Breathing is a movement. Exhaling creates slack—space—for other movements to emerge. When momentum, twisting, or impact cause internal pressure to build, unreleased pressure can strain the body, leading to health risks.
This module is about noticing and releasing that pressure as you roll or stop a roll. In LMA, this is not just a physiological safety measure—it's a way of resolving force before it resolves you.
Safety tips
Once you make contact with the ground, keep moving. Avoid stopping impact or internal pressure shocks.
In back rolls, keep your head tucked by looking toward your own chest or knees.
Begin exhaling as soon as the roll initiates and keep releasing air until the movement's momentum has fully dissipated.
The activity
Explore different rolls and stops while continuously releasing internal pressure. Breathing out creates empty space for your trunk to curl and directs force out of your body before it implodes inward. This isn't about "performing" the right breath—it's about creating the conditions for your body to move with, not against.
Activities in the video
Falling forward and rolling to the side
Curling into a ball and letting forward momentum carry me into a side roll before my knees meet the ground. My exhalation isn't decorative—it's the engine that powers me back to my feet. By resolving internal pressure, I free that energy to continue the roll into standing. Internal pressure, like social contradiction, can build explosively if neither used nor released—true in the body, true in history.
Back rolling with a stop
Rolling backward as a ball and braking with my arms before the head contacts the mat. The exhalation here is a soft landing for the inside of the body.
Full shoulder roll to standing from various stances
Completing the roll, then using momentum and breath to return to standing in one motion.
Shoulder roll from half kneel and full kneel to a stop and bridge
Here, I use a bridge—pressing the hips upward—to counter and cancel momentum before it fully plays out. This differs from the back roll stop: in the latter, momentum is nearly gone before braking; here, I meet momentum head-on with counterforce. Opposing forces can both create and arrest motion.
Forward roll from standing to a stop and bridge
Another example of self-directed momentum resolution. Rolling and bridging are both ways to prevent a hard surface from doing the stopping for you.
Rolling vs. stopping
You'll know the difference when you feel it. Imagine a sturdy glass bottle falling—depending on how and where it lands, it either rolls or shatters. In some conditions, force dissipates; in others, it is absorbed entirely. If you can dissipate force, do so. If you must absorb it, meet it with counterforce.
In LMA, releasing internal pressure is both a biomechanical safeguard and a metaphor for the LMA approach: resolve force before it resolves you; create space to move again.
– Sam