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Our concept leads you via exercises, where you take many unforgettable personal experiences with stress and expansion.
You can feel and study how stress affects your body and mind…
You realise what happens when you stress and which techniques work and which don’t.
Personal experience is better than books of theory.
Video from course Expand to destress. After understanding how stress works, we went through potentially stressful games to be aware of our reactions. One of them was gently throwing tennis balls. It was very fun! 😀
You become aware of undesirable tension, aware of stress-condensing power. Then, we show you how to build up positive habits to expand.
The wave of kinetic energy starts to work for you – you flow – surf on the wave.
You will see the bad habit of holding or restricting your breath.
A new balanced posture creates less tension.
Your new liquid, vibrant body and mind will be open to accepting external forces, and you will be able to flow and synchronise with the world…
This aspect comprised two opposite qualities:
expand – become or make larger or more extensive
open, relax, lightness, fire, flow & yang
condense – make something denser or more concentrated
close, stress-tension, pressure, gravity, resist &yin
Expansion and condensing happen everywhere and all the time.
It affects all of us, whether we are aware of it.
But let me assure you that awareness of this aspect in any part of being will open new dimensions of understanding and freedom for you.
A myofascial body is mostly our fasciae, muscles, and tendons. Of course, we cannot separate ourselves from our bones, organs and the rest of the body. It puts the whole body together.
A fascia is a sheet of connective tissue beneath the skin that attaches, stabilises, and encloses, muscles and internal organs.
In essence, two biomechanical systems maintain our posture:
Tensegrity helps to hold your body weight. Functional tensegrity allows for less pressure on your discs, vertebrae & joints.
Thomas Myers about tensegrity:
The power of expanding is the power on which our tensegrity is based.
Veda strengthens our tensegrity.
Expanding higher reduces pressure on discs and joints. We can fly..!
To be aware of the mentioned qualities, we develop our senses, especially internal feelings of kinesthesia and proprioception, which massively affect the intensity of life.
When you feel better, you enjoy your movement more!!
Pravilo mechanically helps you expand and strengthen fasciae and tendons – whole tensegrity, naturally, just by your body weight.
Read more:
Pravilo – Expand to Life
Vision is probably the closest physical aspect linked with our mind.
It follows that perhaps vision is a helpful tool to switch between focused and expanded awareness.
A focused vision leads to focused awareness.
Peripheral vision leads to expanded awareness.
With focused (tunnel) vision, you can see sharp details of a minor point. Your view is narrower. Your attention flows to the point.
With (expanded) peripheral vision, everything is slightly blurred, but your view is much broader. Your attention expands – you can work with more perceptions/impulses.
Focused vision is good when you need to focus on one thing (e.g. one arm, one ball or one body). The problem arises when you try, with a focused vision, to keep track of more than one object, e.g. 3 limbs, 8 balls or a crowd of people. Peripheral vision is much more suitable for multitasking. You have much better spatial awareness in the expanded vision mode.
Our awareness and attention are not so straightforward; we cannot simply deposit them into a dual system. To explain it, we simplify them in a spectrum between focused and expanded awareness, from which we gush forth focused and expanded attention.
Nowadays, when we use the term ‘attention’, we usually mean ‘focused attention’…
Focused awareness – logical thinking is an excellent tool for tactics, plans and strategy, but not the best tool for initial reactions. In focused awareness, we perceive the world more linearly, in fragments.
Focused awareness is analysing the past and planning for the future.
Fire is the power that lifts us every morning from the bed against the gravitational power.
Different cultures call this vital energy of life differently… The Chinese call it Chi or Qi, Indian Prana or Kundalini; in Slavic culture, it is called Zhiva (Živa / Жива “zhiv” = alive; “zhivot” = life).
In English, I prefer to use the word ‘Fire’ because it evokes quality and helps us visualise this power…
From a chemical point of view, every cell of our bodies has a small burning fire. We call this cellular process respiration. During cellular respiration, the cell uses oxygen to break down sugar. Breaking down sugar produces the energy your body needs. So you have trillions of small fires in your body.
Undesirable tension consumes a lot of our energy and makes us feel tired. It will massively affect the efficiency of your body, training plan & sports goals…
Also, your antagonistic muscles with undesirable tension work against your motion – this negation of your power makes you slower and weaker.
