The Joanne Avison Podcast
The Joanne Avison Podcast is a journey into Spiritual Science, examining the sacred geometry of human form and motion and how the Fascia Matrix changes all we thought we knew about human bodies. Reflecting on her rich experience as a movement and manual therapy practitioner, Certified Archetypal Consultant, ordained minister and Doctor of Spiritual Science; Joanne challenges our assumptions of human anatomy, and asks us to consider the "Humans Being"Â as intimately relating "soma to soul" such that they can't really be useful separated. Joanne animates the true meaning of practical spirituality and the patterns of (our) body and being a...
We All Have a Somatic Archetype. What's Yours?
What if understanding your body type could reveal something deeper about who you are?
We all move, feel and experience the world differently. Have you ever wondered why certain movements come naturally to you, while others (that you don’t find easy) seem effortless for someone else?
In this first episode of a brand-new series, Joanne Avison introduces the fascinating world of somatic archetypes, exploring the connection between our physical bodies, our natural tendencies and our deeper sense of self.
Every one of us has our own myofascial pattern or signature, re...
Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should
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 body types have shaped their experiences of movement, and why there can be no single movement prescription that works for everyone. From Paul's lifelong journey through martial arts to Joanne's discovery of...
What Autumn Is Trying to Tell Your Body
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 and activity, she considers why slowing down might be a form of wisdom rather than something to resist.
Along the way, Joanne shares a remarkable...
Why We Can't Separate Our Emotions From Our Bodies
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/@joanne.avison/videos
Following her Emotional Anatomy series, Joanne responds to your questions and brings together the connections between fascia, movement and emotion.
Thro...
The Scientist Who Saw the Living Body in a Whole New Light
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 interconnectedness of living organisms.
Using polarised light, Mae-Wan Ho and her colleague observed tiny living creatures shimmering with rainbow colours as they moved. These observations inspired her exploration of liquid...
Candace Pert and the Science That Changed How We Understand Emotion
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 receptors, and her influential book Molecules of Emotion, Pert revealed a remarkable body-wide communication network, challenging the long-held, classical idea that our physical and emotional lives are separate.
Joanne reflects on how...
Ida Rolf, Intuition and the Courage to Break the Rules
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, from training and teaching alongside the development of Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains, to an experience with a client that challenged one of the fundamental rules she had been taug...
The Woman Who Changed How I Think About the Body
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 early as the 1930s. She recognised that our emotional lives are expressed through the whole body, and that gesture, behaviour and physical form are intimately connected.
In th...
What Vanda Scaravelli Taught Me About Listening to My Body
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 within our movement — including the unforgettable moment her own body showed her what Vanda called its “anti-gravity reflex.”
A number of you have asked question...
Emotional Anatomy: Do Feelings Shape the Body?
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 anatomy, fascia, movement, spirituality and the work of Emotional Anatomy by Stanley Keleman, Joanne explores the body as something far richer than a co...
Why I Stopped Saying “Feet Hip-Width Apart”
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 look a little differently at the remarkable body you inhabit: one designed to wobble, recoil, adapt, recover and dance it...
Sacred Geometry: 12 Minutes That Changed the Way I Move
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 shoulder. Drawing on decades of work with fascia, anatomy and movement, she became her own case study, committing to just 12 minutes of micromovement a day. She expected that to fully restore...
Sacred Geometry: John Sharkey and the Architecture of Continuity
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 visual model (the 'Skwish') held up by Joanne and John.
Together, they revisit the ideas explored throughout...
Sacred Geometry: Donald Ingber and the Science of Tensegrity
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, Buckminster Fuller and Tom Flemons, we arrive at the living cell itself, where Ingber demonstrates how tension, structure and force are communicated throughout the whole.
You'll discover:
How sculpture inspired Ingber's scientific curiosityThe...Sacred Geometry: Tom Flemons and the Human Tensegrity Model
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 architecture, revealing a model based on continuity rather than isolated parts.
You'll discover:
Why a classroom skeleton cannot stand on its ownHow Tom Flemons built the first human tensegrity modelsWhy the body is not...Sacred Geometry: Buckminster Fuller and the World of Tensegrity
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 domes and “Spaceship Earth” to carbon molecules, fascia and human movement, this episode reveals why Fuller's ideas continue to reshape our understanding of living architecture today.
You'll discover:
Why Buckminster Fuller...Sacred Geometry: Kenneth Snelson and the Missing Piece
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 revealed a profound truth: living forms are not held together by stacked parts, but by a continuous relationship between tension and compression. His insight became the missing piece that helped shape modern ideas of...
Sacred Geometry: Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Seeing
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 was asking different questions. Through meticulous observation, fearless curiosity, and an unwavering commitment to direct experience, he revealed patterns of proportion, movement, and organisation that continue to shape...
