Zdorovye Program

ZDOROVYE – NATURE’S LEGACY

It was cultivated from centuries of ancient Slavic folkdance and folklore as a means of disease prevention and health improvement. Covertly researched during the USSR, scientists devised and investigated the realm of Psychophysiology: The discipline of body-mind interconnectivity. Only National and Olympic trainers, along with Special Military Operations Unit trainers were permitted to utilize this system for the performance enhancement of their athletes and personnel.

In the early 90’s, Scott Sonnon, USA National Team Coach and International Champion in the ethnic Russian sport called Sambo, was admitted as the first non-Russian permitted to learn these powerful health methods. Leading a team of American researchers, Sonnon spent years traveling throughout Russia learning the indigenous Slavic traditions (called ROSS or “Russian Native Martial Art”). After becoming the first foreigner licensed in ROSS by the Russian Government agencies, he and his cadre of researchers returned to the USA and developed Zdorovye into a system of physical culture comprehensible to the Western scientific market.

The Concept and Method:

Stress, trauma, fear, and anxiety daily conditions in Civilization, undermine health and promote disease by disintegrating breathing, alignment, and movement. The misuse of the human organism causes your health to atrophy: analogous to driving an off-road vehicle on the freeway in bumper-to-bumper 90MPH traffic, in low gear, with damaged shocks, faulty brakes, no lubrication, and poor wheel alignment. You may get to your destination, but at what cost?

Breathing, Structure, and Movement are interdependent virtues of your health.
Breathing + Structure creates Movement;
Movement+ Breating creates Structure;
Structure + Movement creates Breathing.
If interrupted anywhere in the cycle, dis-ease results.

Most in the health field appreciate the health cycle:

Zdorovye defines health as the Quality and Synergy of your breathing, alignment, and movement, so the essence of health is not in doing more, but in re-accessing your natural, maximal resources to perform with ease in all things (efficiency= useful work/total work). Though Stress and trauma conceal and diminish it, Nature gives you efficiency as your birthright. Zdorovye teaches you how to reclaim your natural energy, poise, grace, and vitality (Your Natural Abundant Health), through a unique system of Somatic Engineering Exercise, which reintegrates your respiratory, structural, and biomechanical efficiency.

The System:

In the Basic Level of Zdorovye you develop in three phases:

1. Dykahniye: Natural Energy, Respiratory Enhancement
2. Polozheniye: Natural Poise, Structural Alignment
3. Dvizheniye: Natural Grace, Biomechanical Efficiency.

The RE-integration of these three health virtues reclaims Your Natural
Abundant Health, through the Zdorovye Developmental Process.

The Process:

You will develop through three levels:

1. Recovery Period: Training during this period will reclaim your natural capacities of breathing, alignment, and movement.
2. Coordination Period: Training during this period will coordinate your breathing with movement, your aligment with breathing, and your movement with alignment.
3. Refinement Period: Training during this period will synergize your breathing, movement, and alignment.

The Benefits:

Zdorovye – Nature’s Legacy is an integrated health philosophy: it has soul in that it is a tradition where you receive lifestyle enhancement, through a complete system of daily health improvement. It does not merely teach breathing methods, nor merely postural methods, nor merely movement methods, but it teaches you an integrated health philosophy allowing you to explore your health to any depth. Zdorovye improves your condition by reintegrating fragmented health: movement, alignment, and breathing.

Zdorovye – Nature’s Legacy is the synergy of body, mind, and spirit, and begins with the premise that your natural abundant health is your birthright, which can be re-coordinated through direct training, personal experience, and self exploration. The process of high performance health: the human organism is an awe-inspiring health generator, a perfect healer. Disease and illness are products of interfering with the organism’s natural healing process. Zdorovye-Nature’s Legacy will help you, through a unique system, that can be done everywhere and always, to “get out of our own way” to natural healing.

What is the Zdorovye Health System?

The Zdorovye Health System is a natural movement education system, or a type of somatic engineering. Movement Education in Zdorovye is more than working to increase range of motion (flexibility) and strength. The goals of Zdorovye are to integrate/coordinate breathing, movement and structural alignment, as well as increase the pliability, coordination and strength of any individual. These goals are accomplished in a gradual fashion using an errorless learning module of training working gradually from recovery to coordination to refinement in all aspects of health, fitness and awareness. This process is also followed with each exercise – first recovering the necessary pliability, coordination and strength, and then coordinating and refining those aspects. The exercises in Zdorovye are designed to enhance the efficiency of every movement by causing the individual to move in three dimensions simultaneously as well as understanding the use of the center of gravity (of the entire body as well as each individual segment) as a mobility tool.

How is it Structured?

The Zdorovye Health System is broken down into three levels: Novice, Intermediate and Advanced.

The Novice level seeks to fully integrate Dvizheniye (movement), Polozheniye (structural alignment) and Dykhaniye (breathing). The main focus of this level is to recover our natural child-like pliability (flexibility) as well as restore our natural coordination (awareness) and strength (stamina).

The Intermediate level seeks to fully develop the coordination aspect of the exercises. In order to gain any development from the intermediate exercises one must have FULLY integrated his/her breathing, alignment and movement.

The Advanced level seeks to refine these fully coordinated and integrated exercises into truly efficient movements.

‘Recover – Coordinate – Refine’ is one of the overall principles for the Zdorovye Health System. It is applied to the entire system (Novice – Intermediate – Advanced) as well as to each individual exercise. It is a gradual process that, when followed through to the end has a more profound effect on the individual than something that is gained instantly.What can Zdorovye do for me?

Whether you are an Olympic athlete or a senior citizen, Zdorovye can help improve your performance and health.

The following is a general list of the benefits that anyone can gain from the Zdorovye Health System:

Increase Energy:
Breathing exercises integrated with movement and alignment will increase the energy levels, and help you maintain and balance them throughout the day.

Increase Mobility
Movement exercises integrated with breathing and alignment will increase the range-of-motion of your joints – keeping them mobile, supple and strong.

Increase Power
Structural Alignment exercises integrated with breathing and movement will increase the power that is inherent in the structure of your body.

Increase Efficiency
Specialized applications of breathing, alignment & movement will teach your body how to move efficiently (doing more with less).

Decrease Injuries
If your keep your body energized, mobile and powerful you decrease the risk of injury. Through the specialized applications of breathing, alignment & movement the connective tissues around your joints become stronger and more pliable.

Decrease Fear
If you have never jumped out of an airplane you will most likely be terrified the first time you do so. The Zdorovye Health System teaches kinesthetic awareness – awareness of where your body is – which allows you to let go of the fear of such things as falling.

Decrease Anxiety/Stress
There are two reactions that we have towards stress – mental & physical. The physical reaction – tension – is something that we can easily reduce through specialized applications of movement, breathing & posture.

How to start practicing Zdorovye?