Soft Body (Patreon)

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

This is a partner-guided exploration using haptic feedback rather than direct verbal instruction to communicate direction. Instead of resisting your partner's pressure, you flow with it and softly melt to the ground. Like the sapling metaphor introduced in earlier sections, you want to be pliable and fluid rather than tense and rigid. You bend to the ground rather than break and crash. You yield, and in doing so, you stay intact.

Soft vs. hard falls

What differentiates a soft fall from a hard one? The collision.

Sudden and rigid collisions generate breaking force. Soft and extended collisions disperse energy into bending forces. That energy is easier to redirect and recycle.

Rather than fighting the fall, relax into the ground and make contact with soft muscles and pliable joints. Remember our concept of bones lifting up and flesh melting down? This continues that theme. Get the hard bones out of the way—they resist the ground. Let the flesh melt. This spreads force and redirects energy through you rather than into you.

Soft falling doesn't mean limp—it means responsive. It means sensing and redirecting. By expecting contact with the ground, you gain control. Slowing it down affords you more control, allowing you to redirect hard impact from one part of your body to the fleshiest, widest, and softest parts—such as the shoulders, upper back, thighs, and glutes.

The head is a hard part—hide it from the ground like a turtle. Use fleshy areas, like your shoulders and back, as your shell. Exhale to release internal pressure. Breathing out is a part of continuous movement.

Don't stop. That's how a collision breaks you. Keep moving after you contact the ground to prolong the duration of contact. Spread it over both time and space—not just across your body, but across the surface of the ground. This is how you bend with the fall. You don't need a specific one-size-fits-all technique—unravel, collapse, spiral, fold, roll, or turn. Keep the momentum going until you are safe. Use any movement to redirect and spread force.

Soft hands

You can make initial contact with your hands, but in the service of constant movement rather than as brakes. A roll, somersault, cartwheel, sports flop, backflip, and frontflip are falls redirected by the hands. Walking is falling redirected by the feet. Redirection is control, which is why all these movements are also known as controlled falls.

Be in water

Imagine yourself submerged in water. How would you fall? What would that look and feel like?

Water buys you time—so does comfort. It gives you time to think, move, and respond.

Not-so-sudden impact

Even when a stuntperson falls directly onto their back, what appears to be a sudden impact with an immediate stop is actually an extended fall. The broad upper back lands first and acts as a buffer or crumple zone. They're still moving through space, through the flesh. The rest of the body follows, distributing the force over time and surface. Sometimes they slap or push the ground with their arms or feet to decelerate peak force. This can even lift the head and back away from the floor, avoiding whiplash and the ground collision of vulnerable areas. It's still rolling, just within a narrow margin for movement.

Haptic Wayfinding

The essence of this activity is haptic. Your partner guides your descent not with commands or direct instruction but through their body—through pressure, contact, and shared momentum. You attune to their touch and momentum through your skin, muscles, and bones. You are sensing the direction you ought to flow, and by flowing rather than resisting, you reduce the risk of injury.

You're not obeying someone's commands; you're Wayfinding through contact.

Haptics include:

• Tactile sensing – the perception of forces, textures, and temperatures on the skin.

• Kinesthetic sensing – awareness of body position, movement, and effort.

• Haptic perception – the synthesis of tactile and kinesthetic information to understand and interact with the world through touch.

• Haptic feedback – physical stimuli that signal movement possibilities, like pressure and contact.

Once you touch the ground, it, too, gives you haptic information—on how you ought to move and engage with it. Rather than listening to verbal instructions, you are attuning to environmental forces. The partner and the ground become the environment, and you Wayfind together.

Video demonstration

The video shows diverse ways to flow softly with a partner and the ground. The partner gives gentle, even, and consistent haptic pressure—a smooth invitation to move. You correspond with softness, and the ground corresponds in kind. If you meet the ground with aggression, the ground will also respond in kind.

In LMA, flow means without gaps. Don't stop, don't resist, and don't fight. Yield. Be moved by your partner and be moved by the ground.

Areas of contact

Each area was explored both independently and in combination:

Shoulders

• Hips

• Knees

Directions of pressure

• Forward

• Backward

• Sideways

• Diagonal

• Mixed directions (e.g., forward then sideways)

Partner safety

If you are the one applying pressure, move out of the way as your partner rolls or melts. Avoid lifting or picking them up.

Examples of haptic contact

These are examples—not prescriptions. You are not meant to imitate them precisely but to explore them as references in your own Wayfinding.

Shoulder contact

• Using hands, forearms, or your own shoulders to press into theirs

Hip contact

• Using the shoulders, shoulder and biceps, and the head

• Combining directions (e.g., pushing backward then sideways in an "L" shape)

• Sequential or simultaneous shoulder-head pressure

Knee contact

• Using fingers, palms, or shoulders

• From behind: pressing or scooping the crook of the knee

• From the front: pressing above the knee for safety

• Avoid placing your head between their legs

Hip + knee combinations

• Pushing hips with your shoulder while pulling the knee crease with the pinky side (knife edge) of your hand or scooping with your palm

• Pinching the knees inward with your hands (like "Whirlpool") while gently pressing the hips with your shoulder—have the partner start with their feet already close together

Final thoughts

These were our movement discoveries—not rules. Prioritize comfort and safety. Within those conditions, see what else is possible.

Even if you try some of our movements, you'll do them differently from us, and that's awesome. You're not meant to replicate; you're meant to explore.

As long as no one is getting hurt or feeling uncomfortable, you're on the right path.

– Sam