I have a confession to make: not all of my Systema classes have been
enjoyable learning experiences. Nearly all of them have been, but
there are a couple of notable exceptions. Very often it's my own
psychological condition; I doubt myself, and rather than taking a
risk to try to do the work; I intentionally perform badly, this way I
won't have to be disappointed in myself because I'll know the
outcome. At other times, my partner will be too rough, too tense, but
because I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, I
do not tell them to lighten up or relax, and as you may know, you
cannot do Systema effectively if you are tense and rough. Because
they cannot effect a takedown on me with all their roughness and
tension, I feel as if I have failed them as well, and I know they
feel the same way, and would prefer to work with someone else because
I'm too hard to take down. Then there are the conditions inside our
dojo, if it's a very large class, I become nervous. We have to switch
partners, as per usual in Systema class, but I cannot bring myself to
ask anyone to be my partner or even walk over to someone else or
catch their eye. I wait until everyone else is paired up and then,
even if there is only one person remaining, I still cannot meet their
eye or walk over to them, despite the fact that they don't have a
partner either, and I'm their only option, I still don't want to put
them in a position of having to work with me, because I cannot
imagine that anyone might actually want to work with me.

As you can see, I do have some major issues of self-confidence and
socializing with others. If someone walks toward me for any reason, I
automatically turn away. Anyone who wishes to talk to me or make
friends has to make that so glaringly obvious to me, so that there's
no doubt in my mind that yes, this person intends to talk to me,
otherwise I assume they are just coincidentally looking in my
direction. The only reason I have friends at all is because they, not
me, went out of their way to speak to me, and were very patient about
it, until I finally accepted that their intentions were sincere,
which generally takes about six months. I wish I could be a different
person, and I know what I have to do, but I suppose I lack the
courage or fortitude to change my behaviour, because after four
months of training, I still cannot bring myself to find my own
partner, and our instructor usually has to match me up with someone.

In the past, I chose not to post my journals for those classes, but I
hope to give an accurate picture of my training. So here's a
description of a class in which I didn't have much success:

When I perform poorly in class, it's a psychological problem, not a
physical one. In every other aspect of my life, I feel that Systema
guides my physical movements. But occasionally my mind will not allow
my movements to be free enough to train effectively. Although it's
only happened a few times, I view these occasions as discord,
imbalance in my life. So I have to describe my state of mind in order
to explain why occasionally, I can't be a Systema-ist. You'll have to
let me know if you prefer that I stick to the more accurate
description of the drills and omit the very occassional unsuccessful
class from my logs.

I started off fine with a rolling exercise where you start in a
sitting position, keeping your back rounded, lower it on the floor
using on shoulder, use the other shoulder, and lift yourself up
again. We also practiced swiveling our hips and using them to change
direction on the floor. I feel OK on the floor, as if it's a safe
harbor for me. Not so much standing up, unfortunately.

We moved into a kicking exercise, which troubled me a great deal. The
exercise was your partner kicks you, and you swivel your hips to
avoid. Later we expanded it to include avoiding, then swiveling back,
and stepping in various directions. It seems rather simple, but I was
having trouble with it. When there is any kind of stepping or foot-
patterns, I have a hard time following along with the instructor,
even on my aerobic tapes at home. There's this exercise called a
Grapevine on my Tae Bo tape that I have never been able to figure
out. I guess I was standing there with a puzzled look on my face,
because everyone started trying to help me all at once. This made me
really nervous. I felt that if I just practiced it a little bit, I'd
figure out the steps. I asked everyone to tell me EXACTLY what I was
doing wrong, but no-one would give me any specific information. Edgar
tried to tell me not to get hung up in doing it step-by-step, to just
relax and repeat the exercise.

