Learning Lab First Day (Patreon)

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

Intro

MMA fighter and activist Alana McLaughlin visited the LMA (Liberation Martial Arts) Learning Lab for her first LMA session and was kind enough to let us document it. Everyone's first session is similar but also unique because LMA is an approach rather than a fixed style, so it adapts to the individual. LMA is highly structured, but the structure is not fixed beforehand—it's built together during the session.

We don't use instructors, coaches, or even facilitators. Instead, LMA uses training organizers (TO) who design and organize the sessions, often in real-time with the practitioners. The structure is co-created. This is different from skill sharing, where people take turns being the authority and expert.

Conversations and scaffolding activities allow us to set the direction, and then the practitioners and TOs navigate together. TOs are fluid; practitioners can step into that role, and TOs can step into the practice. There is no one fixed way to do it.

Navigation doesn't require speaking since navigation is done with the body, and information is relayed through the body. Whether practitioners say anything or not, they are still co-creating because their bodies are always speaking—often first and more accurately. Speaking itself doesn't mean co-creation either because, in commercial and normative settings, you speak to get permission or to ask questions from the authority. When you start with autonomy and consent, you don't need words to constantly ask for self-determination or verification.

Alana already has years of training, so some of our time was spent unlearning. Rather than leaving with a lot, I told her she would leave with less. At the time, she also had a Thai-boxing match scheduled, which contextualized our training.

As a TO, I attune to the LMA practitioner before me. We talked beforehand and during. Together, we became aware that past traumas were shaping her current movements. This informs our structure. Planning everything ahead of time removes the need to listen. Lots of radicals fail and replicate reactionary tendencies by removing autonomy and self-determination before the session even starts. "If and when I get students, I'm going to do this, this, and this." Making it all about me, me, me—the teacher—is the Western hegemonic student-teacher dynamic. The students don't get a say; they are dehumanized blank canvases, and the teacher is the painter. It's all about what the teacher wants to do, centering the teacher as the main protagonist, authority, and hero. You finally get to be in charge and have power. "It's my turn." But turn to what? Replicate the same model. This is coloniality disguising itself as a universal pedagogy and harm disguised as care. What does it matter if your gym is ACAB if you're using cop/military pedagogy?

(From the screening for Unfightable)

Slow and simple movements allow the practitioner to think, process, and talk, creating a richer information landscape for designing the session we are currently in. Simple activities also allow for unlearning conversations.

Activities

Breathing and sapling stance

We can't always control our environment, but we can control our shapes—starting with our breath. Alana is shaping her breath into a box. It's not a shape that can be seen but only felt and heard.

The body is a tree sapling. Flesh melts down, bones lift up. Rather than being held up by tension, Alana is learning to hold herself up by her structure—this costs less energy. Feet root and gather information from the ground. More information means less guessing, saving energy. One intention is to unclench the shoulders and hips.

Shaping visual perception

Alana is taking in the depth and breadth of her space. Perception is automatic, but it is not automatically shaped by three dimensions. When you control your eyes and take in every dimension, there's less unknown, less chance of something coming at you from left field. Less mystery and startle means more perception, ease, and energy. This is why it's important to name the LMA approach when using it to lessen mystery and startle. Making it about the approach and the practitioners make it less about the presenter or instructor.

Concentration and vigilance, on the other hand, tunnel your vision, promoting more anxiety and costing more energy. The prior breathing activity released anxiety, opening the eyes. I use "activity" intentionally rather than other terms like "drill" because how you mentally categorize can promote or lessen anxiety.

So-called "bad habits" or destructive behaviors stem from tension and trauma. (We don't care about the "right" way of doing things or whether something is a "bad habit" or not. We only care if it is destructive to yourself or others.) When you are at ease, you are adaptive and malleable. These scaffolding activities make everything we build on top of it malleable.

Deep and staggered sapling

Rooting, taking up space, easing the trunk, and regulating pace. As with your breath and eyes, pace can be automatic or organized. The more you can shape autonomic functions, the more in control you feel because you are literally in control of your functions. This synergy promotes more ease.

This is also a time to play with asymmetry. People seek symmetry in an asymmetrical world, leaving them off-balanced. Asymmetry is balance in an asymmetrical world.

Movement diversity and balance

You need movement diversity in every direction to fully explore your three-dimensional movement landscape. Moving in space often requires balancing on one foot.

Slow is fast, and fast is slow. When you rush, you sometimes have to do it again or take a path you can't untravel, bringing everything to a halt. As Alana put it, "You can't unthrow a punch." However, if you take your time, you often don't need to do something again. You also have the time and space to course-correct as you go. LMA's Wayfinding isn't about speed but minimizing lost time. Being steady reduces lost time.

Alana mentioned our approach feeling like somatic therapy because it is.

LMA's wu wei

Using the arms to recycle energy into your hips and legs. It takes energy to create momentum but very little energy to keep it going.

Power walking

We use power walking to attune practitioners to the flow of momentum coursing through their bodies—from their arms to trunks to legs.

Power walking can be shaped into various arm and leg movements. It's not about a memorized technique but feeling the direction of energy.

You can power walk backward, laterally, or side to side. For us, nearly everything is power walking.

