The Body in Question

Today our guest is Corina Avni, a registered physiotherapist with over 25-years of experience in pelvic health. She runs a practice devoted to the assessment and management of pelvic function and most of her caseload comprises of patients with chronic pain and multisystem dysfunction. She is also doing a PhD researching chronic overlapping pain conditions and the role of autonomic nervous system dysregulation.

I wanted to have this conversation because I know so many people who struggle with pelvic pain and pelvic floor issues and chronic pain of many kinds. Corina approaches these things with the kind of holistic understanding that really resonates with me. In this episode she explains chronic pain as a systemic issue that can often be treated very effectively through nervous system regulation. We talk about why we as people are so bad at doing the simple things that we know are good for us. Also about the close link between the pelvis and the psyche. About how what we think directly impacts our physiology. We talk about shame and prayer and pleasure. About spending less time doing and more time being - also as a way of reducing inflammation  in our bodies.

Today our guest is Wil Baiden-Amissah, a strength and conditioning coach with qualifications in Personal Training, Crossfit, and Olympic Weightlifting and  twenty years of experience in the fitness industry both in the UK and South Africa. I wanted to have this conversation because scientific studies of the past few years clearly show that it is crucial for women to be doing strength training, which is contrary to everything you learnt growing up if you are a millennial woman like me. Now we know as women that we also need to work on strength, but there is so much noise on the internet and social media about strength training that we are all confused about exactly what it is that we should be doing and how much of it. In this conversation I ask Wil all the practical questions about progressive overload, cardio, finding a good trainer, and starting and sticking to a strength training routine. And then Wil also takes us deeper into the more existential topics of ageing, of softening one’s resolve, what the cultural fixation on skinniness costs us, the profound importance of rest, the magic of walking, and the slow and gentle work of cultivating a body that can carry you through life.

Wil's Instagram handle: https://www.instagram.com/wilpower.fitness/

Today our guest is Jeri Silverman, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Alexander Technique teacher, based in Cape Town. Before coming to this work Jeri was a musician and actor in New York, and the frenetic pace of that life led her to discover tools that helped her feel safe and free in her body, live with less tension and judgement, and to create from that place. Her work is underpinned by Archetypal Psychology and deeply influenced by the healing power of voice and breath, mindfulness studies and Vipassana meditation. She’s a mother and a songwriter, among many other things, she’s released 2 albums, appeared in international television, holds a BCOM from UCT. 

We talk about Jeri’s lifelong pursuit of presence in her life and throughout  the conversation we return to the question of what it means to be present, to really be open to and fully inhabit the our human experience. We talk about nervous system regulation, what it is and all of the things that social media gets wrong about it. About how what happened in the past can get lodged in us, conditioning our experience of the present. How can we shift these old patterns to open ourselves up to experiencing something new and thereby enabling us to make different choices based on what we desire and who we are. So we talk about opening up space for choice and agency within ourselves but also, on the other hand,  about surrendering to everything we cannot control, which is most things, as Jeri says. How, through non-doing rather than doing, we can create space and capacity within ourselves to not only tolerate the stress of life but also to experience our lives and to allow novelty and unexpectedness and vitality. The relief and the magic of letting go. We talk about posture and about how the way in which we move in our bodies determine the ways in which we show up in the world. We talk about the profound power of rest, and also what rest actually looks like. And how all of this relates to creativity.

Jeri's website: aspacebetween.co.za