The Body Talks

Rachel Biffin interviews Nicho Plowman, a Vedic meditation teacher and co-founder of one of the world’s most used meditation apps- Insight Timer. He also co-owns Edmund and Amelia, an ongoing project running meditation workshops and retreats in Australia and abroad.Links:Nicho Plowman Vedic Meditation teacherEdmund and AmeliaInsight Timer appRachel sips UNBUSY TEA. For more resources and to check out Rachel's services, go to: thebodytalks.net

For an upcoming episode, Ím doing research about the meaning attached to movement and the shapes human bodies make. 

I want to explore how movement is interpreted both from the outside and from within the human doing the moves.

I want to explore contexts where it is helpful to offer meaning to moves (i.e. the use of imagery to encourage and support) and where meaning making can be nonsensical or worse, used as a controlling tool to make the human mover feel alienated, dissociated and dis-empowered.

So I’ve created a survey of a few questions that will take only a couple of minutes and you can find it ">here or

Sharing your experience moving your body in the world will help me build an episode that let’s people know they’re not alone in experiencing the, quite frankly, weird and wacky world of human movement.

Your voices are so important, are so precious. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Rachel Biffin

Humans love to work when it flows. When they have something to push against, some pressures, it's when we can do our best work. 

But, The Commodified Body, and its early Christian values touts a different type of work ethic - using the pillar of "consistency" as part of a mechanistic view of how our bodies should work and how we should produce. 

Here, the pillar of consistency is chained to time only and doesn't take into account the whole human body doing the work, and its requirements for play, for rest and for socialisation. 

We are being marketed the message that we are singular machines whose businesses rely on us (and our customers) "showing up", "doing the work" at all costs and all contexts. This is not possible in the real world without tiredness, anxiety, and in the worse case, burning out.

In this brief episode, I touch on ways "consistency" is viable (and when it's not) and how it can be viewed in healthy terms putting our bodies and businesses front and center. I talk about how I help businesses find their golden thread and bring that to the surface via words and images.  

I hope this episode sparks a conversation, that it can lead us to feel better about our bodies working and how we market to them. Have a listen and drop me a line on Instagram @rachel.biffin 

Blog notes for this episode: contentmoves.net/thebodytalks

Links to mentions in the show:

Jeremihah Tower - The Last Magnificent

Dr. Michelle Mazur 

She’s written a memoir When She Comes Back about her childhood years where, in 1978 , her mother leaves her and her younger sister (Nava)  to live with their father so she could go and follow guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to his now infamous ashram in Pune, India. (This was the guru at the center of the documentary Wild, Wild Country on Netflix).

This book is so relevant in our current climate navigating our bodies through all these “market forces”you could say that signal “not enoughness”, “perfectionism”, narcissism, sexism and so many other isms that make up what I call The Commodified Body.

The fact the book is about a path to healing from these childhood experiences gave me a feeling of hope, of warmth and of regeneration.

It showed me that through the act of writing, compassion, empathy and perspective can be found for both the creator, Ronit and her readers can learn and heal. Enjoy.

Full blog/transcript at www.contentmoves.net/thebodytalks

Links:

Ep2 trailer

The content and marketing around the body can be a powerful tool to help people feel seen, validated, educated and interact with body-based business from a place of centered-ness and agency. 

Trouble is, what I call The Commodified Body - that is, mainstream marketing centering the body, can be coercive and presses on women’s survival instincts in order to make more profit, power and influence. And, over the last couple of years, it’s been made clear to me, the  internet is the amplifier and propagator of conspiracy theories, pyramid schemes, wellness industry grifters and cult-like behavior. 

I started to take a look at my twenty five years as a dancer then a professional in the movement and well being industries, joining the dots between the cult-like elements: That is: coercion, thought-stopping and pain-point pressing language, promises of ascension or transcendence utilized by what I call The Commodified Body and how we work, market our businesses and feel about our bodies. 

Go to Content Moves for full show transcription. 

Links & show influences:

Podcasts: Indoctrination / Sounds Like A Cult / Conspirituality / A Little Bit Culty / Decoding The Gurus

Books: Cultish by Amanda Montell / When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank / The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renae Taylor / Fake Medicine by Brad McKay / Food Isn’t Medicine by Joshua Wolrich/ Shrill by Lindy West / Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price

Culture Makers: Kelly Diels / Dr. Michelle Mazur / Tara Macmullin / Contrapoints / Jamila Jamil / Kate Kennedy

The Body Talks celebrates the golden and the messy moments that are occurring between humans when they move, learn and create.

This season I explore status quo marketing tactics, productivity culture, ableism, perfectionism, and the culty dynamics pressuring body-based-businesses to promote a service that's not actually what they do and attracts clients with expectations neither can meet.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Through my business Content Moves and it’s mouthpiece, The Body Talks right here, I want to break that cycle and start a new one.

Each week I explore how the act of conscious content creation helps us show up in and for our businesses building a culture that heals us, sustains us and let’s us thrive.

Hit the follow or subscribe button and you’ll be notified when new episodes are released and go to contentmoves.net/podcast to learn more.