On Biotensegrity in Martial Arts: Forming Holistic Movement as Westerners Learning Eastern Arts

Abstract

How can people learn to move in a unified, powerful manner, as in Bruce Lee’s famous one-inch punch demonstration? How can adult Westerners learn and embody principles of holistic movement from Asian mind-body disciplines? Many martial arts emphasize body unity and connectedness through distinctive training methods and pedagogies, and these systems can help elucidate the concept of biotensegrity, a notion originating in biomechanics, a laboratory-based science. This article is the first to offer a reflective, first-person, and intersubjective perspective on the theoretical principles of biotensegrity by delving into the examples of unified movement in the foundational taijutsu training of ninjutsu and in an internal approach to wing chun kung fu. As two Western white male martial arts scholar-practitioners relearning how to move in our respective Japanese and Chinese styles, we draw on our respective autoethnographic and ethnographic studies to unpack three key qualities of biotensegrity: energy efficiency, maximizing force transference, and dynamic stability. We show how these three qualities work together to enable the authors and their fellow learners to connect the more familiar movement of limbs, hands, and feet with the movement of the deeper inner body regions of the torso, hips, and spine through the myofascial system to create powerful techniques tested against resisting opponents. By situating biotensegrity within lived martial arts practice, this work extends its application from biomechanics into embodied learning and physical cultures, offering new insights for coaching, pedagogy, and movement science.