Degrees of LMA Immersion (Patreon)

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

Introduction

When you dive into Liberation Martial Arts (LMA), you're not just learning new skills; you're embracing a new way to interact with the world. Whether you're new to the community or seeking to deepen your existing practice, our immersion levels are designed to meet you where you are. However, where you are is also not a fixed point in time but constantly shaped.

Rooted in our anti-colonial, Taoistic, and Marxist underpinnings, we challenge the colonial view of the learner as a zombie, passively fed dead (decontextualized) information. Instead, learning is alive and happens actively through experience, exploration, and deep engagement with our environment. Here, "environment" extends beyond just physical spaces and encompasses the cultural, social, and economic realities that shape and define the martial arts landscape. Knowledge is understanding in context, which means seeing how things exist in the world and adapting.

The core of our curriculum is about unlearning and dismantling the previous colonial models that may interfere with or override new information: LMA's liberatory pedagogy. Our aim is to restore trust in learners who may have lost faith in their ability to self-learn. The view of ourselves as storage units to be acted upon is not a natural perspective but one foisted upon us. Under coloniality and capitalism, learning is not a way to access the world; it's isolated from it. However, in LMA, learning happens in the world.

Full immersion

Full immersion is about getting into the heart of LMA's embodied pedagogy. You're not just learning the LMA principles but letting them shape your interactions with the world. This involves actively following the online LMA curriculum and engaging with all the modules.

Immersion is about experiential learning—actually doing the things, figuring it out as you go, and engaging with the world, from the superstructure to material conditions. You're embodying the LMA philosophy and carrying it with you into the world.

LMA approach (LMA Way)

The LMA approach serves as the theoretical framework for LMA. It's for those who embrace LMA's liberatory pedagogy and spirit and want to adapt it to their unique contexts. Those applying the approach seek to understand the theory and draw inspiration from our examples or use our examples to better understand the theory. The LMA approach empowers you to take ownership of your sessions while staying true to our fundamental belief in the learner's personhood and their ability to learn.

It's thinking in an LMA model rather than taking a default status quo approach and translating it to LMA language or taking status quo thinking and adding LMA elements to it. That would be more like LMA concepts. The LMA approach is a Way of being. It's meant to be your new coherent starting point rather than a reference point.

LMA concepts

LMA concepts is right for those new to our approach, those who don't fully grasp our theory of learning and its implications, or those in rigid, prescriptive, top-down training environments wishing to incorporate elements of LMA's philosophy into their practice to increase decision-making, autonomy, and exploratory learning.

If you're part of an instruction-heavy, repetitive, teacher-centered pedagogy, LMA can be a transition to a more learner-centered approach. It's ideal for those in commercial gyms or normative learning settings who are beginning to explore alternative or liberatory pedagogical approaches.

LMA concepts within Western "tradition"

When people refer to "tradition" or "traditional," they often mean Western tradition. Western hegemony is why we can mistake Western traditions for non-Western ones. Hegemony is the dominance of one group over others, supported by legitimating its norms and ideas. I avoid the term "traditional" because Western norms are not a tradition for non-Westerners and even not a long tradition for the West.

Whether in school, sports, martial arts, or beyond, the hegemonic approach to teaching is part factory and part military system. The Western theory of learning assumes learners are deposit boxes for information to be filled by the hegemon (and its agents) rather than active co-creators of knowledge. Rather than knowledge existing in the world and in the body, it only exists in the head. Eugenics, another white supremacist Western theory, assumes some heads are just better at storing information than others. This is still the norm. Since colonial Western theories are hegemonic, they're no longer seen as theories but obvious facts. Learners who find this approach unnatural are at a disadvantage.

However, from the LMA perspective, knowledge can't be separated from experience or how it was acquired. There is no you without a body—no you without your senses and experiences. Instead of a top-down view of the mind as a C-suite office where the CEO/internalized colonizer dictates orders, the LMA approach is bottom-up, from the street up, from the environment up.

The first thing learners should be taught is pedagogy, or the theory behind how they're being taught. However, most have never encountered the concept of pedagogy. It's rarely acknowledged because acknowledging it would mean the case for how things ought to be taught is still open. That would also mean the Western way of doing things is not Truth.

Christianity was once not acknowledged as a religion or as anything other than base reality because if it was, it would mean it was one of many religions and one of many truths rather than a science or the one Truth. How could reality, the unquestionable and undeniable explanation for everything, be a religion? How could it be a belief system, institution, and practice rather than just how things are? Pedagogy would mean there is more than one way to teach and alternative theories of knowledge acquisition.

If the colonial approach is all you know, the only differentiator is what is being taught and how nice the teacher is in applying coloniality. If coloniality is an underlying feature of the universe that can't be questioned or challenged, then a nice version of this approach might seem liberatory. You are still a passive recipient of knowledge, and information is still passed top-down through direct instruction, but the teacher is really nice about it.

How over what

For LMA, "how" is more important than "what." Skateboarders, parkourists, indoor rock climbers, preschools, kids free-playing, and self-taught musicians are doing more LMA than most martial artists. The Western approach turns every activity into American football. An American doing Thai-boxing is probably still doing American football.

The American way is tense and rigid, forcing strength into everything and turning every situation into a matter of life or death. It's kill or be killed, dominate or die. It's Western foreign policy, it's capitalism, it's colonialism.

If tai chi is about the efficient redirection of energy, a wrestler could be doing tai chi, but a tai chi practitioner might not be doing tai chi—they might be doing American football. People tend to look at what people are doing, "Hey, we practice the same art," but how they do it is what matters. Two tai chi practitioners might have nothing in common if you look at their how, whereas a tai chi practitioner and wrestler might be doing the same thing if you look past the what. LMA finds nothing in common with reactionary pedagogies, even if they engage in similar activities.

