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Going from capitalist subsumption to training and valuing yourself is a difficult transition. It's like an alarm clock taking you by surprise in the morning, starting you off in a panic. That's what jumping right into training can feel like, especially for those starting new or returning to training. It can be overwhelming and intimidating, and the thought training can be its own barrier. So, bring attention to that time before training.
You're not just a body to be thrown around. You're a person. Imagine love without romance. Training is a love affair with the same ups and downs. You must appreciate yourself for you to appreciate training. Likewise, training must appreciate you for you to appreciate yourself.
Every practitioner's endurance is better than they think—in theory. In practice, they're limited by tension, anxiety, pain, trauma, fear, oppression, perception, indoctrination, and conditioning.
We've repeatedly gotten in-person LMA practitioners beyond what they thought they were capable of within a matter of days. Is it because we pushed them? Absolutely not. Was it under duress? Absolutely not. It's always consent, care, autonomy, and body politics first. In fact, everything we do is an invitation rather than a command. Everything is guidelines rather than instructions. Is their improvement due to their cardiovascular, cardiorespiratory, and muscular systems improving in a day? No.
Rather than some biological improvement, they learned to better tap into their current potential. Tension, irregular breathing, and perception were holding them back. If you foster safety, perception, and self-regulation from day one, changes happen quickly. You can do three times the workload you did on your first day if you use three times less energy. It's no different than swimming. Once you develop ease, swimming is no longer as effortful. Now you can progress.
You don't actually know your rate of growth if you've never grown with ease. If you've never been at ease, you don't know what you're actually capable of—just what you've been told you're capable of, explicitly or tacitly.
No one's stamina is great under tension, anxiety, irregular breathing, and capitalism. However, when you're at ease and not holding your breath, your stamina is much better than you imagined. We can do a lot of work once you tap into that.
Once you do a lot of work, you're not just tapping into your actual stamina, you're improving it. Even if you're only training once a week (almost all the in-person practitioners train once a week), you'll develop better capacity than you would in any other environment. In fact, LMA is often the only environment our practitioners can bloom in.
To bloom, we can't rush into action. We must plant, foster, and blossom into spirited training. Blossoming is fruitful. This transitional period is a time to center our gaze, breath, and patience and bring our attention to the little things, the little humanizing acts that remind us that we're a person. That we're respected and valued. So, ease yourself into training.
You don't have to do all of our modules, but I recommend reading them to understand their purpose and how they relate to our overarching approach. A module is a scaffold. (Scaffold is a key concept and will keep recurring.) For instance, learning the alphabet is a scaffold. It's not meant to be practiced forever. Once the scaffold has fulfilled its purpose of building a foundation, you can remove it and build on top of that foundation with a new scaffold.
Some modules can be used as needed. Some can be used temporarily or only once. I apply all the modules to determine if they are necessary or for how long. When I have a group, I don't necessarily have them all do the same things. As the organizer, you can individualize. As practitioners, you can also individualize.
Nothing a practitioner does ought to look perfect because there is no perfect. So long as you're within the ballpark (another key concept), that's all that matters. Early on, we'll be motor learning and building movement diversity. Even if a movement is not necessarily within a ballpark, as long as it adds diversity to their movements and is safe, that's fine. An organizer also needs patience.
Practitioners can't see their own movement, they have to feel it. Being told what to do won't create embodiment (feeling their own actions). So long as you understand scaffolding, you can be at ease that this will build to the next thing to the next thing that gets them closer to the ballpark. You can't find the Way for them, they have to develop their own wayfinding (foundational LMA concept). As an organizer and training designer, you can only foster wayfinding. Finding solutions for them is not fostering wayfinding, just as driving for someone does not foster driving.
Early on, it's all guiding movements to the ballpark. Once a practitioner is within a ballpark (and the movement is safe), rather than idealizing the movement, move on to the next ballpark.
Since this time and space are dedicated to you, value this time of transition. It's rewarding. Capitalism and trauma disembody. Movement and play help us rediscover our bodies and reclaim ownership over ourselves. Healing and awareness start here. LMA is just as much a somatic healing approach as it is a learning approach, martial art, and political framework. That all defines Liberation Martial Arts.
Everything is experiential, and liberatory training is discovery through experience and play. You are not just a head. You are not just a body. You are an act of consecration.
To access the Liberation Martial Arts curriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project as my family and I navigate some recent health and financial challenges, consider upgrading your membership. If you've been putting it off, now would be a great time to sign up. Find other ways to support us 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 one-time donation on Ko-fi. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag on Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)