Sacred Geometry: The Living Architecture of You
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 Fuller, Donald Ingber, Tom Flemons, and John Sharkey, this series follows the artists, visionaries, scientists, and anatomists whose insights help illuminate the living fascial matrix and the extraordinary geometry we each...
Thank You For Having Me: Everything Was Preparing Me
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 seemingly unrelated experiences became part of one continuous education.
At the heart of the episode is a simple realisation: everything was preparing her.
You'll hear:
What...Thank You For Having Me: The Courage to Carry On
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 quieter forms of courage that rarely make headlines but shape lives nonetheless.
Along the way, she shares memories of family traditions, the purple rose that stayed with her for decades, and...
Thank You For Having Me: The Magic We Grow Up Inside
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 magical, this is a story about the environments we grow up inside and how they continue to live within us.
Along the way, Joanne explores a powerful early childhood experience...
Thank You For Having Me: The Story Behind the Story
What does it mean to truly say, “Thank you for having me”?
In 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. Joanne traces the lessons passed down through generations, from an adored grandfather and a thoughtful father to a remarkable mother whose influence will...
Sacred Geometry: The Dodecahedron and the Fifth Element
 What if the geometry of wholeness is already expressing itself through you?Â
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 within every face, how it relates to self-organisation, completion, and living presence, and why ancient traditions considered it the geometry of the cosmos itself…
You’ll discover:
Why the dodecahedron is ass...Sacred Geometry: The Octahedron and the Breath Between Worlds
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, sacred mathematics, and the hidden geometric principles that shape living form from within.
You’ll discover:
Why the octahedron represents air and dynamic equilibriumHow the diaphragm embodies geometric balance in the bodyWhat the star te...Sacred Geometry: How The Icosahedron Shapes Your Reality
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 fascial matrix, and how its geometry shapes the way we move, breathe, adapt, and experience reality itself.
You’ll discover:
Why the ic...Sacred Geometry: The Hexahedron and the Geometry of Grounding
What if the geometry of the cube was a transient aspect of you before you were even an embryo?
In this episode of the Sacred Geometry mini-series, Joanne explores the hexahedron: the geometry of earth, embodiment, and the earliest sacred geometric patterns of human form…Â
You’ll discover:
Why the cube appears briefly during the earliest human developmentHow the body grows through geometric patterns rather than mechanical onesThe deeper symbolic meaning of “earth” within sacred geometryHow fascia carries memory, responsiveness, and formWhat sacred geometry reveals about the intelligence of life itselfJoanne also explores...
Sacred Geometry: The Tetrahedron and the Beginning of Structure
What is the simplest structure the body can form… and why does it matter for movement, fascia, and transformation?
Joanne continues this popular new Sacred Geometry mini-series by exploring the first true three-dimensional form: the tetrahedron.
Following on from the previous episode on zero, this conversation moves from potential into form. Joanne explains how four points create the first possible volume in space, and why this shape is not just mathematical, but deeply relevant to the living body… In fact, the tetrahedron is a foundational pattern of structure, transformation, and organisation within fascia and...
Sacred Geometry: The Missing Link Between Fascia and Form
What is the missing link between fascia and form… and how does sacred geometry help us understand the body more clearly?
Following the popularity of previous episodes on this topic, and in response to so many questions from you, this new mini-series revisits sacred geometry in a deeper way. Join Joanne as she explores the fascinating geometric principles that underpin the human body, beginning with the concept of zero, the often-overlooked starting point from which all form emerges.Â
Rather than treating geometry as abstract theory, Joanne shows how it reflects the way the bod...
Refine In Action: How to Move Well Without Forcing It
What if moving well isn’t about doing more… but feeling more?
In this episode Joanne Avison and Paul Thornley explore the final step in their five-part fascia-focused prehab approach to movement. This conversation brings the series together by challenging one of the biggest assumptions in training: that repetition and effort lead to better movement. Instead, refinement is revealed as something far more powerful, the ability to perceive, adjust, and organise movement in real time.
This episode includes exclusive practical demonstrations from inside their practitioner training, showing how subtle changes in position, timing, and...
Restore In Action: Bringing the Body Back to Its Natural Blueprint
What if true restoration isn’t about rest… but restoring your body’s ability to move, adapt, and perform?
In this episode Joanne and Paul explore restoration, the fourth step in their 5-step fascia-focused approach, and share exclusive video demonstrations from their practitioner training - so you may prefer to watch this on the Joanne Avison YouTube channel - although there's still plenty to be gained here!
Restoration is about rebuilding your capacity to move well over time. Without it, even strong, capable bodies gradually lose options and become more restricted, often without realis...
Release In Action: From Tension and Compensation to Ease
What if “release” isn’t about relaxing or stretching, but letting go of the patterns that hold you back?
