ABSTRACT

Slavic Gymnastic for Women: a tradition system to support women’s health

Agnieszka Pluto-Pradzynska, PhD, Department of Immunology, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Poznan (Poland)

Slavic Gymnastic for Women is a system of psychophysical exercises passed down orally in the tradition of Slavic women living in the borderlands of Ukraine and Belarus. Collected from older women, the items were reconstructed as a set of 27 exercises. Gymnastics was used to regulate menstrual cycles, improve fertility, and strengthen the female body to allow for the natural progression of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and rapid recovery in the postpartum period, where natural medicine was firmly entrenched, especially in areas without access to a doctor, and births often took place at home. We conducted a pilot study in the Department of Immunology to verify observational data, on a group of a dozen women, evaluating immunological and hormonal parameters.