The challenge to LMA concepts is that it must coexist with the hegemonic zombie (banking) theory of learning, which not only competes with but is incompatible with LMA pedagogy. You can't believe learners are zombies while simultaneously believing they're active co-creators of knowledge.

Liberation cannot coexist with what oppresses it, and oppression cannot coexist with what wants to abolish it for long. Look at the Haitian Revolution. Then, look at the origins of the "zombie," which also began in Haiti as a fear among enslaved Afro-Haitians that they would continue their slave duties even after death. A zombie is removed of personhood and exists as a vessel to be programmed. From the colonial/factory/military approach, an ideal learner is a drone that can be controlled by the hegemon.

Starting point, not endpoint

LMA concepts is ultimately an introduction to the greater LMA approach. If you don't have full control over your training conditions, you might not be able to apply more than concepts, but that doesn't mean you disagree with our theory of learning. You can believe in an approach without necessarily having the full power to actualize it. It's like Western socialists who believe in socialism but don't yet have the power to actualize it. Belief is powerful, and a belief in the LMA approach, even with limited opportunities for exploration, can transform and reshape even prescriptive training experiences.

However, if you have full control over your training conditions but only stick with concepts, it might mean you're still clinging to the oppressor's pedagogy. Beliefs come with implications and consequences. If you believe learning should be liberatory, why would you still do things that assume learners are drones meant to store Westernized information dumped by programmers? You can't foster human flourishing and repression together. You can't apply a radical approach and an oppressive approach at the same time. If you do, the radical approach only serves as an opiate to reinforce the oppressive ideology. You either believe in liberation, or you don't. You might start with a little liberation, but that's where you start, not where you end. LMA is meant to be transformative, not an anesthetic.

The differences make LMA

At the core of Liberation Martial Arts is a liberatory pedagogical approach that fundamentally differs from the colonial hegemonic learning model. Coloniality shoots first and asks questions later, decoupling actions from decision-making, information gathering, consequences, or the recipient. The colonizer is active and matters; the colonized is passive and does not matter. "Shoot first and ask later" also means "memorize this" and apply it later, if ever. It's information without knowledge.

Americanism takes it further and just says shoot—"Just do it." Who needs a process of decision-making or knowledge if you're always right? Who needs to learn anything when there's American exceptionalism and everything you do is automatically right? It's the new Christianity and the US is God, and God is always right. If you don't understand it, it's because God works in mysterious ways.

In stark contrast, LMA is rooted in the world and honors it. You learn by seeing how things apply. You gather information from your environment, which guides your actions. You don't just act; you don't act, then look. You look, then act, look, then act. It's a cyclical process of learning—a common worldview in the non-Western world. You perceive to act, then act to perceive. You see a possibility, you act upon it, you see the effect, you act upon it, and so on. Learning is alive; it is personhood, well-being, and a dynamical process. It is not only dynamic, but it also builds and evolves upon itself.

Learning contains multitudes: experience, exploration, and active engagement with both the environment and community. The LMA approach integrates life with theory, where every interaction becomes a potential lesson.

A fundamentally different belief about learners

LMA and coloniality are not just differences in activities but also different beliefs about people. A gentle parent who believes in child-led learning can have their child play, but so might a parent who defaults to a top-down authoritarian approach to parenting. Both children might engage in similar activities, but it's for completely different reasons for completely different results—underpinned by competing theories of parenting. It's play as the norm (gentle) vs. play as the reward (hegemonic default). Likewise, doing similar activities to LMA does not mean you're doing LMA. LMA, like gentle parenting, believes the best in learners. Coloniality believes the worst and forces them into an idealized mold. Without our belief in practitioners, the activities are just activities and not LMA.

In the LMA Learning Lab, we mostly play sparring games. We get better with every game. If you don't have our theory, you're just sparring, which might not make you any better or can even make you worse. Our humanistic view of learning is everything. What does it matter if you "play" some of our games if your view of human learning is ultimately fascistic?

Recapping degrees of immersion

Each degree of immersion reflects a commitment to our distinctive theory of learning but caters to different levels of engagement with the curriculum and control over learning environments. Full immersion embodies my vision of LMA, where learners fully adopt and integrate our philosophy into every aspect of their training, which carries into their lives. The LMA approach allows practitioners to take the principles of LMA and apply them to their specific contexts, empowering creativity and ownership while maintaining the integrity of our learning theory. LMA concepts serves as an entry point for those in more normative, restrictive educational settings or those who are beginning to transition away from the instructor-led, top-down models of learning.

What sets LMA apart is not merely the content of the learning but the philosophy that guides it. It recognizes that you cannot fully embrace a liberatory practice while adhering to oppressive, colonial, and hegemonic education models. Just as one cannot acknowledge the illegitimacy of a settler-colonial project while wishing to keep things the same, one cannot subscribe to a transformative, liberatory approach to education while clinging to repressive pedagogical practices.

The differences make LMA. We empower the learner, reject passive learning, and actively cultivate an environment where learning incorporates the complexities of real life.

Learning happens in the world for the world. Each degree of LMA immersion is not just a step towards learning martial arts but redefining the very act of learning itself.

Knowledge exists in the world. Everything exists in the world. Knowledge is a happening. Learning is about going into the world and finding, observing, sensing, experiencing, and interacting with happenings. The world and its conditions transform us; therefore, we must transform the world to transform our results. If learning and our results are decoupled from the world, what need is there to transform it? If learning and our material conditions have nothing to do with society, why change anything? That's at the heart of what makes normative hegemonic learning models oppressive. Learning is often our unfortunate introduction to oppression. You can't coexist with oppression, you can only be subsumed by it. You can't do LMA unless you're actually doing LMA.

– Sam