The Operative Path - Part 1
It Isn´t About Changing The World, It Is About Facing It
This article distills the core vision I developed in the Operative Traditions volumes: a path where technology is not conceived as a simple set of tools we manipulate to meet our needs, but an architecture that reflects who we are and what we are becoming. In this view, technical means are not external objects to be exploited; they are internal mirrors of our being, shaped by the gestures, discipline, and form we bring to life itself.
By making use of my recent experience in patenting a punch measuring machine, this article outlines a framework for re-rooting technique in life. It is a call not to change the world, but to comprehend it through genuine action, through discovering the potentials of matter, and through a renewed encounter with what we create.
By also honoring the man who powerfully contributed to let me walk my first steps along the operative path –Dr. Mariano Perez Amor- This article explores how the operative approach can help us regain a meaningful relationship with technique in an age where it has become abstracted, automated, and alienating. By reintroducing measure, craft, and lived experience into our relation with technology, I reclaim the possibility of human development not as progress but as deepening, a path where embodiment and intelligence converge.
Originality Through Tension: How a Punch, a Patent, and a Lifetime of Fascination Came Together
When I began the process of patenting my punch measuring machine in 2021, I expected many hassling engineering challenges. It was the first time of my life I got into a process of patenting, and I didn’t expect how simple the application requirements were compared to the complexity of other technical works and the path that led to the idea in the first place. The process reminded me that, in many ways, the real invention happened long before the actual invention emerged in my mind.
The seed of this invention is rooted in 1998. Back then, during my studies in industrial engineering in Vigo, I trained Full-Contact under the supervision of 13-time world champion Simón González. These two parallel processes -formal training in mechanics and practical exposure to combat striking- revealed an inconsistency that would later become central to the development of such invention.
Classical mechanics describes impact between bodies using quantitative magnitudes such as force, impulse, momentum, and kinetic energy. However, early in my training I observed that the pain or damage produced by a punch bore no direct correlation to the measurable attributes of the striker (size, strength, or visible speed), and that these attributes weren´t reflected in the measuring machines. Fighters with average physical attributes could deliver disproportionately painful strikes, while larger and stronger athletes often produced impacts with less perceived effect, yet gaining better figures in the machines. Though I sensed that the key difference was not brute force but the internal energy channeling and technique of the strike, I had no idea of how to conceptualize such difference. But something in me was telling that if I could conceptualize the phenomenon I could then master it.
The former was one case among others of my long-life urge of discovering the nature of power. And even though we can hypothesize that the first approach to nature is measurement… How could that striking “entelechy” of power that characterized some fighters´ punches be actually measured?...
At that time I exclusively cherished questions about the physics involved in punching, yet had not a single answer. However, I firmly knew that my observations contradicted the predictions of standard Newtonian impact theory. In fact, still today, not only all arcade punch machines rely on such Newtonian mechanics, but even the measurement standard employed in the famous PowerKube follows this same framework.
First Requirement for the Operative Path: to Love the Mysteries of Nature
Back in 1999, while training full-contact, I began spending long hours under the personal guidance of Mariano Pérez-Amor, Full Professor of Physics at the University of Vigo. At the time, my mind was overloaded, struggling to make sense of a multidisciplinary storm of physics, engineering, and economics. Mariano’s presence was quietly redemptive. He had the rare gift of isolating the core of any physical problem, uncovering what we called the elegant solution: the ability to simplify without being simplistic, to find order within complexity across vastly different domains.
But Mariano offered more than technical and academic brilliance. He could perceive the essence of a person as intuitively as he could untangle a scientific challenge. His vision extended beyond physics, into deep philosophical and cultural insight. In fact, he was likely the first person who subtly revealed to me that the way we understand nature reflects how we understand ourselves and others.
One lesson in particular has echoed through my life: he insisted that physics is the true gateway -the portal- to the arts, to culture, to psychology and philosophy, and ultimately to the mysteries of the cosmos. Without that grounding in physics, he warned, the mind risks becoming unmoored in abstraction.
Mariano’s wisdom wasn’t worn as prestige. He had no hunger for institutional validation. “People grant themselves too much importance without understanding how nature works” -he used to say. “Social and economic systems are just a thin surface layer of the dynamics of nature”.
