We’re Going Deep
Recently, our community experienced the loss of someone deeply meaningful to us.
This moment reminds me that no matter how experienced we are as teachers, coaches, or movement professionals, we are first and foremost human beings. We experience grief. We experience heartbreak. We experience the emotional weight that comes with caring deeply for others and for life itself.
And in these moments, many of us instinctively return to movement.
Not to perform.Not to perfect.But to process.To reconnect.To feel. To sense.To ground. To heal.
As movement educators, we spend years studying how movement transforms the body. Yet increasingly, research is validating something many in our field have intuitively understood for a long time:
Mindful Movement is ESSENTIAL for the Whole Human Body to recover and heal.
The worlds of neuroscience, somatic therapy, and movement science are beginning to understand that people’s emotional overwhelm are not just things that happen in our brains. We’re experiencing them in our bodies and our feeling nature.
A 2021 “Sports Medicine – Open” review found that practices such as walking, yoga, qigong, martial arts, and mindful movement support bereaved individuals with their emotional recovery:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40798-021-00311-z
Brain imaging studies find grief can activate regions of our brain connected to our emotional processing, memory, stress regulation, and attachment. A pioneering Functional MRI study on grief explored the “functional neuroanatomy of grief”. It demonstrated changes in brain activity during bereavement and emotional processing:
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.11.1946
A meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology found that dance and movement therapy interventions improved people’s emotional regulation, body awareness, interpersonal connection. They reduced anxiety and depression:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01806/full
In other words, the body is not simply a vehicle for fitness or performance, but also a gateway for emotional integration and transformation.
At the Academy of Mindful Movement, we know that Mindful Movement techniques integrate our Body, Mind, Emotion and Self – vital for any movement practice.
Not only for the precious people we teach and support, but for us as facilitators as well.
We as movement professionals today are holding space for communities navigating profound life transitions. People are not only coming to our movement spaces for physical results – they are also coming for grounding and healing.
We created our upcoming training retreat with this deeper understanding in mind and heart. This is not simply a retreat about technique or choreography.
We’re going deep.
We share with you ways of teaching that support not only people’s physical development, but emotional integration, Self awareness and genuine human care.
Mindful movement can do more than strengthen the body.
It can help people reconnect to themselves after loss.Reconnect to vitality after burnout.Reconnect to community after isolation.Reconnect to meaning after life-changing experiences.
And perhaps most importantly, teaching mindfully can help us become more compassionate, aware, and skillful facilitators for the communities we serve.
We invite you to join us for this immersive retreat experience and be part of an evolving conversation at the intersection of movement, science, mindfulness, emotional wellbeing, and human transformation.