What is LIVING IN A BODY™ and how can it help you?
LIVING IN A BODY™ is a series of body mapping courses which offer a practical, clear, and fun exploration of the basic mechanics of human movement and support. It is the quintessential owner’s guide to using our bodies in accordance with our design, allowing people of all ages to experience our innate ease, stability, strength, and flexibility in all activities of life.
Unfortunately, most people have never been taught how exquisitely our bodies are designed to do the basic movements of everyday life: walking, reaching, standing, bending, sitting, lifting, and so on. Thus we often ask our bodies to function in ways that we are simply not designed to handle – resulting in pain, injury, and degeneration.
The LIAB™ curriculum uses simple pictures, physical explorations, and stories to teach you how your body is designed to move with ease and grace - and how to incorporate this knowledge into your daily life and professional endeavors. It has been slowly crafted by international Contemporary Alexander Technique Teacher and Trainer, Robyn Avalon, over 50 years of studying, teaching, and training others in the work of F. M. Alexander and the principles of Body Mapping. She has developed a practical, experiential way to help people truly understand and embody the architecture and efficiency of our amazing design.
LIAB™ offers both self-paced experiential online courses and in-person workshops designed for personal use, as well as offering a unique and essential tool for those who work with others. The LIAB™ courses have been taught for over 30 years throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, offering 1000’s of people proven tools for helping both themselves and their students/clients access their natural ease, coordination, and comfort. It is particularly useful for professionals and teachers in performing and fine arts, movement and martial arts, fitness and athletics, equestrians, primary educators, bodyworkers and somatic educators, therapists, and health professionals.
What to expect when you take a LIAB™ course:
Easy and imaginative exploration of your own body.
Accessibility to many learning styles, including videos, pictures, explanations, stories, simple movement explorations, and writing.
No fancy words to remember, no knowledge of anatomy needed.
Simple imaginative stories and enactments that illustrate your innate design.
Questions about your body’s design that you probably never thought to ask yourself, (or your students/clients).
Realizations about your assumptions about how your body is meant to move.
Finding new ways to move your body with ease, flexibility, and strength.
Short studies for you to do on your own, (or teach to your students/clients).
Effective ways to teach body mapping to groups of any size, age, and ability.
Possible changes in non-biomechanical areas of life - like your overall sense of ease and well-being, your moods and metabolism, and more.
LIVING IN A BODY™ course offerings
Introduction to Body Mapping
What is it and why is it such an essential tool for your personal life, as well as for your professional endeavors if you work with others as an educator, coach, therapist, or health professional.
DUCK, DOG, OR DINO?
Learn how to use your amazing TAIL to release tension, increase stability, and access your flexibility and coordination. Ideal short course for everyone! See how this simple information can change your tension and coordination.
BODY TUNING
Learn to tune your body instrument. Using a violin’s basic four string tuning as a metaphor, you will learn how to tune the 4 major areas of your body. Use it yourself and share it with family, students, and colleagues.
LIAB™ PROFESSIONAL BODY MAPPING COURSE
This self-paced online course offers 98 lessons divided into 10 modules - over 20 hours of self-paced experiential study teaching you the innate design of your body through clear and practical somatic explorations. Ideal for adding into your daily life activities, as well as your work with others.
What is Body Mapping
Why is it an essential tool for you and your students/clients?
Body Mapping is a study of your beliefs (your map) about your body and your innate design.
The reason that it is so important is that your nervous system is designed to use your beliefs (software) to organize your body (hardware) - whether or not those beliefs are accurate!
That means, that even though you are trying to so something differently - like learn something new or gain more technical proficiency or just be more comfortable and have greater stability and flexibility - if you haven’t considered your underlying beliefs (map) about how your body is designed to do that activity, then you will not be able to change how you do it! Therefore, it is essential that you have the ability to recognize mismaps (incorrect beliefs), so you can upgrade how you literally live-in-your-body.
LIAB™ is specifically designed to teach you how to recognize and change mismaps. It is not an anatomy course, although you will learn about your anatomy, especially your design. It’s not about learning the names of things, but rather, where they are, what they do, what they are related to, and why they are important, in the large scheme of your whole design.
The material is clear and easy to follow, with no previous experience or knowledge needed. In addition, it offers a direct way for anyone who teaches anything to incorporate accurate body design into their teaching. It is designed for folks who don’t know anatomy, as well as those who do - and since it is not an anatomy course, it offers quite a lot of new material for those who have already studied anatomy!
The Story of Living in a Body™
Living in a Body™ was created to solve a problem:
We are not taught how our body is designed to function with innate ease.
In fact, we are often taught information that is misleading or even inaccurate.
Therefore, many people are actually working against their innate design.
I began my studies in Contemporary Alexander Technique in 1975, developing a full practice in the USA and Europe. Over the years, I found myself teaching the same basic material about the design of the body repeatedly, no matter the age or background of my students. Why did people from such different backgrounds have such similar confusions about their bodies?
As I began a deeper questioning of my student’s beliefs and ideas about their bodies, I realized that most people were following ideas and images that they were taught to them by society and media. And since your nervous system follows your beliefs - conscious or not, and accurate or not - people were essentially using societal ideas of what bodies are ‘supposed’ to look like and act like, instead of relying on their gorgeous innate design. No wonder there was such confusion!
Once I realized this, I began asking all of my students their beliefs about every area of their body.
When I tallied this information together, it became clear that there were many commonly shared misconceptions. So, in the 1990’s, I developed a series of simple, playful, and effective ways to help people notice their confusions and change them on their own. I polished each and every study over decades of teaching, so that they are effective for everyone, and can be taught to individuals or groups of any size.
The results of these 40 years of research are presented all together in the LIAB™ courses. It presents the most common mismaps that students are likely to have - how to recognize them, and how to change them. The courses have been taught to thousands of people, in person and online, throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, and are translated in multiple languages.
