Movement Practice: Case study of Capoeira as a system for gathering personal and communal strength
It's World Martial Arts day! Today we are going to explore the first martial art I ever trained in. Capoeira!
Listen along!
Capoeira Angola emerged in 16th century Brazil as a form of resistance among enslaved Africans, disguising combat training within dance and music. The art form developed as combat training simultaneously incorporating elements of dance, order to develop a complex communication system that Portuguese enslavers couldn't recognize. The capoeiristas trained combat to música de capoeira in the background. Not only did these powerful sounds fuel the training but warned when to transition to dancing in order to avoid punishment and disguise the means of rebellion. This ingenious system allowed practitioners to develop strength, agility, and fighting skills while appearing to engage in cultural ceremony.
The roda (circle) created a sacred space where knowledge was passed down through movement, music, and oral tradition. Within the roda you’d hear a few different instruments: the berimbau, pandeiro, atabaque, agogô, and reco-reco. My favorite, The berimbau, is a musical bow of African origin and one of the most distinctive sounds of Capoeira Angola music. A wood rod bent with a steel string to create the bow shape and a hollowed out gourd attached to the bottom.
Capoeira training is a combination of bodyweight strength training, flexibility training and endurance training. I remember the days being in constant motion while learning to do flips, rolls, cartwheels and handstands to the music. The importance of flexibility comes from the necessity to execute and avoid powerful kicks from a variety of different positions.
There was this one episode of the show '“Greatest Warrior” where they had a master capoeirista among other master martial arts practitioners perform a kick on a moving platform and the capoeirista by far had the most stability and power on average through most tests. Capoeira adapts to each practitioner's body and capabilities, encouraging sustainable progression through playful exploration.
The roda represents a microsystem of community. Capoeira’s history and culture is one where we want to see each other get better. Rivalries may exist, conflicts may be settled but there is always respect. Learning martial arts from such a young age was paramount to my ability to defend myself but also understand the power of pulling punches or avoiding physical conflict altogether. I yearn for the youth to return to the traditions of martial arts and honorable fights. If need be, the intentional and self determinant, use of our bodies are excellent tools for communication and boundary setting. I’d rather a lil communication than the use of deadly weapons in settling challenges.
Being a capoeirista has strengthened my ability to improvise. I’ll never forget seeing one of my teachers get swept off of his feet but then somehow turning the fall into a floor spin, kicking in the air at his opponent, using his hands and shoulders as his base of leverage and trapping the opponent between his thighs before tossing them off balance and flipping back to a standing position. I’m having trouble describing what I saw because it was just that amazing.
This adaptability has been much like my entrepreneurial journey. As someone who in the past aimed for perfection I’d feel annoyed at having to start over or pivot. But the pivot is the most powerful opportunity for us to move closer to our goal. The pivot is not us lying on our back but flipping over our shoulder to a smooth, or not so smooth but on our feet, ginga. The “dance” or “step” in capoeira. Feet switching places in order to return the equilibrium of rhythmic movement and engagement. As I’m writing this I’ve had to make the decision for a business pivot and it's got me excited. I hear the background music of the imaginary crowd cheering me on as I prepare to strike my target.
Capoeira is a beautiful case study for systems design and systems thinking oriented around community. Particularly adaptive cycles first introduced by C.S. Holling in 1986 to describe cycles of change in ecosystems.The adaptive cycle, a framework for understanding how complex systems evolve, powerfully illustrates capoeira's evolution through four distinct phases: growth, conservation, release, and reorganization. Each phase demonstrates how systems accumulate, preserve, transform, and reinvent resources over time.
In the growth phase, systems rapidly expand with high resilience and potential for change. This manifested in how enslaved Africans developed capoeira in slave quarters, gathering in circles during permitted rest periods to practice capoeira. Knowledge transfer occurred through community gathering.
The conservation phase represents when systems become more structured but less flexible. Capoeira developed specific organizational patterns with the berimbau's rhythms signaling when to switch between combat and dance. Songs in regional dialects mixing Portuguese with African languages contained coded instructions, creating a complex system of preservation and communication.
During the release phase, systems face disruption and must adapt or collapse. For capoeira, this manifested in intensified periods of persecution where established training systems needed rapid transformation. As authorities became more aware of capoeira's dual nature, practitioners had to constantly innovate - developing new signals, changing practice locations, and evolving their musical codes. This continuous adaptation became integral to capoeira's nature, with masters developing increasingly sophisticated methods to preserve the art while evading detection. The persecution paradoxically strengthened the art form's resilience, as each crackdown forced the community to strike their oppressors harder and faster to pursue liberation and develop additional systems of practice and preservation.
The reorganization phase represents transformation and renewal. Capoeira evolved from an outlawed practice to a celebrated cultural art form, maintaining its core principles while creating new opportunities for innovation. Like the art's ability to shift between combat and dance, this cycle isn't strictly linear - systems move between phases as needed. Capoeira is now a globally practiced art form and sport.
The journey of capoeira from survival art to global sport demonstrates how systems can evolve while maintaining their core essence. Whether in business, technology, or community building, these lessons remind us that true strength comes not from rigid structures, but from our ability to adapt while staying rooted in our foundations. The roda continues to turn, and with it, new possibilities for growth and transformation emerge.