In Spain, the academic title of Catedrático -roughly equivalent to full tenured professor- is far beyond the PhD. While holding a doctorate is a basic requirement, only a very small fraction of PhDs ever attain this academic distinction. The competition is fierce, and unfortunately, access is often shaped less by intellectual merit than by internal politics, strategic alliances, and institutional privilege. That’s precisely what made Mariano Pérez-Amor such a rare and admirable exception. He didn’t climb through favors or networks of influence, he reached the top on his merit and his chosen team. His dedication to teaching, his clarity of thought, and his ability to inspire made him a Catedrático in the truest sense: not a political figure, but an educator in service of truth.
Mariano Perez-Amor during a tribute in University of Vigo, Spain
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Mariano´s clarity of thought and personality gave me the first real keys for opening my intellect to technical systems, organizations, and the architecture of meaning itself. And it was thanks to his early influence that, only three years later, I could articulate the foundational principles behind the Fondo Natural project, a multimillion-euro initiative that aspired to link culture, economy, and nature not as separate sectors, but as one living process.
Therefore, the core idea that finally allowed me in 2021 to define with technical clarity the true biomechanics of a punch didn’t arise from a brainstorming session or a desire to “innovate”. It emerged from a lifetime of fascination: with power, movement, with force, with precision, and with meaning.
People often speak of originality today as if it were just novelty. But I don’t see it that way. Originality, to me, is not a random burst of creativity or a clever twist on something old. It’s the result of living one´s life in such a way that one begins to see things differently; to perceive things differently, even without seeing such things with one´s eyes. And that difference -earned through time, effort, and experience- is what shapes truly original work.
During my early teens I wasn’t original. Apart from my passion for drawing I was exclusively a good imitator in everything else and was mostly copying all the time. The pressure of imitation was high in my schooling environment, since “copy-pasting” text in exams was conceived as the highest standard of human intelligence. In school and sports too, I was merely imitating others. It took years before I began to find my own way of doing things. But when it happened, it didn’t come from a desire to stand out. It came from living deeply, from paying attention, from wanting to understand; not to just understand techniques and sciences, but how things work, in every domain. It wasn´t only about identifying what makes motors and machines move, but also about revealing what ultimately motivates most people´s lives, actions and decisions.
This, to me, is the path of real invention. It’s not about embracing an abstract idea or ideology and aspiring to apply it to the world. It’s about being immersed in the chaotic fringes of the world, about transcending the need to constantly conform to the expectations that others project upon us, allowing something new to rise from within that commitment. That’s the beginning of what I call the operative path.
Modern society tends to imagine techno-science as an impossibly complex domain, reserved for PhDs smashing particles at CERN, running billion-euro labs, launching rockets to Mars, or debating quantum entanglement, consciousness unification, and multiverse theories. Yet one of the most important lessons Mariano taught me -echoing Nietzsche- is that many of these experts “muddy the waters so that they may seem deep” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
Rather than bringing us closer to nature’s mystery, such theatrics often obscure it behind prestige and abstraction. This insight rings especially true in another project I’m currently developing, one that questions a foundational law in physics. Though the details of this project still remain under NDA with my partner, Sir Ruggero Santilli, by now I can say this: it involves something as simple as a child’s toy.
That’s the paradox. The most profound cracks in the dominant paradigm rarely come from high-tech facilities; they emerge from ordinary phenomena viewed through an unclouded lens. In that spirit, the project seeks to rekindle the ethos of grassroots science that Rupert Sheldrake once championed: curiosity grounded in experience, not in spectacle.
Accuracy without Aim
My 25-year pursuit of understanding the intricate mechanics behind a punch has drawn heavily on disciplines akin to those explored by Eugen Herrigel in Zen and the Art of Archery. In Operative Traditions I, I referred to Herrigel’s remarkable account of Zen Master Awa Kenzo, whose mastery in archery revealed a technique so extraordinary that it seemed to defy the materialistic physics Herrigel had once studied. Herrigel could not grasp how the release of the arrow occurred; effortlessly, with precision, yet beyond willful control, as if defeating the force of gravity.
