Many instructors, facilitators, and approaches to movement and martial arts talk as if total autonomy already exists—as if learners arrive with full motor control, full decision-making capacity, and full freedom to explore. But that isn’t true, and pretending it is true creates its own harm.
Imagine walking across a wooden beam that’s a foot off the ground. Easy. Ordinary. Your body can choose how to move. Now put that same beam 1,000 feet in the air. Mechanically, nothing changed. But you changed. The material conditions changed you.
Heightened arousal robs self-determination. The old adage, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,” speaks to how we have self-determination in our movements until we don’t. Sometimes the punch isn’t physical but an embodied pattern we carry. It narrows perception, disrupts coordination, and limits choice—things happen without your choosing. Acknowledging this fact would force mechanics-driven instructors and systems to start over from scratch, so they avoid it. Instead, they begin with the assumption of autonomy rather than fostering it from the beginning. These systems end up selecting the survivors rather than developing everyone.
When arousal spikes—fear, panic, overwhelm, threat—you lose access to voluntary movement. The moment shrinks. Your body switches to survival patterns, not learning patterns. No one can predict what you might do, including you. You’re watching yourself move, or not move, without any real say in the matter. You can perceive threats, but you can no longer access your actions.
Most movement systems—even play- and game-based ones—assume the practitioner starts with enough autonomy to benefit from the game. Building everything on self-direction assumes people already have it. That’s a libertarian belief, not a liberatory one. That assumption naturally benefits those whose lives have never been interrupted, marginalized, or threatened. People whose safety has been largely guaranteed can play with risk without anxiety. Many people don’t start with that luxury.
Understanding that there are already systems in place that decay self-direction is the starting point of a liberatory approach to movement. Autonomy is not something to be assumed but reclaimed and fostered.
Even well-meaning movement approaches and instructors assume the beam is one foot off the ground. But for adults whose autonomy has already been eroded by trauma, capitalism, violence, fear, or long absences from the body, the beam is always 1,000 feet up. Even if instructors say they understand this, does it show in their approach? Or is there still an unspoken belief that self-determination will simply appear on command?
Someone who already uses a game-based method once told me they could see that what we were doing was different and wanted to do what we were doing, but they couldn’t name the difference. They know LMA when they see it, but they couldn’t explain what made it LMA. (That conversation sparked this essay.)
The Liberation Martial Arts approach starts with these questions and takes them seriously:
Can you choose your movement right now?
Do you have enough motor control to move the way you intend?
If other approaches focus on teaching you how to walk the beam, LMA focuses on restoring the conditions that allow you to access that ability—or even to begin learning it in the first place.
When arousal settles, autonomy can flourish. When autonomy flourishes, arousal settles. And when those two support each other, exploration becomes possible. Exploration is where learning accelerates.
A calm person with no martial arts training is more likely to avoid a punch than a trained person who is escalated. Simple tasks done calmly become nearly impossible when overwhelmed. And tasks that once felt impossible become achievable when control expands and noise decreases.
LMA bridges that gap between ability and access. We don’t raise the stakes to “toughen” people. We lower the stakes so the real person can show up. We nurture that person so they can move as themselves. This includes repatterning embodied obstacles to self-determination. Then we challenge them so they can grow. Growth means self-determination under broader and broader contexts.
Everything we do is designed to maintain or restore the ability to choose how you move, even as situations become dynamic, uncertain, or intense.
LMA is the practice of giving people their movement back—not just the mechanics, but the ability to express themselves through movement across changing environments. We don’t force movement; we foster the conditions where movement stays yours.
It’s your movement.
We just help you move as you see fit.
To access the Liberation Martial Arts curriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project, consider upgrading your membership. Find other ways to support me here. – Sam
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(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, upgrade your subscription. You can also support me on Patreon or make a donation. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag on Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)
