters a more flexible and adaptable Wayfinding ability over time. Through extended periods of dwelling, we amass experiences that culminate in knowledge and skillfulness. Dwelling in coloniality, however, amasses trauma. LMA begins with unlearning to pave the way for growth and healing. Without unlearning, coloniality will constantly interfere with and override new information that better serves you. To fill the glass, you must empty it. This is the Way.

Concluding thoughts

Wayfinding is more than a skill; it is a way of being in the world that emphasizes the fluid, continuous interaction between the self and the environment. By fostering an educational framework that emphasizes this interaction, LMA not only teaches martial arts but also a profound way to engage with the world at large. The more we dwell in Wayfinding, the more we improve in finding our Way.

– Sam