One striking conclusion is that the solution to such a physical riddle doesn’t lie within the system of bow, string, and arrow. It originates elsewhere. The seemingly miraculous force that Master Awa channeled was not just a refinement of motor skill, but an expression of a deeper power, one that transcends the physical realm. The physical act, in this case, becomes a manifestation -a proof- of that transcendence. Technique, then, is not merely functional. It can become metaphysical.
I only practiced archery a couple of times in my life, and quickly realized I was remarkably clumsy at it. Yet when I was 17, I discovered a natural precision and explosive power when striking a soccer ball, and I can´t forget it coincided with a powerful change of my mind-set and personal values at that age. Hence, that early experience of impact stayed with me for years. In 2014, while practicing with firearms in the U.S., I encountered a new variation of the same mystery. The body’s response to the recoil baffled me: the more I relaxed my arm, the more accurately and powerfully the shot landed. How could letting go improve control?... Physics still lacks a satisfying explanation for this paradoxical biomechanical reaction.
And yet, in that moment, I sensed I was approaching what Mariano had once called the real frontier: the place where the mysteries of nature reflect the mysteries of being. These aren’t just technical anomalies; they’re thresholds. They hint at a deeper, operative intelligence woven into matter, gesture, and perception.
The genuine power of an operative path lies in how it bridges the deep fracture modern culture has reinforced between mind and body, a fracture rooted in Judeo-Christian dualism, which separated creator from creation, spirit from matter. One consequence of this split is that our intellect becomes flooded with narratives, spectacles, ideologies, and abstractions that rarely align with the actual dynamics of the physical world around us.
Today’s urban-industrial economies reward us for structuring thought around control: systems, modeling, administration, networking, efficiency. This may serve adaptation within the techno-industrial machine, but it leaves no room for transcendence or the slow birth of mastery; what Eugen Herrigel once sought through his Zen training.
The paradox is that “control” often impedes the very reconnection of mind and body it promises. Even in control engineering, systems can only be governed when physical laws remain compliant. But mastery takes root precisely in those regimes where control breaks down -far from thermodynamic equilibrium- where chaos reigns and new architectures emerge.
In such spaces, creator and creation merge. The operative path dissolves the divide. Neurosis, in this light, is the symptom of disconnection; operative experience is the healing.
I’ve seen this truth many times in my life, but perhaps the clearest symbol is this: it’s unrealistic to separate my 20-year study of punch physics from the one-arm pushup Guinness World Record I achieved in 2021, a movement that biomechanically mirrors the mechanics of a perfect strike. My performance wasn’t about strength or endurance. This is so because the 6X result greater than that of the strongest athletes in the world can´t be explained through the physical models that permeate the fitness industry. It was another phenomenon, and ultimately I just wanted to embody its discovery.
I never set out to invent a new kind of push-up. I simply trained, evolved, and worked through the tension between intellect and body. And one day, something unprecedented emerged, not as a trick, but as proof that originality is born from inner pressure, not outer planning.
The core model of the punch-measuring machine was born of the same discipline, that same year. Like F1 engineers guided by the embodied instincts of elite drivers, I relied on gesture under stress -not calculation- to give shape to a technical truth. This is one of the side-effects of all operative arts.
Though the core techno-scientific idea underlying my punching machine patent is disconcertingly simple, it integrates many engineering disciplines, such as electromagnetism, stress materials, thermodynamics, electronics and machine design. Deep down, its technical model is straightforward, but getting to that simplicity required a lifetime of converging knowledge: multidisciplinary engineering, biomechanics, athletics, and above all, the will to understand. That convergence doesn’t happen on a whiteboard. It happens in the body, in the mind, and in the world. It took years of converging disciplines: structural mechanics, martial art philosophy, gesture-based study and human observation. Not one of those paths was guided by a plan. They all evolved through experience, through attention to power, not as a concept, but as something felt and measured.
This is why I believe technique must be personal. You can’t separate the invention from the person if the invention is truly original. Technique, then, is not just a tool, it’s a mirror. A gesture. A way of knowing that can only be transmitted through experience.
The patenting process may still take 2-5 years. But the real work was already done long ago. It just hadn’t yet taken form. And in a world chasing novelty and performance, perhaps that’s the most original thing of all.
What would Society profit from an Operative Path?
