MOVEMENT PRACTICE | MOVEMENT TRAINING

Movement training and Tree Climbing in London locations. Experience a meaningful outdoor movement practice (although we have indoor group movement classes too). Join our drop-in classes, courses & workshops or go deeper with your development and connect with our regular London movement group via the movement practice membership and get access to unlimited classes, including drop-ins and exclusive members only classes (and also ongoing discussion and resources for self practice). Get my full attention with a personal 1-to-1 movement session or an online call / coaching and support.

MOVEMENT PRACTICE | CODED LIFE - WHAT MOVES YOU?

We explore relationships - the connections, interactions and interdependence between body, community and habitat - through the lens of a movement practice to attempt to explore how we perceive and communicate. Whether the individual or a group, inside or outside (although we prefer to Move With The Seasons), the lens of a movement practice or just movement, is a larger vehicle than most would think to explore questions (and not worry too much about the answers) and observe ourself in the world.

We want to understand and we want to be understood - Jozef Frucek, Fighting Monkey

On the surface we explore cultivating a movement practice - which ultimately you will decide what that means to you - but let’s just say we have movement classes, 1:1s, workshops and events which cover a wide range of movement training disciplines, practices and influences, infused with my own personal beliefs and what I am currently passionate about in my own movement practice. The practice changes and evolves, having a system or method is too static for me. Life isn't static and like life, our movement practice contains patterns, cycles, rhythm, ying and yang and with it opportunity for awareness, adaption, harmony and hope to *‘Understand and be understood’. But so what? What does that mean to you? Really **‘I teach/coach nothing’ and I can’t make you learn anything. I can propose direction, facilitate opportunities and give you feedback that is just my opinion. 

Classes/events are are a safe space to rediscover playful and natural movement in the context of nature and the season with a supportive group. To suggest movement practices and scenarios that I hope provide opportunity to serve you as a mirror for self discovery - the potential for discovery through embodiment, discovery of traits and qualities we have and/or wish to keep hold or let go of. Exploring the relationships  between body, community and habitat -  whether a self, group and/or environmental (locomotive) practice - and how they sculpt one another. *Does what we practice explore qualities and relationships we can carry over into life and help us enjoy it a little more? How do we adapt to challenges and change if we don't expose ourself to variety and adversity and stick to comfort and the known? Is it useful to recognise parallels between your life and the changing seasons?

As big and bold as these ideas are, ultimately we are a huge believer of PLAY - something perhaps most adults don't realise is missing or don't think is important now they no longer are children. Helping you rekindle this often atrophied play drive for me is key to a engaging, sustainable and nourishing practice - one that is driven by intrinsic instead of extrinsic rewards.  An activity driven by play will make us want to do it over and over again. We can speculate that play is nature’s optimal state for learning. Play is being in ‘the zone’ highly engaged in whatever it is you are doing, for me the true meaning of ‘Flow’. Perhaps there is an alternative to the chore and bare minimum attitude of exercise in a sedentary culture. Maybe we can enjoy and maybe even LOVE our physical practice and make partaking in it a pleasure. With doing what you love as a foundation, we can fill in what’s missing with training for specific goals and supplemental exercises to restore and maximise our potential - the balance between a classical and romantic approach - but in a world where perhaps we are overly saturated with the classical and reductionist approach, I think we need a bit more romance!

The group - without the privilege of being involved with the wonderful people that come to classes and events etc it would be difficult to explore these relationships. Adults need play perhaps more than ever and we are good at it when we remember how. Playing together encourages positive social engagements to grow and to learn together which is vital in a very narrowly socialised, touch deprived culture. With a culture that is overly concerned with fear and shame, the support and encouragement of the group is even more crucial to rediscovering childlike qualities we admire and embrace such as curiosity, hunger to learn, honesty, open mindedness, energy, imagination, behavioural flexibility, humour and playfulness, and so on.

The truth about the human species is that in body, spirit, and conduct we are designed to grow and develop in ways that emphasise rather than minimize child like traits. We are intended to remain in many ways childlike; we were never intended to grow “up” into the kind of adults most of us have become - Ashley Montagu

We move by ourselves
We move with each other
We move with the environment
We move with the seasons

What Moves You?

*Paraphrasing Jozef Frucek / Linda Kapetana of Fighting Monkey
** Paraphrasing Joseph Bartz

My movement classes and private lessons in London cover a wide range of movement training disciplines and influences infused with my own personal beliefs, giving my students what they need to improve their movement quality, rediscover their play drive and achieve their goals. I'll expose you to what I know, but you will ultimately decide what moves you. I am inspired by and passionate about the systems and teachings of several of my peers and mentors, and these elements are encapsulated in what I offer. I am constantly developing my own practice which is the foundation of what I share with others, to always ensure I'm passionate about what I'm teaching. My practice constantly evolves around topics and disciplines that develop my internal freedom of movement, body control  and the use of imagination (a Self Practice). Practice with a partner or group and learning to move through my environment whether city or woodland. All help me understand finding a meaningful experience through being present and seeking flow. This is what I also hope to share with others. 

Self Practice | Partner/Group Practice | Locomotion (moving through you environment) Practice

Natural Movement | Tree-climbing | Roughhousing/Rough & Tumble Play| Improvisation & Flow | Mobility & Strength

LEARN TO MOVE LIKE A HUMAN

Reclaim your capacity to move with flow over grass, rocks, and trees, play with sticks and stones, and learn to develop yourself through contact, rough & tumble play, dance and combatives. Reconnect with nature and develop your aliveness in movement to become more resilient embodied human.. As an Evolve Move Play coach, I am passionate about teaching people how to move like a human.

Move with speed and grace | play | reconnect with nature

Seasonal Movement Workshops

Moving in, about and with the Seasons

Move With The Seasons is primarily an outlook on observing, coordinating and adapting (moving) with change. Moving with the rhythm of the changing seasons of our inner and outer landscapes. Viewing the moving body in a changing environment through the lenses of movement practice, seasons of change and story.

I love all seasons and the variety it brings. Here are some things we got up to at previous Move With The Seasons workshops.

There’s an event for each season

About Me

My approach is to connect people with what it feels like to move like a human again, to rediscover one's innate play drive we had as children, to rekindle connection with nature to give this movement and play context, and develop a movement practice that ultimately gives a meaningful experience. Rebuild the prerequisites (joint mobility, strength & body control) for the many variables and chaos we encounter, leading us to reclaim the basics of natural human movement and ultimately aspiring to freedom in movement and true engagement/fun.

Taking inspiration from my teachers Rafe Kelley, Jozef Frucek & Linda Kapetana, Joseph Bartz, Tom Weksler, and others, and following and applying the work of Ido Portal, I continue my tutelage from the people that inspire me. I am Rafe Kelly's first and only Evolve Move Play coach and a Functional Range Conditioning Mobility Specialist (FRCms).

I run quarterly workshops, mentorships, intensives, several weekly classes exploring a variety of movement influences - natural movement / Evolve Move Play method, Fighting Monkey Practice, parkour in natural environments and tree climbing, gymnastic strength, FRC mobility development, rough and tumble / roughhousing, group/partner games and play, and also offer private sessions/programmes in the form of 1to1 movement training and online coaching.

Nature Jam Community Event
a free monthly gathering

Nature Jam - Family, friends, community. All are welcome - come and join us for this FREE meetup, usually every first Sunday of the month. Check the event on my Facebook page for more details. Meet 12pm at entrance opposite Hampstead Heath Overground Station by the railings.