Ian Jarvis

What is “Mindful Movement”? – an exploration

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My perspective comes from my work as a body therapist and yoga practitioner/teacher, viewing the human body as a tensegrity structure with internal tension that keeps it upright and flexible. (The ‘strap line’ for Spineworks is “Mindful Bodywork Therapy”.) Ever since bringing the Spineworks concepts into my work, along with learning and developing from and with Tarpan in the mid-90s, I feel I have been working with fascia. We didn’t make much reference to it then, though we spoke about ‘connective tissue’ but in practice that was the mode of our work.
The same is true of the movements or exercises that I often give to clients. These exercises all have an element of mindfulness – or awareness as I have been wont to call it for many years. Often I will work out a specific exercise for a client depending on their problem and other individual factors.
This conference is about Mindful Movement so what then is the difference between “normal movement” and “Mindful Movement”? (Noting the capitalisations.)
As therapists, we are used to seeing the body in a static pose through idealised pictures, or a client lying relaxed on a treatment table. However we must always take account of the reality of movement and how that client moves in daily living.
How does our view of anatomy affect our work as body therapists and movement teachers as well as our own personal posture and movement in the patterns of our daily life?
Together we will explore the element of Mindfulness in our posture and movement, both internal and whole body. We will see experientially how every movement we make engages our entire structure, how trying to work out what muscles are active in what way when we move, is just nigh impossible!
Movement is natural and intuitive – you didn’t have to learn to be born. But maybe we have to learn to live in our body in a mindful way with the stresses of the modern we world we have created.
I hope that this session will help you on your way.

Ian spent over 30 years in the IT industry spending too many days sitting in front of a computer screen – and before they were invented, a coding sheet!
Through the 1990s he trained in Shiatsu, Reiki and Spineworks. He has never stopped learning and in this century has learnt Body Harmony, became a yoga teacher (after some 25 years personal practice) and attended many short courses. All this has given him the platform to develop into his work with bodywork, body awareness and movement.
He likes speaking to groups, including business groups, about their body and becoming more aware of how they use and abuse it in daily life. He also enjoys facilitating yoga based classes for people who think they really aren’t suited to yoga, though that is infrequent because of his work in Bhopal.