176: Becoming Friends with Movement (with Nuria Bowart)

🎙 Becoming Friends with Movement (with Nuria Bowart)

📌 Save the date: early December 2026 in Boulder, Colorado — as a result of their discussion here, Til and Nuria are teaching a collaborative workshop for bodyworkers, hands-on and moving, both. Details to come at https://advanced-trainings.com

Tell Nuria you’re “not really a mover” and she won’t argue. She’ll just say: maybe you’ve forgotten.

Most of us learned to work on bodies that hold still. Nuria Bowart — dancer, movement artist, Certified Rolfer, and a Mestra in Capoeira — lives at the opposite pole, where the body is always moving, listening, and playing. Til sits down with her to explore a deceptively simple question: how can those of us who work with our hands become better friends with movement — not as one more thing we prescribe, but as listening, relationship, play, and a way of being more at home in ourselves?

Along the way they get into Fascial Intelligence, the Axis Syllabus, Contact Improvisation, and Capoeira — and what each one teaches about touch, agency, aging, and befriending the unknown.

✨ We talk about:
• Why “maybe you’ve just forgotten” is Nuria’s answer to anyone who doesn’t think of themselves as a mover
• Fascia as a constellation of intelligences — and listening as the core point of access
• What changes when we start with the body’s design and options, instead of fixing
• What Contact Improvisation reveals about weight, gravity, and arriving together in the present moment
• Capoeira as a healing art: play, risk, vulnerability, and responding creatively to danger
• Aging as a “mystery school” — and movement as the micronutrient of longevity
• A simple practice for the week: finding the moment you don’t know what to do, and staying there to listen

✨ Resources:
• Nuria’s website: https://www.nuriabowart.com
• Nuria on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nuriabowart
• Berkeley Capoeira Collective: https://berkeleycapoeira.com
• The Field Center, Vermont
• The Axis Syllabus: https://www.axissyllabus.net | US events: https://axissyllab.us
• Axis Syllabus literature and texts: https://www.axissyllabusforum.org/literature
• Axis Syllabus socials: https://www.instagram.com/axissyllab.us | https://www.facebook.com/AxisSyllabusResearchMeshwork
• Frey Faust, founder of the Axis Syllabus
• Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen & Body-Mind Centering; Sensing, Feeling, and Action (Contact Quarterly)
• Nita Little & the Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication — hear her in episode 140 of The Thinking Practitioner

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✨ Watch the video / connect with us:
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AdvancedTrainings/podcasts
• Whitney Lowe – https://academyofclinicalmassage.com | https://facebook.com/WhitneyLowe | https://twitter.com/whitneylowe
• Til Luchau – https://advanced-trainings.com | https://facebook.com/advancedtrainings | https://instagram.com/til.luchau

📧 Email us: info@thethinkingpractitioner.com

The Thinking Practitioner Podcast is intended for professional practitioners of manual and movement therapies — bodywork, massage therapy, structural integration, physical therapy, osteopathy, and similar professions. It is not medical or treatment advice. Rolfing® is a registered service mark of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®.