Centering gaze

Our eyes face out, which should naturally focus our gaze outward, not inward. We should be partner-centered rather than self-centered or self-conscious. Alana and her training partner, MY, are centering their gazes on each other's trunks. They can see the environment and all the limbs from the trunk without shifting their gaze. You're setting your eyes on the horizon.

Moving to and around the target

Once you see the horizon, you can now navigate around the horizon. We come in already knowing how to back away from an obstacle. What must be made intuitive is also moving to and around the obstacle. When you move forward, you deny an obstacle the space and time to change directions toward you.

Connecting with the obstacle

Making contact with the obstacle as you move around it. We use foam noodles to lower the stakes, as stakes can shape our behaviors in destructive ways.

Total body

Movement is always total body. Move the trunk to move the body.

Tag with the shin

Now, rather than moving and touching the obstacle with the foam noodles, it's about touching it with your shins. (Foam noodles and chest protectors are our first equipment.) Just a gentle touch. How you step and move the trunk stays the same. Still power walking. It's intuitive because all that changes is the touching surface, from foam noodles to shins. The kick emerges. No pivot or adjusting of the planted foot is needed. In fact, no instruction is needed. It's Alana's movement.

Just as the session is alive and being organized as we go, Alana, too, is organizing and reorganizing her kick movement based on information from her eyes, feet, body, and movement landscape.

Intuition is about trust—trust in the approach, trust in the TO, and trust in yourself. Reducing stakes and promoting psychological safety are critical to fostering intuition. This simplifies the activity to movement problems and solutions.

Tree sapling game

Using foam noodles to guide each other's movements as we root with the feet and flow with the trunk. A sapling is rooted and pliable. It doesn't fall over; it bends. This game, in particular, is about making the eyes less dominant and developing the other senses like touch sense. (Categorizing as games, like activities, makes it less about stakes and more about tasks, exploration, and wonder.)

If both practitioners can recycle energy, they can flow together. Much of this is about making the shoulders and hips pliable. Since we already unclenched them, we can integrate that ease into movement. Ease creates empty space for movement.

Once there is flow and trust, the role of the TO diminishes. I'm mostly encouraging. Movement has a momentum and so does confidence. Keep the confidence going. We call this "nice culture." Sometimes, "nice" is all that needs to be said about a movement.

We sometimes have practitioners play TO even on their first day because it's mostly about being positive and keeping the activity positive. Since it's LMA, no one expects TOs to be the experts, allowing you to walk into it even on your first day. It would be different if this were a commercial gym and a commercial model, but fortunately, we're LMA.

LMA pushing hands

There's no fixed or set way we do pushing hands. It's flexible based on need and context. Since Alana was preparing for a Thai-boxing event, we wanted to attune her to being connected with a partner since Thai-boxing allows for clinch. (We rarely say "opponent" because that causes anxiety and disconnection and raises the stakes.)

In LMA, we think about "clinch" as two people co-creating a single structure. However, the participants can't see the structure; they can only feel it.

Touching and grappling can trigger trauma for some practitioners. Starting with ease (de-escalation), foam noodles, and then moving to pushing as a sensitivity game frees touching and grappling from existing in the same context as trauma. They're differentiated.

Movements are contexts. What matters isn't the movement but the context. Through new contexts, we can develop new paths and scaffolds for new movements.

Alana told me she can't dodge due to trauma. In the sapling game, you can clearly see her use her eyes to dodge the foam noodle before it makes contact. Why? Because it was no longer about dodging violence but using her eyes to make a read and clear an obstacle. It's a new context that no longer triggers a freeze response. She had spent much of the session shaping her eyes and moving around obstacles, so moving away from the foam noodle was intuitive. This is how we can reshape movements even shaped by trauma. She doesn't need to be consciously aware of the change for the change to happen. (She won't even know she can intuitively dodge until she watches this video because we didn't discuss it. Surprise!) We don't have to "fix" someone for new movements to arise. Talking through trauma takes a long time and may never alter movement. However, new contexts foster new movements quickly. In the LMA approach, you don't have to be perfect and pristine to be a good mover. Alana got so good at dodging that I invited her to use her touch sense instead of her eyes to feel the momentum and move with it.

In the pushing hands game, Alana and MY are physically connected and moving without either leading the movement. They are co-creating their movements. They are moving without aggression while avoiding obstacles, all without verbal communication. The less you speak with your mouth, the more the body can talk. Intuitive movements mean being in your senses rather than your self-conscious thoughts.

In the video, I may be speaking more, but the practitioners are the ones fully in control of their movements. They are dictating, not me. Unlike the colonial model, it's not about the words but who owns their movements. I'm using words but not for ownership—a critical difference. The practitioners own their bodies and their movements. However, since they are playing together, they must give each other their attention and respect. It can't be selfish. In LMA, movements are co-created rather than independent.

Outro

We worked through the curriculum—Introduction/Unlearning, Plant, Water, Nurture, Growth—in less than an hour. Organizing a session has a flow that everyone involved shapes. When you co-create, there is kinship, bonds, community, and trust. Horizontal doesn't necessarily mean co-creation or self-directed. Distributed doesn't mean lacking in authority. Emphasizing co-creation makes the learning experience radically different.

– Sam