The pain, injuries and burnout that resulted forced me to learn how to fix my foundations and partner with my body.
Hi. I’m Jonathan. If you’re reading this, you’re probably curious about who I am and if I’m someone you’d resonate with learning from.
You can scroll down if you want to read the longer story, or learn more about me.
While I don’t know where you are and what you’ve been through, I do know what it’s like to struggle with your body.
The reason I created the Embodied Movement approach was because I couldn’t find a holistic, body-positive solution to heal, restore and unlock the freedom I knew was possible in my body.
Years of collecting injuries without rehabbing, pushing myself too hard, and not listening to my body forced me to learn how to heal my body at the deepest levels.
You name it, I’ve probably tried it. Yoga, corrective exercise, natural movement, calisthenics, Feldenkrais, Pilates, physical therapy. The list goes on. I found that many of these approaches a piece of the puzzle, but it wasn’t fully integrated.
By studying ancestral movement, the way we evolved to move, I’ve learned how to give people a bridge from modern living back to their primal strength.
By learning about trauma and how the nervous system gets “stuck” I’ve learned how to help myself and others heal their bodies from chronic pain and tension.
If you’re stuck with your body right now, I get how frustrating and challenging that can be.
I encourage you to learn more about my approach and if it resonates, give it a try. It’s helped me and over 500 of my students rebuild their bodies.
For years I collected injuries, lived in my head, and pushed my body too hard
I learned to listen to my body because it refused to let me trespass over it anymore.
Like most of us, I was never taught how to properly care for my body. My body was something to be tamed, to be forced to perform. For much of my life I lived entirely in my head. Most of the time my body was an afterthought, an inconvenient appendage I had to lug around with me.
I tried to find self-worth through physical achievement at the expense of the health of my body. I did a lot of cool things, don’t get me wrong. I learned how to do handstands, kickboxing, muscleups, parkour, calisthenics and lots of interesting yoga poses. But I was always doing it to get somewhere, to prove something to myself or others. Partly to prove my worth through physicality as a man. Partly to feel like I could be good enough as a coach. There was no spaciousness allowed for progressions or letting my body recover after I pushed it to its limits.
So naturally I collected a lot of injuries. Injuries I never had the time to attend to, because I was too busy climbing a ladder that I would later learn would never lead to the fulfillment I desperately hoped for. My lack of internal self worth created a hungry ghost that could never be satiated.
As if the constant pushing my body wasn’t enough, I’m like all of us a product of our culture. Too much time in front of screens, wearing “feet coffins” and abusing my body turned off key muscles in my core, spine, and feet.
I had numbed and checked out of my body’s needs so much that it started to catch up with me. For years I could ignore and push through the pain to keep being a good little cog in the machine of capitalism and delayed gratification.
But my body had other plans. Not only did I have chronic pain in most of the joints in my body, I was also starting to develop chronic fatigue and gut infections from pushing too much, for too long.
My body wasn’t whispering at me anymore. It wasn’t even yelling. It was screaming. But in the end, all of it led me back home to myself. Pain, tension, numbness, they were calling me back to learn to listen. To partner with my body. Eventually I learned how to use movement practice as a path to greater intimacy and self love through my body.
Curious about my background?
Along the way I’ve learned from a lot of amazing teachers. While there are too many to list, folks like Jon Yuen, Katy Bowman, Frank Forencich, Todd Hargrove, Mary Bond, and Donna Farhi have informed my work tremendously. And there are of course the teachers like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh that are not movement teachers but have contributed so much to the way I live and inhabit my body.
During my journey I’ve extensively studied natural movement, somatics, Jeet Kune Do, qigong, Feldenkrais, functional movement, breathwork and more.
I’ve also learned a lot just by spending time with trees, nature and plant medicine.
But my biggest teacher has been my own body.
Want the juicy details? Here’s a more intimate bio….
I currently live in Los Angeles on Chumash and Tongva land. But I grew up in Idaho, descendents of White European settler folks. I was raised Mormon, but luckily survived that and learned how to trust my own intuition again thanks to the support of a lot of great friends, my partner and amazing therapists. I identify as queer and use they/them pronouns.
Raised religious I was taught to not listen to my body. It wasn’t to be trusted.
Growing up enculturated as a man I was taught that my body was something to build, sculpt, and hone. Physical achievement meant more worth in the tribe.
Living in a capitalist, knowledge-centric culture, I was taught that the mind was more important than anything. The body was just something that made the brain work. So I was taught to sit still, focus and ignore my body.
These things helped me survive and fit in in the world. But they didn’t do my body any favors.
It took many injuries, chronic tension and pain for me to realize that I needed to do something different.
Helping people heal their bodies and return to wholeness, trust and freedom is my purpose. While I don’t know exactly where you are, I can imagine that you want to feel better in your body. Some things aren’t working for you the way they used to or maybe never did. I get it, because my pain and struggle with my own body alchemized into my purpose and my offering to the world.
First, it’s important to know that I’m pretty much a geek.
Let me demonstrate:
I’m a tea nerd. I particularly love ripe, pu’erh tea. The more it tastes like an old-growth forest floor covered in moss, the better.
I love learning languages. It’s like a portal into being an honorary member of another culture and experiencing the world with fresh eyes.
I try to spend as much time as possible conversing with plants, rocks and the sky.
I’m super fascinated with what it means to be embodied as a human. I mean, does anyone really know what’s going on here? Having a body, breathing, eating, moving, it’s kind of a trip, isn’t it?
I know I can’t cultivate freedom in my body without simultaneously unlearning and detoxing myself from the racist, capitalistic, sexist and ablist systems that are upholding our world.
I’ve learned that when I treat my body as a system of all my parts, I find greater ease, freedom and expression. When I access the resources I have available to me at all times, I can find greater ease through the difficulties and challenges life brings.
If my journey inspires you in some way, I’d be honored to walk this path with you and offer support from what I’ve learned along the way.
Ready to get started?
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