This month we’re speaking with, Gemma Mallol the originating founder and creator of Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training. She is a senior yoga and mindfulness teacher, a somatic experiencing practitioner, and body orientated trauma therapist.
What she offers in her teaching is in-depth somatic therapeutic experiences and process through Buddhist insight meditation, embodied journeying and movement practice in and with nature that cultivate resource and regulation in the mind-body-system.
This conversation takes place at turning point, which its self is one of many, in the history of the teacher training - on which Marcela teaches Embodied anatomy & Physiology of movement - and we took this as an opportunity to tell Gemma’s story, and that of Still Flowing, as they map much of the evolution of yoga in the West from the late 90s onwards.
Her teaching has many influences, Somatic and Scaravelli Inspired Yoga, Buddhist Mindfulness & Eco Dharma, and body oriented somatic therapy, movement and creative process, yet the roots of her own practice go back further; through the rise to mainstream popularity of Ashtanga in the 90s, mindfulness and Vinyasa-Flow in the 00s, and the trauma informed somatic methods of today, being there amid the birth of each of these emerging waves of health and wellbeing.
Throughout them all, Gemma’s core interest has been understanding and connecting with existence, and this has been the focus of her 20 plus years of practice and teaching, and that is an enquiry has taken place through her body. We cover much of this in the conversation - and more too - taking in these personal, cultural and also hereditary factors and traditions that have informed Gemma, and Still Flowing, but which have never defined or held her in.
You can find Gemma on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stillflowing/and her website address is http://www.stillflowingyogateachertraining.com/ where there are links to Gemma’s Zoom classes, courses and one to ones. If you want to know more about Still Flowing Teacher Training at its new home at The Yoga Garden in West Sussex, on the Knepp rewilidng Estate you can also go https://www.the-yoga-garden.co.uk/200hr-teacher-training where there’s information about the taster workshop taking place in March and the training is scheduled from June 30th 2021 to April 11th 2022.
As with last month’s show we begin with a somatic practice, so we recommend that if time and circumstance permit that you sit with the practice to orient yourselves to the felt- sense ahead of listening.
This month’s listener shout-out goes to Phil Greenfield. Phil is a body-worker of 20+ years, and educator, athlete and author of the amazing book ‘Unraveling - Letting Go, Getting In.’ We connected with Phil on a Buddhist meditation group - where we had shared EP007 of the podcast with Ajahn Sucitto - and where we had both commented with mindful embodiment tools for anxiety in response to a post. It speaks volumes to Phil that he was there sharing his wisdom freely and openly. You can find him on Instagram as https://www.instagram.com/philgreenfield/ and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/phil.greenfield.3 for his personal account, and https://www.facebook.com/CoreAlignmentBodywork where he has links to his book and his contact details. The book website is https://www.theunravellingbook.com/ too.
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