In essence, we practice not to fight an external opponent but rather to include them into your brain maps, by making them part of our close environment. It’s almost like we are throwing out a net and capturing our opponents, pulling them in close. Then we play with these integrated brain maps, which include our opponents.
Our brain will do this to a certain extent automatically through our mirror neurons (see mirror neuron article), however, through fear and tension this process can become disjointed. By consciously training to include our opponents/training partners into our brain maps, we accelerate a process of familiarity and relaxationand widen our perception. We focus less just on one adversary at a time or one opponent’s quality at a time. We are working more inclusive with an open perception to all possibilities that present themselves to us.This greatly improves our spatial efficiency in respect to our work with opponents. It can also allow us to minimise harm to ourselves as well as our opponents/training partners.
EXERCISES: Here are a few examples:
Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Then focus your awareness firstly on your body-outline. Then include awareness of your clothes and integrate them in your brain maps consciously. From there you can play with awareness of your training partners in close proximity and at different distances. You can start with a single partner but make sure you progress to multiple partners simultaneously. Add a variation by having them at different locations. Then the exercise can progress from closed eyes to open eyes. The initial closed eye exercises emphasise the visualisation and reduce the distraction of vision.
Add to it various emotional states from your partners, as well as active and passive focus from your partners on you. Your aim is to first simply feel the presence and location of your training partners. Then you progress to picking up their attitudes and intentions (make sure you include aggressive and violent intentions). You can also play with movements of varying speed.
The important aspect is to have a mental concept (visualisation) of a field (brain map), which includes and perceives your training partners with increasing amount of information. Also, remember partners will not always be in your field of vision, therefore this exercise should teach you heightened awareness of people outside your direct field of vision. Eventually you should progress to full contact exercises with your partners. Always keep track of your breathing rhythm and your heart rate.
In simple terms, you want to start to include everyone in a certain radius in your transient brain maps.This is an exercise you can also do outside of training, say in a café. Sit as central as you can with people all around you if possible. See how many you can pick up and integrate, then try sensing their state of emotion, their movements. Can you do this simultaneously with multiple people? Does anyone stand out (not visually)? You can have a lot of fun with this training.
About the Author:
Dr. Andrea Bisaz is a Systema Instructor at rmaSystema-Australia in Melbourne, training and teaching Systema since 2005. Dr. Bisaz also works at the Melbourne Sports Clinic and can be contacted at +61411745746 or at:bisaza@optusnet.com.au. A very common question for people wishing to study Systema, “what DVDs should I get first?”
The following titles are highly recommended:
Systema Hand to Hand
Systema Breathing
The Combative Body
Breathwork and Combat
Strikes
Escape from HoldsFundamentals of Knife Disarming
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