Systema Health was written for anyone to use to improve their health, mood, mobility, fitness and stress management skills. It contains 25 health practises and is especially useful for Systema practitioners and teachers as a guide and aid. Below is an extract from the Training Tools section of the book:
Notice your breathing. Systema begins and ends here. Try to notice every time you hold your breath. Every time you hold your breath and move, tension and fear will come into your body. To be truly free in your movements, you have to be free in your breath. Always look to make your breath the engine or driver of your movement, not a ‘by-product’ of it.
Work Slowly. Begin all movements and practises slowly with your full attention. This way you will develop efficient movement and replace old habits and skills with new ones. You will be able to notice and remove the restrictive tensions in your body. Gradually increase the speed as your skill develops.
Adjust the volume. As your skill develops, you will want to go faster. This is fine. Notice when you get stuck. Maybe your breathing stops, your movements seizes up, you run out of ideas, you repeat patterns over and over again, or any other aspect that causes frustration. At these times slow down again. Build and wire new skill and understanding and then gradually speed up again.
Strive for creativity in your training. Remember that Systema is not training for a set sequence of movements, such as a Kata or gymnastics competition. This is a much more transferable skill, that reaches every aspect of life. The pictures in this book are intended as a guide only and just show one way of doing things. Play and experiment. If you can do it forwards, try it backwards, or with your eyes closed, or on a balance beam etc. Have fun but stay safe. My deep desire, is that through the logical progressions in these practises, you will begin freely creating your own practises, to the extent where you are training in Systema in every moment. By all means use my progressions as a guide, but you then have to just move randomly and naturally. Try not to form patterns in your movements.
Movement. Systema is really the study of movement. Freedom and ease of movement is your aim. As your movement relaxes, so will your psyche. Then your health will improve exponentially.
Search for the struggle. You will inevitably find sticky points in your movement. Ranges of motion that you can’t move through without momentum, if at all. Areas where you hold your breath through strain and tension. Search for these areas and spend time in them. You will iron them out much faster this way.
A film is worth a million words. Video yourself doing the movements. You will correct yourself so much faster when you can see your movement yourself. Vladimir Vasiliev offers a video coaching program through his website that is well worth using.
Do the pillars once every day (Practices 11-14). If I could give you one tip for a healthy body and movement for the rest of your life, it would be this one. Do the pillars once a day. One of each pillar. Once. As slow as you can, with full range of motion, working on breathing and relaxing your body. The whole of Systema is in these movements.
Look for Symmetry. Look to get as good on your left side as your right side in all the practices. Don’t favour one side over another.
Thank you and my very best wishes for your training and health.
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