Practices: Fear as a Teacher in Systema (w mayor Komarov)

Mayor Komarov’s way of teaching Systema Russian martial art is very closely related to the notions of fear and pain. He invites his students to work with those sensations in order to better understand themselves, to know their own weak spots, and to work with them and through them.

In this interview fragment mayor Komarov talks about fear. He says we all grow up full of fears, which we incorporate during our childhood and early age. Fears often stem from limits that we set up for our own security. However, when we grow up we’re limited by those childhood limits, so those fears restrict us from our own freedom. A way to reach the freedom in the body and in the mind is to eradicate those fears, working with them on the physical level, learning how not to get tense when it’s not needed and to regenerate any tension that may arise.
In the exercise shown in this interview the instructor walks around the space swinging a stick, creating a stressful situation, and the students are walking around using their breathing and correct state to learn to calm down in a stressful situation and to manage their fear.

In the video below Konstantin explains his approach to working with fear in more detail: