Martin Wheeler is actually the first instructor who got me interested in Systema. So, finally meeting him in person for the first time was even more magical than I had imagined!

In my Ryo seminar recap, I mentioned applying tension to trick or mislead your partner. Martin showed me why this might not be a good idea. Yes, although this may work beautifully in hand to hand combat, when it comes to weapons… even the slightest thread of tension could get you stabbed or shot!

I didn’t totally understand initially but all Martin did was move in such way that is almost as smooth and soft as water and although I may have seen him move, I couldn’t possibly respond… or rather, I didn’t know to respond?

As far as I understand, this is probably as simple as relaxation. Yet, while the skills or drills are no secret or strange to me, no matter how hard I tried, I could only perform them sometimes, at best, as it was later explained to me, that the problem is that I was “trying”.

“Trying” means I want to make things happen, which inevitably leads to tension; While relaxation is simply letting things happen.

When I stop worrying about things like “I want do to it” or “can I do it”, and just know that I know the stuff, that I am on top of things, everything came so naturally. In fact, things worked even better if I didn’t think about any of that. Two separate light sparrings, about a week later, I somewhat performed the first half of a move Martin had shown, the second half of the said move lit up in my head… and actually happened simultaneously. My fist went into the eyes beautifully!

However, I feel like when learning new material reaching new depths basically means that we don’t know them… at least not that well, and definitely don’t own them. So, quite a Möebius loop there?

Nevertheless, as I was presumably more relax… Not only was my work more natural but it also seemed to give me a clearer perspective. And, I started noticing things, for example, when I had the pleasure of working with Martin himself, I realized I was always following, that I was half a step behind. Probably because whenever he did something to me, that said thing was what caught my attention. I was feeling pain and I just wanted to get rid of it and in so doing, was blinded to the threat I was walking into. And I might have even thought that I was relaxing through it but I wasn’t. At least not as much as I would have liked to.

This brings us to the most important insight Martin shared with me: True Systema is very boring. When you punch, do push ups, whatever you do, your emotion should always be neutral, and you should always be consistent in how you feel. And hence when you do Systema, you are not fighting with anyone, but with your own emotions.

大概沒多少人知道，Martin Wheeler其實是最初勾起我對Systema興趣的人。沒想到時隔這麼久終於見到他真人…完全沒讓我失望，給了我一個奇妙的體驗！

之前我說過可以用Tension來做假動作之類、引(誤)導對手，但他一來就示範了為何那不是好主意。如果雙方都赤手空拳或許還能騙下人；但假如面對的是刀或鎗時，只要一絲Tension觸動了對方便足以令你被砍或射中了！我也許不是完全明白，相對的他僅僅動作有如流水般輕柔、自然，便使我縱意識到卻仍…忘了要去反應？

按我的理解，秘訣無非就是放鬆。雖然這些技巧和練習對我來說幾乎可以用熟悉來形容，但不論我再怎樣歇力嘗試，頂多也只是偶爾能做到…後來他解釋那說是因為我在「嘗試」。

「嘗試」，即是我想「使事情發生」，而這很容易成為、甚至可說就是Tension；相反，Relation(放鬆)的思維應該是「讓事情發生」。

當我不擔心「我想怎樣」或「我能做到嗎」而認為自己知道及能做到時，真的就自然發生了。坦白說，完全放空時感覺更好。約一周後我在二次輕度對打中剛好做了某個他示範過的動作的前半時，後半就在腦中浮現…同時實際發生了。我的拳頭漂亮的擊中了他們的眼晴！他們沒事啦…

但這中間我覺得有個比較吊詭的地方：在我們嘗試學習新事物或達到新高度…那表示我們當然不可能那麼的了解、做到，更別說掌握他們了？

總之，我猜我的確放鬆了點吧？不單事情開始較自然的發生，我感覺自己好像開始注意到更多之前我注意不到的事。好比說我察覺到Martin總是領先、牽引著我行動。每次被他碰到我就忘掉初心而集中在他的動作中，被弄痛便不顧一切的逃而沒注意到正走進下一個危機…我以為自己是放鬆、化解，其實不然。最少沒有到足夠的程度。

而這正好引申到Martin給我最大的啟示：真正的Systema是很沉悶的。出拳也好、掌上壓也好、做什麼也好，你的情緒都應該是平穩的、你的感受都應該是一致的。所以在修煉Systema時，你永遠有一個對手，不是任何人，而是你自己的情緒。