Liberated Being
ep 48: Biotensegrity and Fascia Research Congress

I give my take on the 7th Biotensegrity Interest Group, the 1st Biotensegrity Summit, and the 4th Fascia Research Congress all of which recently took place in Reston, Virginia.


ep 47: Born to Walk with James Earls

James Earls, author of Born to Walk, takes a very whole system approach to understanding walking.

We talk about how the whole body walks, different schools of thought that have looked at walking in “parts” instead, how we are seduced into seeing anatomy with the same eye that we look at the manmade world around us, his homage to Robert Hooke who was a contemporary of Newton’s,understanding ground reaction force, the essentialness of efficiency in our evolution, the debate about whether or not walking is controlled falling, fascial wrappings as hydraulic amplifiers and oh so much more. 


ep 46: The Spark in the Machine with Dan Keown

Dr. Dan Keown, who is both a Western medical doctor and a Chinese medicine doctor joins me for a conversation about his book The Spark in the Machine.

We talk about many of the crucial things that Western medicine ignores- things like fascia, extracellular fluid, how an embryo knows how to organize around a seeming blueprint, and how your spirit affects your health. We talk about how fascia explains chi, how and why jing and shen are better predictors of lifespan and health than a person’s genetics, what cancer has to do with fascia and chi, how we are all built like crystals and what that has to do with piezoelectricity, and so much more. 


Ep 45: How We Form and Move with Joanne Avison

Joanne Avison, author of Yoga, Fascia, Anatomy, and Movement, talks with me about fascia and why it has been overlooked historically (which includes a fascinating tour through the history of anatomy and its relationship to the Catholic church), how we form embryologically and what implications that has for biomechanics vs. biotensegrity (or biomechanics vs. biomotion), what that changes when we think about movement and the language we use about movement and the body, 


ep 44: Stand Up Kids with Juliet Starrett

Juliet Starrett talks about the non-profit she and her husband Kelly have founded, Stand Up Kids, which aims to spread movement rich classrooms throughout the nation. They've started with their children's public school in California, which this August aims to be the first chair-free school in the United States.

How can standing desks create a movement-rich classroom environment instead of just replacing old furniture with new furniture? Hear the key details that make that possible.

How is a movement rich classroom environment and equality issue for boys and/or children with ADHD?

How can you make this happen in your community? 


ep 43: Making Classrooms Movement Friendly

I talk with Richard Brennan, originator of the School Chairs Campaign to make backward sloping chairs illegal, and Patricia Pyrka of Beyond Training about her week-long furniture-free experiment in her son's school.

What is (approximately) 15,000 hours spent sitting still in chairs throughout their educational years costing our children in terms of their physical and emotional health? 


ep: 42 Physical Disempowerment of Infants and Children with Kathleen Porter

How have our "advances" physical disempowered infants and children?

What long terms costs does that have?

How might the epidemics related to poorly functioning nervous systems be linked to or influenced by this?

How do we send the message that what is "out there" is more important than what is "in here"?

What are some of the movement-related predictors and therapies for autism spectrum disorders? 


ep 41: The Long Body with Frank Forencich

Frank Forencich and I talk about "the long body". A Native American term about how we are massively connected with the biological and social world around us.

Where does the human body begin and end?

Why is our perception of ourselves as isolated units dangerous?

Why do we have nervous systems?

Are we currently living in an alien environment?

What are some of the features of our culture that make is a "short culture"?

How is technology changing our nervous systems and our relationships?

How has stress changed since paleo times?


Ep 40: Navigating Pain with Neil Pearson

What is pain? Neil Pearson helps to clarify the assumption that all pain is directly correlated to tissue damage, why your brain is messing with you by creating pain in the first place (if it’s not always telling the truth about what’s going on on the inside), and how you are likely to convince your brain that you need more oomph in order for it to be listened to.

Neil also discusses how pain isn’t just biological, biomechanical, or biomedical- and how better understanding how our lives and bodies are integrated can help us to address it more effectively than reducing this way and trying to put it into one “box” or another.

We also touch on the controversy about whether you can measure someone's pain with a brain scan, and get into how yoga, movement, and fitness teachers can educate themselves in order to help their clients better.   


