IMA sparring should be free from moments of freezing into tension. From there, you do what feels best to you, really, to try to describe a specific style is pointless.
Just relax and keep changing, keep breathing, and most of all have control of your mind so that you can choose to not lock up.
That is one thing you see in low level MMA, but again, the masters who just breathe, look very calm, and thank God for not getting injured after each fight, they tend to be more fluid, connected, relaxed, focused, and mentally quick.
They adapt, instead of doing the same thing over and over, which is what anyone would do if their art were not somehow unified via some qigong method and some type of principles of movement and just being.
That is a weakness of a "style" made from effective bits of TMA, but again, only like one in how many thousands really show any kind of higher level fighting when someone is trying to hit you with bad intentions.
My first taiji instructor studied the science of taiji, not so well publicized, and he actually documented gong development through balance and gait testing, which I assisted a bit with.
Without some sort of change to the hardware and operating system, it isn't IMA, I think that is for sure. All the supplemental qigong and even massage, which is usually ignored or not taught, are part of a lifestyle that increases your overall powers or abilities to maximize your potential and live a long, meaningful life.
It's about surviving the war, not just winning some of the battles.
It's the combination of a breathing/energy management (I suppose Shooter did come up with that term here, but I've read it myself from Über high level trainers of pro athletes and word-class business executives) that attempts to do some top-down training along with the bottom-up basics, hopefully creating a unified and balanced style that opens up possibilities, rather than closing them off with outdated rules that are sometimes taken too literally due to, well, a subtle form of racism
but one that can be taken advantage of, just like force is taken advantage of by the IMA master.