This is an important question, and I´ve been asked it many times. In terms of providing a brief and key answer it´s important to address several concepts: Freedom, Power, and the Myth of Control
There’s a popular idea that certain people change the world. That visionaries shape the future, that entrepreneurs build the next empire, that power is something possessed. It’s an idea repeated in books, films, headlines, even well-researched critiques of today’s AI landscape. But I’ve never seen it hold true in reality.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand how things actually work. Not in the abstract, but in the field -in the workshop, in the training space, in the structures we inhabit. And one thing I’ve learned is this: power is not something we own. It’s something we participate in. And the more we try to impose form from above -whether on a machine, a team, a social system- the more resistant the world becomes.
Gilbert Simondon, the French philosopher whose work is very present in my Operative Traditions IV, came extremely close to this insight. He wrote that originality –individuation- emerges not from ideas imposed on matter, but from direct comprehension of the materials, their behavior, their internal tensions during stress. When you know what happens inside the workshop -when you understand the properties of the steel, the rhythm of the team, the friction of budget and constraint- something begins to form through your action, through technique. Not because you dreamed it, but because you listened to the vibes of matter and technique. That’s where real invention arises.
I’ve lived this firsthand. As an industrial engineering student, I was thoroughly trained in the belief that “technology is applied science”. But I quickly discovered -outside the classroom- that nothing could be further from the truth.
Academically, I was rewarded for analyzing the functions of all kinds of machines using scientific laws and mathematical models. The underlying assumption was simple: if you understand the scientific principles behind a technology, you can dominate it, and by extension, dominate nature itself. This was often presented as the essence of engineering. But I soon realized this was an ivory-tower illusion.
It’s like saying that diagnosing an illness guarantees its cure. Both notions rest on the same flawed worldview: that scientific knowledge of the cosmos automatically grants us access to its creative powers.
Before René Descartes ushered in this paradigm, medieval Europe built its Gothic cathedrals at astonishing speed, not through imposed abstraction or applied arts but through operative disciplines that channeled the self-organizing forces of nature. These builders didn’t “apply science” to nature, they participated in its flow, allowing local forms to arise from broader structures shaping their societies.
The modern fantasy of imposing arbitrary forms on nature is a luxury made possible by industrial exploitation of Earth’s energy reserves. But this power comes at a cost: it demands massive division of labor, a high degree of specialization, and massive hyperconsumerism in human societies.
And that’s where my view of freedom begins.
For me, freedom is not the absence of power; it’s the understanding of it. When I say understanding, I don’t mean theoretical knowledge. I mean the kind that changes how you act. The kind that reveals who you are, not through labels or roles, but through how you’ve lived your tensions. Most people, when asked who they are, answer with references: their job, their nationality, their group. But very few can say: “I am what I’ve discovered through my own experiences”.
And yet, that is where true individuality begins. That’s where freedom takes root. And paradoxically, it’s only there that you begin to see how the world actually works, how power moves, how systems behave, how structures hold or collapse. Whether you’re building a machine or observing the true structure of the State, the same laws apply.
In fact, I now see a direct analogy between two of my following projects: one focused on revealing the true physics of a punch, and the other –to be presented in literary form in 2026- on revealing the nature of political power in our times. Both expose a common limit: the inability to see beyond equilibrium. In biomechanics, scientists still restrict themselves to the first law of thermodynamics. They measure power as if it were a closed system. But force is not just about conservation. It’s about dissipation; it´s about flow, tension and entropy. The same blindness exists in how we talk about society. We analyze the State as a static structure, as if it could be defined only by control, authority and ideology. But States, too, are energy dissipative systems. They organize, decay, adapt, and reorganize again.
That’s why I find it difficult to believe in the myth of world-changers. Even the most “powerful” figures today -the ones behind global technologies and empires- are not truly in control. They chase influence. They seek to capitalize on something that is beyond their grasp. As I read in Karen Hao’s recent book, The Empire of AI, there’s a brilliant dissection of networks and ambitions, but beneath it all, an assumption still lingers: that someone is steering the ship.
I don’t believe that because control can´t even be accomplished in labs without reducing energetic dissipation to its minimum. What I see all around is a massive self-organizing process -technical, economic, psychological, thermodynamic- and the most we can do, if we’re honest, is understand how it flows. That understanding can give us clarity. It can give us direction. And sometimes, it can open a narrow path toward original action. But only if we stop trying to impose, and start learning how to participate.
