How do bodywork and movement enhance our health and happiness?
For over three decades, Derek Notman has dedicated his life to the study of physical culture and philosophy. This pursuit has led him all over the world including time living in China and Southeast Asia, studying with traditional masters of martial, movement and healing arts.
The marriage of movement arts and healing skills leads to the more harmonious development and balanced expression of the individual.
Derek Notman
The beauty of good practice is the continuity it provides despite the constancy of life’s changes, rendering stable ground from which to observe the change.
I’ve always been deeply curious and on to something, meaning I’m always trying to find the next piece of the puzzle.
Derek Notman
Derek seeks to extract the essence of the traditions while connecting the common elements. Despite the uniqueness of each art and human form, there is a commonality to being in a body and so themes emerge. Derek has made it his life’s work to investigate and understand these themes and share them with others in a paradigm of traditional wisdom through embodied practice.
I came at all of this from a background in philosophy. That was my first passion and study. I was interested in an embodied and living philosophy that led me toward Chinese and Eastern traditions because it was a place where I saw the confluence of philosophy, medicine, self-care, and all these things in living traditions that had a real coherence and depth to them.
Derek Notman
Derek has a strong passion for helping people discover their fullest potential to live healthier and happier lives, and he believes that movement and bodywork play a vital role in our ability to do so.
Integration is what we are all after. Even with this question of “what is health” and “what is healing,” it depends on what facet of the gem we are looking at. There’s healing the body, there’s healing the spirit, there’s healing the emotions. Someone could have a healthy body and have some mental/emotional issues. Really, to be whole is to be integrated.
Integrative practices allow people to be in the wholeness of who they are.
Derek Notman
Derek believes that sensory feeling awareness regulates our motor function through the nervous system’s controls of the muscular system. This quality of attention is the single most beneficial skill we can develop to maintain health, release pain, and improve physical performance.
Our body is a repository of our experiences.
Derek Notman
Derek believes that tension, unrecognized and unreleased, is the “rusting of the human organism.” It must be actively pursued and transformed or else it adversely shapes the landscape of self. Drawing on established traditions, Derek’s methodology provides specific tools for bringing healing practices and awareness into our daily lives.
Health is a function of circulation, whether it’s a human body, an economy, or a roadway.
If things aren’t circulating, it’s problematic.
- Tension locks circulation.
- Too much thinking locks circulation
In settling into the body and becoming quiet and relaxing, we are creating the conditions for circulation.
Derek Notman
Kathryn and Derek’s conversation ranges from philosophy to curiosity and listening, to movement to Jin Shin Jyutsu. Here are some of the themes that will engage you as you listen to their podcast:
- How do we learn to “listen” while we move our bodies?
- How do we learn to “listen” while we practice Jin Shin Jyutsu?
- How does “Inquiry” teach us to be curious and to listen deeply?
- What is special about the complicated time we are living in right now?
- What are common elements in all spiritual teachings and religions around the world?
- What is important for us to know about how the mind works?
- Why does Derek feel that there are infinite possibilities for growth when an individual explores vulnerability?
- How does our way of viewing things affect what we will receive?
- In Jin Shin Jyutsu we say, “look until you hear, listen until you see.”
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How the Marriage of Movement Arts and Healing Skill Helps Us Heal