I was feeling sort of crappy because I am not one of those people who
picks things up quickly, I have to practice over and over again
before I understand the movement. All eyes were on me and I felt a
lot of pressure to pick it up. Truthfully I was hoping for more
practice, less demonstration and explanation. I felt as if I could
only keep practicing, I might get it. But being the center of
attention made me feel as if I used up all the class time because our
teacher and the rest of the class were preoccupied with trying to
help me. I know this isn't logical, after all, they were friends
trying to help. But you see, a person like me has all sort of inner
conflicts when it comes to interacting with others. The
phrase "change partners" brings on a mild anxiety attack, I feel as
if I've already made a gigantic effort in securing one partner, and
now I have to find another person? If you are a person who has
socialized normally, perhaps you cannot imagine how it is to be this
way, to hope that no-one will notice you, and to feel that any
attention from others, no matter how positive, is damaging. I was
speaking to our school director afterwards about shyness and we both
agreed it has a little bit to do with pride and ego. Although I
always claim to be shy, I have a great deal of self-confidence in
some areas of my life, the intellectual areas, but not the physical
ones.

In any case, everyone encouraged me to practice with our teacher, and
he does not talk much, he just wants you to keep moving. I knew if
only someone were willing to just kick at me over and over again, the
repetition would eventually provide the solution. Our instructor is
fine with allowing us to practice on him over and over again, and
does not often expect any reciprocation, except to demonstrate how
it's done (generally with my partners, we switch back and forth,
usually punching or kicking in sets of 4). Edgar does not need to
tell me if I'm doing something wrong, I know this for myself based on
the outcome of my movement. If I am falling all over him or
stumbling, losing my balance, or if I end up several feet away from
him, then I was not doing it correctly. But he'll just keep coming at
me and I generally get it eventually, and then he'll say "right"
or "good" very quietly to let me know I'm on the right track. That
was all right but I still felt as if I was consuming all his time.
Edgar encouraged us to be playful, to treat sparring like a game, and
generally I do have a merry and sometimes mischievous attitude in
Systema class, but I hardly smiled today. That probably made a
significant difference in my performance, certainly I felt less
relaxed.

Probably I was a little distracted by an impossible assignment my
boss handed to me before I left to go to class. Also I was a little
bit tired, because I didn't go to sleep at a reasonable hour, and the
sound of the theater troupe practicing a musical next door was pretty
loud. Everyone was trying to help me at once, our teacher, my
training partner, the other classmate, I expected the school director
sitting behind the reception desk to start shouting instructions at
me. I hate to be the center of attention, even when it's something
good. I'll never forget the humiliating experience of my sixth-grade
teacher asking if he could read my essay aloud to the class, and when
I refused to allow it, he harangued me mercilessly, telling the
class, "I'd like to show you how an A+ essay sounds, but someone
won't allow it."

It's funny how our happy memories fade and our unpleasant ones, like
my sixth grade teacher's words to me, persist for years and years, or
in some cases, for the duration of our lives. But feeling bad is not
something that I can supress, I just have to let myself get as low as
possible until I finally realize, Wait, things could be worse! I
still have all four limbs, so what am I feeling sorry for myself for?
I will sit on my sofa, drink some ginger tea, and watch the snow, and
I am pretty sure I'll feel better tomorrow.

It's about a half-hour since I wrote that last line and I do feel a
lot better. The problem is that unsuccessful training sessions like
today's destroy my self-confidence. The last time this happened it
was a lot more dramatic and I did feel such a loss of confidence, I
wondered whether I should continue training. I don't have such an
intense feeling this time, but I do have this uneasy feeling of being
a bad student, far worse than being a bad Systema-ist. I feel if only
I paid attention more or was cleverer, I could learn the movement
without taking up all the class time with my own problems. Luckily I
have a wonderful teacher, Edgar Tsakouls, who always tells me not to
worry, that the exercises are difficult, (though he makes them look
easy), and to have fun with them. He's a remarkably kind and caring
person with a soothing personality and the calming movements of an
accomplished Systema-ist, so that we leave class, no matter how
challenging, in a more relaxed state than when we arrived.