In this episode, Joanne Avison and Paul Thornley explore Release as the next step in their fascia-focused approach to movement. This is part of a mini-series on the Five R’s, and includes exclusive video demonstrations from inside their practitioner training, so you can see how this work is applied in real time. So you may prefer to hop on over to the Joanne Avison YouTube channel to watch this one 📺 (Although if...
Recoil In Action: The Foundation of Body Resilience
Why mechanical thinking breaks movement, and how Recoil restores adaptability, resilience, and real-world function in the body.
After such a great reaction to their recent episode about Rebound, Joanne and Paul return with the second instalment in this mini-series exploring the Five R’s of myofascial motion, again sharing exclusive demonstration videos from inside their practitioner training!
So you may prefer to hop on over to the Joanne Avison YouTube channel to watch this one đź“ş (Although if you'd prefer to listen you'll still get plenty of goodness here.)
Rebound In Action: The Key to Moving Without Strain
For the first time ever Joanne and Paul share real movement training clips from inside the Myofascial Magic In Action practitioner course! 🌟
This exclusive episode explores why strength and stability alone actually don’t create efficient movement, and introduces Rebound as the key to moving without strain. Joanne and Paul illustrate this beautifully with visual clips of their Rebound exercises, offering a rare look at how this work is applied in practice with professionals.
So you may prefer to hop on over to the Joanne Avison YouTube channel to...
Why Lever Mechanics Don’t Explain Human Movement
Why lever mechanics don’t explain human movement.
In this episode, Joanne explores the limitations of the biomechanical idea that joints act as simple levers. Drawing on fascia science and anatomical observation, she explains why the human body cannot be accurately understood through linear mechanical models.
Many traditional explanations of movement rely on engineering concepts such as levers, pin joints, and mechanical chains. But living bodies are not built like machines! Joanne describes how the architecture of the body is fundamentally non-linear, tubular, and spiral in organisation, shaped by fascia and the dynamics of...
Is the Skeleton Really Linear? Rethinking Alignment
Is the human skeleton really linear — or is that a fundamental misunderstanding of anatomy?
In this episode, Joanne responds to a detailed YouTube comment that raises important questions about fascia, skeletal organisation, and so-called “linear” underlying structure of the bones. What follows is not a disagreement of style, but a clear challenge to biological inaccuracies that are commonly repeated in movement and manual therapy circles.
Are bones straight?
Is working to soften the tissue an advantage to everyone?
And does it always automatically restore function?
Drawing on extensive fascia resear...
Fascia, the Nervous System, and Inner Regulation
How regulation emerges through sensation, awareness, and relational feedback, not force or control.
In this final episode of the five-part series on fascia, embodiment, and practical spirituality, Joanne explores the relationship between fascia and the nervous system, and how inner regulation can arise through lived, embodied experience, rather than necessarily needing to use conscious effort or technique.
Drawing on fascia science, somatic awareness, and relational regulation, this conversation looks at how safety, coherence, and resilience are cultivated through sensation, rhythm, and connection. Rather than trying to “manage” the nervous system, the episode invites a subtler unde...
The Living Geometry of Fascia and Embodied Awareness
How does the body organise itself into movement, perception and awareness?
In this episode, Joanne explores fascia as living geometry — not symbolic or abstract, but the organising architecture of embodied awareness…
Building on the previous episode about the energetic body, this conversation looks at sacred geometry as a biological reality rather than a spiritual overlay. Joanne reflects on fascia as a self-organising, responsive field through which structure, sensation and meaning continually arise.
From embryology to movement, from breath to healing, fascia reveals a non-linear intelligence that adapts and reorganises when awareness and safe...
The Energetic Body & Fascia: A Bridge to Spiritual Awakening
How fascia connects the energetic body, embodied awareness, and spiritual awakening — explored through lived, sensory experience.
In this episode, Joanne explores the energetic body through the living lens of fascia, embodiment, and direct experience. Rather than treating spirituality as something abstract or separate from the body, this conversation invites a grounded understanding of awakening as something sensed, relational, and embodied.
The episode reflects on fascia as a responsive field that shapes perception, movement, and inner organisation. From embryology to adult self-awareness, it explores how awareness arises through sensation, rhythm, and relationship, not effort or...
Biomotional Intelligence in Practice: Tuning into Your Body's Wisdom
Biomotional intelligence describes how the body senses, adapts and responds before thought or analysis…
In this episode, Joanne explores how awareness, fascia and lived experience shape the body’s innate intelligence in everyday life. She looks at biomotional intelligence not as a concept to understand, but as something to practice. Through embodied awareness, presence and subtle listening, the body reveals meaning that cannot be reduced to data, mechanics or emotional labels.
Drawing on fascia therapy, somatic practice and contemplative traditions, Joanne reflects on how sensing precedes thinking, and how over-analysis can interrupt the body...