That, to me, is the true role of the individual, not to “change the world” (the world will still keep changing, even in the absence of humanity), but to know how it works, to know how humans work, and to find the precise zone where the two meet. That’s where invention happens. That’s where freedom begins. And that’s where the operative path leads.
The Sword in the Machine: How to Transmit Truth Without Killing It
In a world obsessed with performance, we’ve forgotten how to transmit meaning. We speak louder, explain more, influence more, optimize endlessly, and still, something essential slips through our fingers. Because the truth is, you can’t transmit the spirit of a path by explaining it. If you give people all the answers, you kill the magic. If you reveal everything, you leave them with nothing to live through. And without experience, there is no transformation.
This has become one of the greatest paradoxes of my work. I don’t write, build, or train to “give” people knowledge. I do it to prepare the space for something to ignite, especially in myself. Something that can’t be received passively. Something that must move through a person if it’s going to mean anything.
That’s why geniuses like Mariano taught me what transmission really is, especially now, in an age where younger generations are increasingly shaped by virtuality, frictionless media, and algorithmic stimuli. Many of them don’t even know what it feels like to encounter the world through their own hands. They’ve been raised inside interfaces. Their nervous systems have been shaped by surfaces. And the result is a growing disconnection from reality itself.
So what can be done? Certainly not preaching. And certainly not more content that reinforces the loop. What we need are invitations to experience. Riddles, provocations, forms; gestures that call something awake. Not through answers, but through tension. Through mystery. Through the silent pull of fascination.
That philosophy is built in my punch machine.
At first glance, it’s just a device. A tool to measure the “fire” of a strike. But beneath that surface is a very different logic. Unlike the arcade-style machines that reward mass and spectacle -machines that silently reinforce the bodybuilding culture’s belief that “bigger is better”- this machine was built with another principle: thermodynamic clarity. It doesn’t care how big you are. It cares where your power comes from. It reveals how well your body, mind, and intention are aligned. Not how much momentum your gesture has, but how true it is.
And in that sense, it’s not just a tool. It’s a trial. A mirror. A modern-day Excalibur.
Because just like Arthur didn’t conquer the sword by force, one can’t conquer this machine by aggression. Arthur didn’t become king because he trained harder than everyone else. He became king because he was already prepared. His gesture simply revealed it. The sword released itself, because the man holding it had passed through fire, through doubt, through complexity. And he had emerged whole.
That’s what the punch machine is meant to express. You don’t punch well because you spend eight hours a day in the gym. Quite the opposite: you punch well because you’ve understood how the world works. Because you’ve faced your own weakness, your own chaos, your own ego, and forged coherence out of it. That coherence is what my machine perceives. Not the momentum created by hypertrophied muscle.
This is why I believe in the path of transmission through the combination of gesture and attitude. Not through slogans, not through explanations, but through lived invitations. Through well-designed instruments that reveal the real. Because the real fight isn’t in the ring. It’s beyond the ring. And only those who face it -who know how to endure, to integrate, to act without illusion- can express true power.
And yes, there’s no guarantee this will reach everyone. Even a lightning bolt doesn’t always awaken those who sleep. But that’s not a reason to stop. That’s a reason to sharpen the gesture, to refine the tool and to deepen the silence from which true speech emerges.
Because in the end, we don’t change the world by trying to change it. In strict technical terms, all we can do is participate in a change that is directed by cosmic self-organizing principles that transcend human control. This participation moves through us -into machines, into gestures, into myth- and those who are ready will feel it.
These individuals may not say anything. They may not comment. But something will begin to shift in them.
Pain Is the Portal: On the Other Side of Pleasure
We no longer speak of pain. Not honestly. We pathologize it. Hide it. Rebrand it as trauma, stress, or dysfunction. And in doing so, we lose the thread.
But pain is not a malfunction. It’s a signal. It’s the first law of thermodynamics breaking down and the second law beginning; it´s when control slips, and entropy speaks; it´s when the closed system cracks and something alive begins to emerge.
Most people today live within the first law of thermodynamics. They seek stability, comfort, preservation. And our culture encourages that. From a young age, children are protected not just from danger, but from difficulty, tension and consequence. Pain becomes taboo. Any contact with it is suspect, a sign that something has gone wrong.