Ep 39: Natural Born Heroes with Christopher McDougall

Christopher McDougall is talking about his latest book, Natural Born Heroes. We talk about this remarkable story of a band of resistance fighters on Crete during World War II, how they contributed to toppling the Nazi occupation there, and the amazing local Cretans who taught them about their tradition of the hero.

Christopher doesn't stop at these remarkable people however, he asks what makes a hero and how can we all be heroes?

We talk fascia, Parkour, natural movement/MovNat, low heart rate training, burning fat for fuel, and how we can all rise to the occasion by studying the way of the hero. 


Ep 38: The Bliss of Your Biology with Ged Sumner

Today's conversation is with Ged Sumner about his book Body Intelligence Meditation.

- Is traditional meditation treating the body like a machine to be broken?

- Is it therefore anti-body and therefore leading to dissociative instead of enlightened states?

- Can deep shifts in our physiology happen simply by engaging in somatic meditation and inviting our deep intelligence to arise? And why does that sound so totally ludicrous to people?

- How the greatest miracle is that we seem solid at all.

- Have become too obsessed with pathology and not engaged enough with what feels good?

- Are we bliss-phobic as a culture and how do we get some of that yummy, juicy, waiting for us bliss back?


Ep 37: Embodied Mindfulness with Jamie McHugh

Where are we teaching critical sensing skills (instead of just critical thinking skills)?

What is true physical education?

Are classical meditation forms incompatible with modern life and the modern mind?

How do we use the expressive capacity of our bodies to connect as communities of humans? 


Episode 36: Barbara Loomis: Uterine Wisdom

Barbara Loomis talks about the surprising symptoms that can spring from uterine malpositioning- urinary incontinence, constipation, fertility issues, and even knee pain with ovulation. We also talk about the normal movement of the uterus, what we can do to keep it in as happy a position as possible, and some of the cultural things that contribute to a malpositioned uterus. Additionally we talk about the risks of hysterectomies, and the controversies that spring up around whether or not women should lift- if that affects uterine issues or contributes to problems in pregnancy. .


Episode 35: Dr. Stephen Levin: Biotensegrity

 

I am talking with Dr. Stephen Levin about what biotensegrity is, the many ways that we are not like skyscrapers, how the difference between the bicycle wheel and the wagon wheel can illustrate the concept of how we are “pre-stressed”, what viscoelasticity is, the shoulder as a sesamoid bone, some examples of the many tensegrity structures we can find in nature if we know what we’re looking for, what the ichosahedron has going for it and why we should care, and more!


Episode 34: Judith Aston: Our Relationship to our Bodies and Their Relationship to the World

 

I talk to somatic pioneer Judith Aston about the Aston Kinetics paradigm and how it integrates seamlessly with other paradigms like yoga, Pilates, and personal training, how seeing the body is taught in those disciplines and what seeing the body even means, our bodies not just as self-contained units but also about their interactions with the physical world, thoughts on the impact of product design on our bodies, what the early days of co-creating with Dr. Rolf and other pioneers was like, and the meaning behind her quote, “sometimes we just need help interpreting ourselves.”


Episode 33: Eyal Lederman: The Myth of Core Stability

 

Dr. Eyal Lederman talks about his paper, The Myth of Core Stability. We get into the assumptions that were pulled out of the research which have lead to the core stability model, how dividing muscles into “core” and “global” groups is a reductionist fantasy, why the focus on the transversus abdominus is faulty, and the problems training for core stability can create.


Episode 32: Steve Gangemi: Raising the Bar for What “Healthy” Means

 

Dr. Steve Gangemi, aka The Sock Doc, is a chiropractic physician and MovNat certified trainer who is merging functional neurology and nutritional biochemistry into mainstream natural healthcare. We talk about foot health as a gauge of a person’s overall health, the recent Vibrams 5 Fingers lawsuit, orthotics, the dangers of stretching, why you want to move your ass often but not quickly, long term effects of doing only high intensity workouts, and much more.


Episode 31: Gil Hedley: Exploring Inner Space

Gil Hedley is an ethicist and anatomist who runs unique human dissection labsthat are much more about discovering the reality of our connectedness than about finding the separations between things. We talk about how our model of the body determines our relationship with it, the superficial fascia and what’s up with everyone ignoring it?, different tissue layers as different antennea of the body, insights into the famous “fuzz speech” and more.


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