On the other hand, relaxed muscles spend less energy, making you more efficient. E.g. if a marathon runner releases 10% of his tension, he has about 10% more energy to run quicker.
Then, high tension can also limit your training. If you relaxed your muscles, you could increase your training plan.
Another reason your relaxed body is much more efficient and moves easier and quicker is its higher sensitivity.
Undesirable tension slows down regeneration and produces toxins.
Too tensed tissue is the cause of many sports injuries. Too-tensed muscles, tendons & ligaments are more fragile (like the too-drawn spring of a guitar) – it can be easily injured.
Therefore it is essential to increase the elasticity of your tissue.
Relax creates a positive cascade effect.
The most efficient posture is balanced.
Every deflection from balance is compensated with extra muscle work or hanging on tissue in the worse position.
You acted upon by two main forces:
Gravity pulls you down, and fire pulls you up.
A healthy body can flow like water.
However, at that exact moment, it’s able to expand & uplift like fire, pulled by vital energy upwards to the sky.
You automatically uplift up to your optimum balance point if you have enough inner Fire.
How does it work?
Our reactions when our mind recognises any impulse:
a) resist
b) escape
c) accept, let the power move the body.
Resistance is a typical answer to impulse as a push or pull.
If something scares us, we can subconsciously escape (e.g. some insects or reptiles).
There are also other reactions – accept. So, I do not resist the power of impulse but use that kinetic energy for my motion.
To accept is not a reaction. It’s a different stand of body and mind. It’s not easy to accept it.
There are many ways in which power could affect the body, depending on the quality of the body.
A stiff, solid body reacts differently than a soft body.
Some joints can be solid to transfer the power, and others could be soft and let the power move joins.
By preparing different combinations of internal quality of your structure, you can choose how the coming power will move you.
On a higher level of awareness, you can be a programmer on a path to power.
Resistance is a passive solution. This attitude usually creates stress and pain.
It’s much more efficient and fun to flow with power…
A young body is elastic, resilient, smooth and flexible…
By ageing, our bodies and mind crystallise. Therefore the method to cope with crystallising keeps the body younger!
The qualities of the crystallisation process are very similar to frozen water.
Crystalised – frozen water doesn’t flow.
Ice is breakable – crystallised bodies become brittle and lose flexibility and plasticity.
Ice is cold – also, the old crystalised body is colder – blood circulation is weaker and slower.
The ice floes are crashing instead of smoothly flowing.
What affects this process?
The Crystallisation process of our mind is increasing by:
– condensing power – stress
– tension
– repetitive work
– poor using
– resist etc.
How to slow down your body and mind’s crystallisation (ageing)?
Firstly you have to use it – train it.
Stretching is good. However, expanding our bodies helps even more. Of course, the best way is synergies, both: expanding and stretching. Do not forget to expand your mind!
Accept and flow with surroundings rather than resist and crash. Perfect are activities such as dance, martial arts sport etc. Same with your mind – go to flow.
Bodywaves – the flow of kinetic energy. make you relaxed (From the point of view of mechanics, you cannot wave with a tense solid body).
Bodywaves help you diagnose stiff places (the wave doesn’t flow through tense tissue).
Bodywaves help breaks down ‘crystalised’ tissue and make the tissue supple once again.
Relax – be aware and get rid of undesirable tension.
The first step to coping with stress is to release your body’s tension.
You relax immediately, your heart rate reduces, your blood pressure decreases, and the body produces fewer stress hormones and enzymes.
To be aware of your tension, it’s necessary to develop an internal feeling – kinaesthetic and proprioception sense. It helps you to detect tension in your muscles and fasciae and control it.
Balance your posture to be more relaxed.
Keep flaming your Inner Fire. It helps you to expand and keep balance. Breathe deeply and smoothly.
Massaging the body makes it more supple and relaxed. It increases blood and lymphatic flow.
Avoid stress and learn to cope with it.
Breathing dramatically affects the quality of the physical body and the state of mind.
Breathing can help with pain, fear and stress, or it can literally paralyse us.
For some reason, we believe holding our breath helps us move. We close the throat to create inner tension to support us from inside the chest.
