The Joanne Avison Podcast

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 its “anti-gravity reflex.”

A number of you have asked questions about emotional anatomy and the idea that our body is listening. In response to that, Joanne also explores the teachers who helped shape her ability to do that along the way, why learning to trust our own inner guidance matters, and how her later understanding of fascia, biomechanics and biomotional intelligence gave new meaning to ideas she first encountered decades ago.

There’s also a simple practice you can try as Joanne invites you to pause, breathe and experience the subtle two-directional movement of your own spine, to really feel what Vanda’s guidance meant in practice.

Perhaps awakening the spine begins with something remarkably simple: learning how to listen and using our breath to hear.

🌟🌟🌟 Plus, the free guide 'Sacred Geometry In The Living Body', including five subtle movement practices, is still available here! 
https://www.joanneavison.com/sacred-geometry-gift
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Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman

What if your emotions aren’t separate from your anatomy, but part of the way you move, breathe and express who you are?
After sharing her deeply personal experience of recovery in 12 Minutes That Changed the Way I Move, Joanne turns to a question many of you have been asking in the comments: what is emotional anatomy, and do our feelings really shape the body?
Drawing on decades of studying anatomy, fascia, movement, spirituality and the work of Emotional Anatomy by Stanley Keleman, Joanne explores the body as something far richer than a collection of mechanical parts.
She reflects on the relationship between our emotions and the shapes we make, why she’s cautious about labelling a person by their posture or body type, and how changing the way we move can sometimes change the way we feel…
Joanne also shares something she has noticed through her own micromovement practice: when she moves differently, she breathes differently. She smiles. She feels different. And her whole body responds.
Perhaps our emotional anatomy is part of an ongoing conversation between body, movement, feeling and soul - one we already have the ability to listen to.

🎁 If you haven’t collected Joanne’s free Sacred Geometry guide yet, you’ll find five subtle practices inside that you can explore for yourself.
 👉 Get your free guide here: https://www.joanneavison.com/sacred-geometry-gift

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My website - https://www.joanneavison.com/
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Instagram -  joanneavison

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Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman

What if the way we’ve been taught to stand is getting in the way of how we’re designed to move?
After the extraordinary response to last week’s personal episode, Joanne continues the conversation with something wonderfully practical - beginning with a sentence she used herself for decades:
“Stand with your feet hip-width apart.”
So why doesn’t she say it anymore?
This episode is an invitation to look a little differently at the remarkable body you inhabit: one designed to wobble, recoil, adapt, recover and dance its way through life.
Joanne explores the natural spring and intelligence already within us, and shares a simple micromovement you can try for yourself right away. You might discover something surprising about the way your body prefers to balance, turn and move! Because perhaps moving better for longer begins with listening more closely to the body we already have - and trusting a little more of its innate wisdom...

*** If you haven’t collected Joanne’s free Sacred Geometry guide yet, it brings together both Sacred Geometry series, the geometry of the living body and five subtle practices for you to explore.
 Get your free guide here: https://www.joanneavison.com/sacred-geometry-gift

 And Joanne mentions Myofascial Magic In Action co-founder Paul Thornley in this episode. You can find Paul on Instagram at @paul.s.thornley

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My website - https://www.joanneavison.com/
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Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman

What can 12 minutes of gentle movement really change?
For this final chapter of Sacred Geometry Series 2, Joanne does something a little different. After exploring the remarkable people and ideas that have shaped our understanding of living architecture, she shares a much more personal story.
Following surgery after a diagnosis of breast cancer, Joanne came home unable to move her right arm and shoulder. Drawing on decades of work with fascia, anatomy and movement, she became her own case study, committing to just 12 minutes of micromovement a day. She expected that to fully restore her movement it would take at least 12 months. It took 12 weeks.
This episode follows that experience through recovery, the support and grace that surrounded her, and the unexpected visit from Paul Thornley that led to the creation of Myofascial Magic in Action. It felt essential to them both to share the benefits of this work.
It’s a story about subtle movement, fascia, recovery and restoring the natural spring we’re all designed to have… and what that can mean for you.

🎁 A SPECIAL GIFT FOR YOU
Inspired by everything we’ve explored across these two Sacred Geometry series, Joanne has created a free guide for you, connecting the keys of all the Platonic solids explored in Series 1, a summary of the key protagonists in Series 2 and how all that geometry actually works in the living body, through five subtle practices you can explore for yourself. 
👉 Get your free Sacred Geometry gift here! https://www.joanneavison.com/sacred-geometry-gift

✨ EXPLORE THE 5 R’s
Explore the 5 R’s of micromovement sequencing Joanne mentions in this episode, by watching our special YouTube mini-series - complete with practical demonstrations - starting here: Rebound In Action: The Key to Moving Without Strain

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My website - https://www.joanneavison.com/
My course - https://myofascialmagic.com/
My book:  - https://amzn.to/3zF3SAS
Instagram -  joanneavison

FREE ONLINE WEBINAR:
Free Webinar - https://myofascialmagic.com/webinar-registration

Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman

What if continuity is even more fundamental than tensegrity?
In this special episode of Sacred Geometry, Joanne is joined in person by clinical anatomist and exercise physiologist John Sharkey for a wide-ranging conversation about fascia, tensegrity and the living architecture of the human body.

You might prefer to watch this episode on YouTube as there are a couple of brief references to a visual model (the 'Skwish') held up by Joanne and John.
Together, they revisit the ideas explored throughout Series 2 - from Leonardo da Vinci and Kenneth Snelson to Buckminster Fuller, Tom Flemons and Donald Ingber - and ask where those discoveries take us now…
John explores why fascia may be better understood as something that transcends the body's individual systems, how living geometry continually adapts through movement and time, and how no two bodies ever express that architecture in quite the same way. This fascinating conversation also covers fasciategrity, stochasticity, force transmission, the spiral architecture of the heart (!) and what decades of anatomical dissection continue to reveal about human form.
It’s a conversation about continuity, curiosity and the questions still waiting to be asked, with plenty of stories from Joanne and John's years of working and teaching together.

Subscribe to continue the journey. There’s one final episode of Series 2 still to come, and Joanne has something special waiting for you there.

Links to some of John Sharkey's most recent papers:
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/15/12/1924
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42458875/ 
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My website - https://www.joanneavison.com/
My course - https://myofascialmagic.com/
My book:  - https://amzn.to/3zF3SAS
Instagram -  joanneavison

FREE ONLINE WEBINAR:
Free Webinar - https://myofascialmagic.com/webinar-registration

Podcast produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman