Show Notes
Why lever mechanics don’t explain human movement. In this episode, Joanne explores the limitations of the biomechanical idea that joints act as simple levers. Drawing on fascia science and anatomical observation, she explains why the human body cannot be accurately understood through linear mechanical models. Many traditional explanations of movement rely on engineering concepts such as levers, pin joints, and mechanical chains. But living bodies are not built like machines! Joanne describes ...
More from The Joanne Avison Podcast
What if the human body is far more connected and extraordinary than we've ever imagined? And what if the way we feel is inseparable from the way our entire body moves, responds and experiences life? In this final episode of her Emotional Anatomy series, Joanne explores the remarkable work of Dr Mae-Wan Ho, a pioneering biophysicist whose research challenged how we understand the interconnectedness of living organisms. Using polarised light, Mae-Wan Ho and her colleague observed tiny living cr...
What if our emotions are communicating through far more of the body than we ever imagined? In this episode, Joanne considers things she learned through the groundbreaking work of Dr. Candace Pert. Dr Pert is the neuroscientist whose scientific discoveries helped transform our understanding of the relationship between mind, body and emotion. Through her research into neuropeptides and their receptors, and her influential book Molecules of Emotion, Pert revealed a remarkable body-wide communica...
What happens when everything you’ve been taught tells you to go one way, but the body asks you to go another? In this episode, Joanne reflects on Dr. Ida P. Rolf, the pioneering biochemist whose work creating Structural Integration profoundly influenced the way we understand fascia, bodywork and the organisation of the living body. Joanne shares her own journey through Structural Integration, from training and teaching alongside the development of Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains, to an experience...
What if the body is doing far more than simply carrying us through the world? Following last week’s exploration of Vanda Scaravelli and learning to listen to the body, Joanne turns to another woman whose work profoundly shaped her thinking: Mabel Elsworth Todd, author of the pioneering The Thinking Body. Todd was writing about the relationship between thought, feeling, posture and movement as early as the 1930s. She recognised that our emotional lives are expressed through the whole body, and...
What happens when we stop telling the body what to do, and start listening to what it already knows? More than 30 years ago, Vanda Scaravelli’s Awakening the Spine began a journey for Joanne that would profoundly change the way she understood yoga, movement and her own body. In this episode, Joanne reflects on what Vanda taught her about gravity, the spine, proprioception and the intelligence within our movement — including the unforgettable moment her own body showed her what Vanda called ...