But it hasn’t gone wrong. It’s gone real.
Pain -emotional, physical, psychological- is the place where we meet the edge of ourselves. It shows us where our will ends, where our illusions shatter, where false force collapses. And if we’re willing to stay there -not run, not numb, not explain- something new begins. A shift. A heat. A process.
Pain is the entry point to transformation. Not as punishment, but as portal.
That correlates with the philosophy underlying my punch machine; it’s not about measuring the “fire” of a punch, but to reveal what kind of life produced the strike. Not only mass. Not only tough muscles and tendons, but coherence forged through experience. I’ve seen it again and again: those who’ve faced pain -not theatrically, but quietly, inwardly- can generate a power that feels effortless. Because it isn’t borrowed. It’s theirs.
And that’s what I want to offer; not just a machine, not just a philosophy, but a path. Not one to follow, but one to discover. A call to those who are tired of simulation, who feel something missing but don’t know where to look.
Here’s where to look at: pain. The pain you’ve avoided. The tension you’ve rationalized and rendered neurotic. The part of you that knows something’s off but hasn’t had the space to speak. That’s the beginning.
We live in a culture of pleasure, by which I mean the pursuit of constant satisfaction and soothing. And yet, beneath it all, there’s a hunger for something else: for adventure. But where can a teenager today go to find it? What forest is left? What rite? What reality?
Adventure still exists. But it doesn’t begin in the jungle. It begins in your body, in your resistance, in the moment you stop scrolling and ask: what is this pain trying to show me? That’s the first step. That’s where the operative path begins.
I can’t walk it for you. No one can. But I can offer this:
You’re not broken for feeling pain. You’re not wrong for being lost. Pain is the moment the system opens. The heat that softens the old shape. The crack through which truth enters.
Don’t run from it. Don’t dramatize it. Enter it. With attention. With humility. With curiosity.
Because on the other side of pleasure, there is something better.
What Kind of Wood Are You Made Of?
Not all pain destroys. Some pain refines, but only if you know how to stay with it, not to dramatize it, not to escape it, not to blame anyone for it. Just feel it, with attention. Let it pass through you, until it shows you the shape of who you really are.
That’s the point of pain: not to punish, but to burn away what isn’t yours.
And if you’ve lived it, really lived it, then you already know: pain doesn’t make you smaller. It makes you truer. It strips away every identification you thought protected you -roles, opinions, borrowed truths, inherited masks- and reveals something that no one can give you and no one can take away.
But in today’s world, we’ve lost this understanding. We ask people to “feel” but offer no path to configuring their genuine personality from their roots. We treat pain like a glitch in the system, not a call to transformation. And we try to protect others -especially the young- from the very thing that could grant them strength: a meaningful encounter with difficulty.
We’ve replaced pain with performance. Challenge with simulation. Adventure with entertainment and virtual reality.. And in doing so, we’ve promoted human lives that are that’s frictionless and directionless. No fire, no tension, no test.
And yet… the desire is still there. Deep down, if we could live forever we´d ultimately want to know who we are. They want to know what kind of wood we´re made of.
That expression exists in many languages. It comes from something ancient: the need to test a material, to strike it, stress it, to see how it reacts. Not to destroy it, but to reveal its nature.
That’s what I built my punch machine to do.
Not to reward size. Not to glorify aggression. But to verify the spiritual power of technique. To measure -not the force of the punch- but the structure of the person behind it. Their clarity. Their integration. Their ability to express tension without distortion.
You don’t need to be 120 kilos. You don’t need to perform. You need only to be real. And the machine will eventually show you -without judgment, without noise- what lives in the unconscious reflexes of your body.
Because that’s what life does too: It presses, tests, and hits. And it asks, without words: What kind of wood are you made of?
But here’s the secret: your wood isn’t about your origin. It’s about your destiny.
Not where you come from, but where you’re going. Not your name, but your direction.
And pain -redeemed pain- is the fire that hardens that wood. That gives it shape. That makes it worthy of becoming something sacred.
My machine is the sword in the stone. And if you’ve lived what you need to live and you’ve passed through the heat without losing yourself, you may find, one day, that it releases in your hand.
(continue to Part - 2)
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