Frank Arias/Kwan Lee Desert Heat

[Richard Brown]

Since no one else has posted anything I thought I should at least mention this great seminar. Frank Arias came out to Phoenix for the 110+ temperatures and Kwan Lee hosted the event as well as co-teaching.
The two days were full of info with new material and new takes on everything you thought you already might know.
Both days started with walking breath work, one breath one step, inhale two steps, exhale two steps and then Frank instructed everyone to fall to the ground and come up with breathing while doing the walking drills. Of course, often the falling was aided by a grab, push or trip!! One of the things Frank was emphasizing was using spiral movement to come up from the ground. Both Kwan and Frank talked about constant movement and not stopping the movement even when rising from the prone position. When they both demonstrated they seemed to be pulled from the ground by their spiral motion, some of the rest of us... not so much.

Mr. McQueen mentioned in his post that Vladimir was really emphasizing breathing in Japan and it was no different here. I cannot speak for anyone else but my take on what Frank and Kwan were emphasizing is a type of progression. First your breathing is part of your movement, then your breathing starts and ends the movement until finally your breathing is the movement.

I don't want to try to cover everything blow by blow but some of the other things I remember were: breathing massage (on the second day) to help recover from the first while preparing for all the great strikes, going to the ground and coming up without use of the hands (don't forget the spiral!). A nice three person drill that starts with one person on the ground avoiding the other two as they walk, then they strike the person on the ground, then the person on the ground has to avoid them and get up to a standing position. Of course as soon as they come up the two "attackers" put him back down (by whatever means) and start striking immediately. Kwan wanted to make sure everyone understood that coming up from the ground can be an attack in itself. Most of us were just happy to get to our feet without the other two kicking us in the head, but to capture the feeling Kwan demonstrated how coming from the floor (with breathing of course) while maintaining proper posture led us right into strikes against the other two. After watching Kwan come up from the floor the group I was training with mentioned something about Kwan not having joints in his body, but it wasn't confirmed.
We did some drills with the knife and the emphasis was in not tracing your own body with the attacker's knife. Plenty of strikes, take downs, refreshing breathing drills aka pushups, squats and leg lifts. For those of you who haven't spent any time training with Kwan one particularly unpleasant breath drill is... push up position, down one inch, up, now rotate your body over with only your fists and feet on the floor with your front now facing the ceiling and go down an inch, rotate over to pushup position and go down two inches, rotate and then lather, rinse and repeat going down all the way to the floor one inch at a time.

It was a great seminar with two excellent instructors who are also great people. When Frank was doing something Kwan grabbed a camera and then while Kwan was showing some work Frank grabbed his own camera. One thing that never ceases to amaze me about Systema is how two people like Frank and Kwan can both move differently yet both move so effortlessly. It's Systema but it's their Systema, they make it fit their body and their body fits into the space they're in.
Personally I had a great time and I'd like to thank Frank for travelling all the way out from Toronto (especially since he did it in the summer, usually people come from Canada to Arizona in the winter!!) to share with all of us and to Kwan for hosting the event and adding his own great abilities.
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Richard Brown

[Kwan Lee]

It has been a while since the seminar, but I wanted to take a moment to thank Frank on this Forum for coming down to Phoenix on short notice to join me in teaching this event. Everyone enjoyed themselves and learned a great deal from the dual-instructor format. Thanks Richard for posting the review as well. I need to take your lead and be more vocal about things!

Hope to see everyone again soon... and definitely for Vladimir's (plus special guest master) event in November.

Kwan
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Russian Martial Art AZ
www.systema.us

"Bucket work implies much more discipline than most men realize." -- R. Bly