The Joanne Avison Podcast

Just because your body can do something, does that mean it's what your body needs? In this episode of Myofascial Magic in Action, Joanne Avison and Paul Thornley explore myofascial archetypes, our individual patterns of structure and movement, and why understanding our natural tendencies can help us move, perform and recover more effectively. Joanne and Paul share how their own contrasting bo...

As autumn arrives and the days grow shorter, have you noticed a change in your energy, mood or the way your body feels? In this reflective seasonal episode, Joanne explores the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain and what the changing seasons might teach us about listening to our bodies. From circadian rhythms and the effects of changing daylight to the moon, tides and our natural cycles of rest an...

What if the way we understand the human body has been missing something fundamental? 🎥 A quick note: This episode includes several visual demonstrations that really help bring Joanne's ideas to life. You can absolutely enjoy the conversation in audio, but we'd particularly recommend watching this one on YouTube to get the full experience! 👉 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jo...

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 interconnecte...

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 recepto...

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, fro...

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 ear...

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 with...

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 anato...

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 l...

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 s...

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 visua...

What if tensegrity isn't simply a theory, but something already at work inside every living cell? In this episode of Sacred Geometry , Joanne Avison explores the groundbreaking work of Donald Ingber, the Harvard scientist whose research brought tensegrity into the laboratory and helped establish the field of mechanobiology. Following the thread from Leonardo da Vinci, Kenneth Snelson, Buckmin...

What if the model we've used to explain the human body could never stand up on its own? In this episode of Sacred Geometry , Joanne explores the remarkable work of Tom Flemons, whose human tensegrity models challenged centuries of conventional biomechanics. Inspired by Kenneth Snelson and Buckminster Fuller, Flemons spent decades building physical demonstrations of the body's living arch...

What happens when someone gives a name to something that has always existed? Buckminster Fuller didn't invent tensegrity, but by naming it, he gave the world a new way of seeing. In this episode of the Sacred Geometry series, Joanne explores how Fuller's remarkable work connected architecture, engineering, biology and the living human body through one universal principle… From geodesic d...

What if the missing piece in understanding the human body was discovered by a sculptor? In this episode Joanne explores the extraordinary life and work of Kenneth Snelson, the artist whose remarkable discovery of floating compression transformed the way we understand structure, movement, and the living body. Working from curiosity rather than convention, Snelson built a simple sculpture that revea...

What did Leonardo da Vinci see that the rest of the world missed? In the second episode of this new Sacred Geometry series, Joanne explores the extraordinary quality of attention that allowed Leonardo da Vinci to perceive the human body in a way that science would not begin to explain for another 500 years. Long before the language of fascia, tensegrity, or living architecture existed, Leonardo wa...

What if the geometry of the cosmos is also written within you? Following the extraordinary response to the first Sacred Geometry series, Joanne Avison returns to go deeper. This time, the journey is about the remarkable people who saw what others missed: the hidden patterns, living intelligence, and sacred architecture of the human body. From Leonardo da Vinci to Kenneth Snelson, Buckminster Fulle...

What if the work you're doing today actually began long before you knew its name? In this concluding episode of Thank You For Having Me , Joanne reflects on the hidden threads that shaped her life's work. From a childhood spent surrounded by fabrics and fashion design, to years learning alongside artisan chocolatiers, to a lifetime devoted to fascia and human movement, she explores how s...

What does it mean to carry on when life doesn't go to plan? In this deeply personal episode of Thank You For Having Me , Joanne reflects on a formative period of family life shaped by illness, uncertainty, service, and unwavering love. Through the story of her father's struggles, and her mother's extraordinary determination to keep the family moving forward, Joanne explores the quie...

What if the magic of childhood never really leaves us? In this deeply personal episode of Thank You For Having Me , Joanne reflects on the childhood experiences, family traditions, and acts of everyday wonder that shaped her life. From rainy day boxes and upside-down days to family rituals, beloved grandparents, and a mother with an extraordinary gift for transforming the ordinary into something m...

What does it mean to truly say, “Thank you for having me”? I n this deeply personal opening episode of a new series, Joanne Avison reflects on the final hours recently spent with her mother, Stephani, and the profound sense of gratitude that emerged. What begins as a story about her passing becomes a tribute to connection, to family, to love and the invisible architecture that shapes a life. Joann...

  What if the geometry of wholeness is already expressing itself through you?  In this final episode of the Sacred Geometry mini-series, Joanne explores the dodecahedron: the geometry of ether, the fifth element, and the archetypal pattern of wholeness that underlies all living form. Drawing together the themes of the entire series, Joanne reveals how the dodecahedron contains the golden ratio wit...

What if the breath itself was a geometric event unfolding through your body? In this episode of the Sacred Geometry mini-series, Joanne explores the octahedron: the geometry of air, breath, dynamic equilibrium, and the poised relationship between opposing forces. Beginning with a single conscious breath, this conversation journeys through fascia, tensegrity, Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, sacre...

What if the shape of water was also the shape of life itself? In this episode of the Sacred Geometry mini-series, Joanne Avison explores the icosahedron: the geometry of water, flow, fascia, and living form. From soap bubbles and spheres to Fibonacci, pi, tensegrity, and the liquid crystal nature of the human body, this conversation reveals why the icosahedron sits at the heart of the living fasci...