We spend more energy on using surface muscles rather than utilising core muscles.
We use surface muscles when we engage in strenuous physical activity, when we are stressed, shocked when we feel pain, and when we want to be precise…
By holding our breath, we naturally tense up; we are expending more energy.
By holding your breath, oxygen ceases to flow to your body! We need oxygen for the brain and muscles, especially in stressful situations.
Another usual restriction is binding breathing with movements. E.g. exhale on exertion: during push-ups, exhale on the push, and inhale as you bring yourself down… Are you free to inhale on the push? Are you free to breathe in a different rhythm than the movement? Cutting off the link between your motion and breathing brings you new freedom.
We tend to hold or restrict our breathing during hard or specific work.
A deep inhale into your lungs is like a deep blow to the fire.
Holding a breath usually causes resisting the flow of kinetic energy.
Free-breathing – breathing that is not restricted and interrupted by undesirable tension makes you look younger, feel younger and live a higher quality of life!
In many cultures, it is inappropriate and unacceptable for adults to smile without reason. Only kids have this privilege, and as they grow up, we teach them to take life seriously—without smiling.
A simple smile has the power to soften and relax the body, mind, and Spirit. Smiling makes life lighter, happier, and healthier, enhancing the enjoyment of whatever we do.
Initially, all it takes is to allow the smile rather than suppress it. In time, we can even learn to smile and laugh intentionally, releasing the silly societal norms that inhibit these expressions. Laughter Yoga (Hasya Yoga) can be a great tool to rediscover this freedom.
An honest smile opens our hearts so we spread and receive more love.
People around feel that energy and react accordingly.
Smiling people are happier, heal the world and make it a better place…
Can you smile and feel stressed at the same time?
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Course ‘Expand to destress’ synergistically complements course ‘Team Harmonisation’. However, both are made as independent fully-fledged courses.
The course can be tailored to your needs.
I have synergised knowledge from Martial Arts, Physiology, Dance, Chi Kung,
and dynamic meditation and integrated them into a Holistic picture.
In the past, I worked as a manager in insurance, which gave me a good understanding of what a professional team needs to thrive in stressful working environments.
Tibi’s camp in Greece
The main thing that held me back was stress and the tension that followed. When there was no expectation during class training, I was relaxed and much more focused than in the heat of competition when I most wanted to win during competition. As much as I tried, the stress would become too overwhelming, and It held me down in ways that I couldn’t fully express my potential.
So, I began to study why stress has such a debilitating effect on our lives… and how we can cope with it.
It took a lot of time and patience. I tried many Eastern martial art forms, such as Karate, Wing Chun and Qigong, eventually mastering and teaching both, but still, I felt something was missing.
Then I found Systema.
I remember the first time I touched Vladimir Vasiliev… When I asked him where he took power from, he just smiled and said, ‘From being relaxed’. I didn’t understand, so he said: ‘Touch me.’ I put my hand out to touch him and was shocked at the ghost-like quality he had in his body. I’ve never felt such a relaxed body which didn’t resist my touch at all. His body accepted me and flowed with me.
After a couple of months, I realised that I had found the real treasure of stress management – in the martial art called ‘Systema’.
Tibi has been learning Systema stress management from Vladimir Vasiliev, Colonel Mikhail Ryabko and other masters…
Systema brings very old knowledge from our Vedic roots. Until today, we had the opportunity to study Vedic knowledge just from the Indian lineage. Fortunately, now through, the Cossacks tradition (Systema based on) is opening another source of Vedic culture. The main aim of Vedic culture was the development of consciousness. We became aware of processes in ourselves. Know thyself.
Systema is developing awareness of many inner processes. E.g. tension, expanding or condensing, the flow of kinetic energy and many others… A liquid quality in our bodies and minds allows us to flow even in the most stressful situations.
It’s a shame that Systema is not for the average Joe! Because not everybody like martial arts.
So I decided to take it upon myself to develop an appropriate method to teach the Systema principles to anyone – managers, sportsmen, teachers, kids and mothers.
I enriched it with other sources of knowledge, especially the result of my deep observation of processes in my own body…
Tibi Moravcik draws from ancient wisdom, ) modern knowledge and personal awareness experience.